Chapter 4
“Excuse me.” I slip out of John’s arms and toward the stranger.
Faintly, like my ears are clogged with water, I hear him calling out after me, but I hardly pay him attention.
My heart is racing. In panic or wild, desperate exhilaration, I can’t be sure, but it’s off-beat with the clicking of my heels against the marble floor.
It’s then that it hits me what exactly I’m doing.
I’m not one who by nature or temperament would typically be comfortable approaching a man like…well, like him. John was supposed to be my buffer. Was supposed to introduce me to the suitors, steer me away from awkward silences, ensure my evening avoided wastes of time I can no longer afford.
But I’ve never seen another Mark before. Well, besides the ones in the dreams I learned to stifle years ago.
Still. I’ve always held out hope. Just a glimmer. Just a morsel. That one day, he’d come for me. But now, several paces away, I’m second-guessing myself.
He’s leaning against the cedar frame of the balcony doors, so that at least provides me with a bit of privacy as I sneak behind a pillar and toward him.
With the subtlety of a predator marking its next meal, the man tilts his head. His sleek black mask only emphasizes his daunting presence. Metallic ears, fashioned to razor-sharp points, jut from the side of the mask, a nod to the legendary fae that once ruled our realm before the curse that dwindled their numbers. Curiosity flares in those ivy green eyes of his as he detects me approaching him.
Oh no. He’s seen me now. Meaning there’s no turning back. No throwing myself behind the nearest pillar to get away from his assessing gaze.
The stranger lifts a haughty black brow over the curve of his mask.
“Hello,” I say, because that’s the only word of the millions in the Estellian language to come to my head at the moment.
“Hello,” the man drawls, flicking his gaze down my body and back up again, though there’s nothing really to examine given the modesty of my silk wedding garb.
My face flushes as I realize how forward this must seem. I’m not typically this nervous around men. The same way a market vendor isn’t shy around her customers, I assume. All my life, I’ve been in the business of selling myself. Practice has made me competent, if not comfortable, with engaging potential suitors in conversation, even if I have to shed my natural reticence to do so.
I’m unsure whether it’s this man’s Mark or his demeanor that’s tying my tongue like a knot on Michael’s shoestring.
I can’t think of what to say, so I blurt the first thing that pops into my mind. “Would you like to dance?”
The man says nothing, just stares at me in that brutally assessing way, so I add hastily, “With me, I mean.”
“I assumed as much,” he says, and not kindly. There’s a jeering in his tone, one that catches me off guard. Perhaps in his home kingdom, it’s offensive for a woman to ask a man to dance.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“What are you apologizing for?”
I’d say my words are getting hung in my throat, but that would require me having an answer to begin with. Finally, I gather my swarming thoughts. “I didn’t—I didn’t know if perhaps I had offended you by being the first to ask you to dance.”
As to whether I offended him, he doesn’t say, but he shifts on his feet, sounding utterly weary as he says, “Why would I be interested in dancing with a spoiled heiress who looks as if she’s hardly been weaned?”
Heat flares at my neck, shock stunning my lips for a moment. I blink. Now that I’m close enough to get a better look at him, the difference in our ages is rather evident. Though I can’t spot the telling folds at the corners of his eyes due to his mask, he has that rugged appearance that sometimes inhabits men as their faces shift with age. Leaner at the cheeks, firmer at the jaw. He must be at least fifteen years my senior, if not more. “I thought—” My eyes betray me, searching for a glimpse of the Mating Mark I’d thought I’d spied on his hand. Surely it hadn’t simply been a trick of the light.
It’s the briefest of glances, but the stranger must catch it, because understanding dawns on his face. He tilts his chin up ever so slightly, crossing his arms at his chest and gesturing to his hand, his Mark shimmering in the low light. “Ah. Let me guess. You have one of these too, don’t you? I suppose it’s not a piggish disposition your parents are trying to hide underneath that mask, after all.”
My jaw drops.
A cruel grin plays on his lips. “Come now, Wendy Darling. You can’t blame a man for wondering.”
Tears sting at my eyes, each of his condescending words plucking at the corset strings I used to tie myself together tonight.
“Forgive me,” I seethe, “for assuming predisposed interest in a man attending a ball—the very function of which is to name the inheritor of my dowry.”
The stranger lets out a wry laugh, pushing himself from the wall in a fluid, graceful sweep. “I assure you, there are reasons for attending these functions that far exceed procuring a child bride.”
A child bride.
Images of a little girl, dancing barefoot with the shadows, careful not to let her skin touch, assault my mind.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” the stranger says, shoving past me on his way toward the center of the ballroom. “I’ll be looking for someone with slightly more wit to engage my attention.”