Chapter 35 #3
And then a voice rose above all of it—clear, unhurried, and entirely unbothered by the weight of the silence it was breaking—and every last sound in the ballroom dropped away.
“Confectioner girl.”
Lucie’s breath stopped. Slowly, still holding Kazrian’s hand, she turned toward the voice. The crowd parted as she looked, bodies shifting aside in a slow, silent wave, until a clear line opened across the breadth of the ballroom and Lucie could see her.
The High Lady.
She had known, distantly, that the High Lady often attended the Rowanwood Masquerade.
Rosavyn had mentioned it more than once over the years.
But somehow, in all Lucie’s careful preparations for this evening—the gown, the mask, the decision to come at all—she had not once stopped to consider that the High Lady might be standing in this very room when the masks came off.
“Miss Lucie Fields,” the High Lady said.
Lucie’s hand tightened in Kazrian’s. She knows my name. She was at the launch, and she spoke of me with Lady Rivenna, and she remembers my name. Whether this was good or very, very bad was yet to be seen.
Lucie breathed, steadied herself, and sank into the deepest, most careful curtsy she had ever made.
The High Lady regarded her a moment longer, and then the faintest curve touched the corner of her mouth.
“I do not believe there is a soul in all of Bloomhaven who has not heard tell of you and your remarkable skill, Miss Fields. You take honey and light, and you shape them into something that no fae confectioner has ever thought to attempt.” She tilted her head.
“I have tasted it myself. I can attest that the reports do not exaggerate.”
A small murmur moved through the crowd. Lucie’s heart was hammering. She could not yet tell whether the ground beneath her was steady or about to give way entirely.
“I will tell you all a secret,” the High Lady said, “though I daresay it is not much of one. I have always been quite hopelessly fond of a love story. You will recall my delight over the soulbonded couple several Seasons back. And this particular tale, I confess, has held my attention in recent days.”
She let that settle, and the room hung on it.
“Consider it,” she continued, taking a step forward, addressing the crowd.
“They met as no more than a girl and a boy—she in a tea house kitchen, he a fae lord’s son—and they loved one another, quietly and against all sense, for years.
And then they were parted. Sundered by distance, by half the width of the world, for years more, each believing, I do not doubt, that the door had closed for good.
And then—” the High Lady spread one graceful hand toward them “—then they were brought together again, by that charming new confectionery so many of us have already come to cherish, The Honeycomb. Where they worked side by side, day upon day, and discovered that the years and the distance and the whole weight of society’s expectations had changed nothing at all. That they loved each other still.”
She paused, her gaze returning to Lucie and Kazrian.
“And now they stand before us. A fae lord and a human woman, hand in hand and unmasked, before the whole of Bloomhaven, refusing to pretend otherwise for one moment longer.” A small, deliberate silence.
“It is my considered opinion that any society which would tear such a thing apart, for the crime of two hearts having chosen each other across a divide, is a society rather more in need of correction than they are.”
The murmur that ran through the room now was different. Softer. Turning.
“So let it be known,” said the High Lady, and her voice rose and rang, “that these two have my blessing. Openly and gladly. And that I shall look with very great interest indeed upon anyone who feels inclined to say otherwise.”
Lucie could not breathe. Tears blurred her vision. Beside her she felt Kazrian standing still as stone, and then his hand squeezed hers, and she squeezed his back, and somewhere in the crowd a lady pressed her hands to her heart, and someone else began, tentatively, to applaud.
“And now,” the High Lady called out, “one final dance.”
The music began, a slow waltz, the opening notes drifting across the ballroom, and Kazrian turned to her.
“I can scarcely believe that just happened!” she whispered, still clinging tight to his hand.
His grin stretched into something wide and unguarded. “Nor I. Is it possible we are dreaming?”
She squeezed his hand again. “That feels considerably real to me.”
He laughed. “And to me.” Then his smile softened. “Miss Fields,” he said, “will you dance with me?”
“Lord Rowanwood,” she said, “It would be my pleasure.”
They stepped onto the floor.
There were no masks now. No enchantments, no borrowed faces, no anonymity to hide behind. There was only Lucie Fields in a golden gown, and Kazrian Rowanwood in his dark coat, and the whole of Bloomhaven’s society watching them from every corner of the room.
Let them watch.
His hand settled at her back, hers found his shoulder, and she felt him exhale a long, slow breath.
They began to move.
It was not like the giddy whirl of the earlier dances when they had spun through the crowd in delighted, breathless secrecy.
This was slower. Quieter. A thing with weight and meaning, every step deliberate, every turn unhurried, as though the music had been written for this exact moment and they were simply following where it led.
And somewhere in the slow, steady turning of it, with his hand warm at her back, his eyes on hers, and the faelight golden around them, Lucie felt something shift deep in the center of her chest. What she had wanted—quietly, desperately, for longer than she could bear to count—was finally, unmistakably, hers.
She looked up at Kazrian, and he looked down at her, and the whole vast glittering ballroom receded to a distant, shimmering hum.
There was only him.
Only this.
And Lucie Fields, who had spent her whole life being careful and sensible and exactly where she was meant to be, danced in the arms of the man she loved in a room full of glowing light, with no distance at all between them, and did not look away.