32. Jet #2
“Thought you’d gotten lost.”
“Was it you, you bastard?” I demand, tugging at the two sets of arms holding onto me.
“You are not guests here, gentlemen. Please do bear that in mind. Any courtesy extended to you is at my request. And trust me, you should be grateful. Robertson would just as soon see you both at the bottom of the sea and forget all about you.”
“Well, you’ll forgive us for not falling over ourselves with gratitude,” Sev says, surprising me and, apparently, Senna.
“Severin, you disappoint me. I thought you’d be the reasonable one.”
“Where’s the contract. We’d like to sign it and go. Let you all get back to your… celebration.”
“And that is exactly why I came to find you. Imagine my surprise to have to send out a search party.”
“Where’s Amal?”
Just then, a gong sounds loud enough to hear in this room. The music of the quartet stops.
“This way,” Senna says, and turns to walk out into the corridor.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I bellow.
He turns, distaste or hate curling his lip. “You will see her momentarily.”
We follow him. Or, I should say, we’re made to follow him.
The corridor is empty but for a few stragglers hurrying toward the Great Hall. Two men stand sentry at the entrance of it, ready to close the door. I get the feeling even members of The Society aren’t free to roam the castle’s halls.
Senna gestures for the last of them to enter. I’m behind him so I can’t see his face but from the looks on the faces of the other guests, he’s not hiding his displeasure.
A moment later, he fumbles with his mask, pulling it over his face. I’m guessing he’s just realized it is on top of his head and people can actually see his true expression.
Once the last of the guests are inside, Senna gestures for us to enter.
The soldier holding onto Sev releases him and Sev walks ahead of me.
I follow my brother into the Great Hall where there must be more than two-hundred guests.
As I take them all in, I realize how just as all the men are in various shades and fabrics of black, so are the women in creams and whites.
This strange fact registers just as the conductor gives the signal, and the quartet begins to play a mournful, almost screeching tune.
Something that would better fit a funeral than a festive event.
A sound draws my attention to the top of the grand staircase, its twin curves sweeping down to meet in the center of the room. I turn just as a collective gasp ripples through the crowd. Every guest seems to react at once, as though rehearsed. Only my brother, the soldiers and Senna remain silent.
I see why when two men wearing identical half-masks and black suits, the same suits and masks of every soldier, appear at the top of the stairs, between them the most stunning, unnerving sight I’ve ever seen.
A woman in a dress the color of blood.
Amal.
It’s her. I know without having to see her face because I can’t see her face. No one can. It’s bound up forcefully by lace to match the red of the dress, her dark hair pulled back, tamed for the first time ever in what I guess is a painful knot.
Hands close over my arms again. I realize I’ve taken a step forward, my body physically drawn to her, pulled to protect her as if by some invisible force. But I can’t get to her. Of course I can’t. The soldiers holding me back see to that.
“Now, Jethro, your Amal,” Senna says, moving his arm in a grand gesture as if to present her, as if he’s just drawn the curtain aside. Although his face is directed toward Amal, I can hear the satisfied grin I know he’s wearing beneath that mask. I don’t need to see it to know.
The men who are holding onto Amal release her and she sways a little.
She takes two steps to stand at the top of the stairs and looks down into the room of two-hundred masked strangers.
I can imagine from here how her heart must be pounding.
How terrified she must be because she is what this whole thing is about.
She is the one to watch, not us.
We were mistaken, arrogant to think this ball was to parade Severin and me, to make an example to the members of The Society and remind them what happens when you disobey.
In my mind, I see that wall of vines interlaced throughout all those coats of arms, touching every family, every life.
The name, Fairbairn. I’d seen it in her notes.
She thought she was looking for her father but all along, that name belonged to her.
I see it now. I understand it now. Does she know? Does she understand?
She takes another step, wobbly this one, and I think of a lamb walking to the slaughter. She is that lamb. The sacrifice dressed in bloody red.
My hands fist, rage burning inside me.
I will her to look at me. To see me. Only me.
And a moment later, as if fate will grant me this one wish, she does.
She sees me.
The instant she does, I swear I see that fierce, impossible blue of her eyes as her gaze locks on me even over the distance and through her prison of lace. I swear I see the eyes of the woman I will raze hell to protect and I will my strength onto her.
But I don’t need to.
I underestimate my wife. Have I learned nothing?
Because she straightens, growing inches taller before my eyes. When she takes hold of the banister, I tug free of one set of hands only to have two more grab me.
Amal begins to walk down the stairs. She’s unsteady and I think they drugged her, too. They must have. Even so, as she pauses to steady herself, to steel herself, her eyes never once leave mine. Not for a second.
She’s barefoot. I notice it immediately, each careful step exposing a glimpse of pale skin beneath the crimson silk.
My gaze travels higher and my jaw tightens.
The fabric has been wound tightly around her chest. It’s not to hide her, but to display her, deliberate and calculated.
And yet, she holds her head high. If they wanted to humiliate her, they failed.
She’s wearing enough lace to circle the island three times over. I imagine hanging Senna with a length of it and it satisfies something dark and cold inside me.
But Senna barely registers. All I see is Amal.
I watch her descend the seemingly endless staircase, watch the crowd part as the sea did for Moses, and there is only her. I think of all the times I’ve pressed her hand to my chest, my heart, and I feel her there now.
In my heart.
My wild bride.
My fearless bride.
The woman I will lay my own life down to protect.
The men holding me back release me and I hurry across the space to her, reaching her in a few long strides. Once we’re in the middle of the room, guests create a circle around us and that screeching, hideous music grows louder, heavier.
This ritual, whatever it is, it has begun.
I wrap my arms around Amal as she throws her weight against me.
I hear her breath catch as she lays her cheek against my chest and for a long moment, I hold her tight to me, feeling the frantic beating of her heart, breathing in the scent of her, needing to be certain this is real.
She’s real. And I have her now. She’s safe now.
“All may join,” a man says. Robertson.
Couples spill onto the dance floor around us, their movements graceful, studied. But with every turn and measured step, the circle draws tighter. The dancers weave together, shoulder to shoulder, an elegant prison to trap us at its center.
I know there will be no running with Amal and Sev. I think I always knew. It wouldn’t be that easy. Even if we could run, she’s the only woman in red. They’d see us a mile off and we wouldn’t get to that mile. Not with all their manpower.
I hold her tight, looking down at her face. “Amal?”
She lifts her head and I see why she doesn’t speak. The lace has made an elegant gag, rendering her speechless. I feel for the knot at the back of her head but there isn’t one because it’s woven through her hair and held in place with what feels like a thousand hairpins.
“It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you now, baby. I’m going to get this off you and get us out of here,” I promise her, even as over her head I glimpse my brother being forced from the room by two soldiers. Even as two more come to stand beside us and Senna gestures for us to move.
I guess act one is over.
“Do you have the gun?” I whisper to Amal, hoping against hope that somehow, she was able to smuggle it under the dress.
Somehow, she managed it. But she looks up at me with such a sad face, and I see the tears drenching that lace.
“It’s okay. It’s fine. Don’t worry,” I reassure her.
It would have been easier to have some firepower but honestly, we are so fucking outnumbered.
So, we move, heading in the same direction as Sev, me holding so tight to her hand that I force myself to loosen my hold before I break her finger.
Her little bare feet seem so out of place here, so vulnerable in this room, among these people with their stiletto spiked shoes and sharp-toothed grins.
When the door is closed behind us, all noise falls away as if there is no one here at all. As if there aren’t two-hundred guests in the Great Hall and a string quartet isn’t playing a requiem for their horror show of a party.
We’re hurried down a dimly lit corridor that seems to go on forever.
Lights flicker here, not candles although they’re made to look like that.
At one point the hall is so narrow we must walk single file.
I keep hold of Amal’s hand, glancing over my shoulder afraid she’ll slip away, disappear if I don’t see her. If I’m not touching her at all times.
Sev is ahead of us. Soldiers front and back.