Chapter 20
Elric yanked at the neck of his ridiculous outfit as they strode down the street with all the other partygoers. There wasn’t anyone who would recognize him, so his mask covered only part of his face, but that didn’t make it any more comfortable. Just like the rest of this stupid costume.
The witches had made it very clear that he was to pay attention to his surroundings and not deviate from their instructions.
He would endanger all of them if he did.
That meant he had to wear the clothing they had picked out for him, and no, he couldn’t conjure his own.
Someone would ask “Lord Bloodworth” where he’d purchased his outfit, and he’d have no good answer.
But why this suit? It was starched so heavily that it barely moved when he did.
The creases down the legs were so sharp, he was certain they would cut someone if he got too close.
The black silk shirt underneath the velvet jacket made him a little too warm, and the vest in between, embroidered to look like a rib cage, was just silly.
Still, it was quite nice to walk down the street freely with Jessamine. And she looked beautiful.
He glanced down at her again, willing himself not to get hard the moment she looked back. Those dark eyes bored right into him, and all he wanted was to strip her out of that silk and watch it pool at her feet.
He wanted to worship her like this. Worship her like he had against his own shrine. Every moment with her made him more and more obsessed, and sometimes he feared what that meant for him. For her.
For their kingdom.
Sighing, he turned his attention back to the crowd around them lest he walk into the party with a hard-on that he couldn’t explain.
“So, this is the place?” he mused, as though they hadn’t ever been inside this building before. Too many prying strangers could be listening to their conversation.
“They say Fortuna’s home is the finest in all the Pleasure District,” she said, leaning against his arm and trying to flutter her eyelashes but failing spectacularly. “Do you think someday you’ll build me a home like this?”
“Anything you want, darling.” Elric raised her hand to his lips.
He could hear the couple next to them sigh in happiness at their love, but he could see by the glance they shared that their reaction was fake.
Later, they would speak of the sickly romantic couple who had been so cloying to stand next to in line.
There were so many people here. Far more than he had anticipated, and quite a few who didn’t look like they were even from Inverholm. Leaning down, he pretended to kiss Jessamine’s shoulder while he murmured questions against her skin.
“Does it look like the man beside us isn’t from here?”
She glanced that way, tilting her neck so he had more access to it. “He’s from a neighboring kingdom. Not Leon’s.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Fortuna’s net is wide.” She cast her eyes at another couple, the movement so small he might not have caught it if he wasn’t so attuned to her. “They’re also from another kingdom. Although I’m not sure if they’re together or siblings.”
He looked at the way the man’s hand hovered at the base of the woman’s spine. “I think siblings.”
“Interesting choice, then. I’m not sure why they would be here when Fortuna made it very clear she was looking for a husband.”
He shrugged, then stood up straight again. All of this still felt like a trap, and he couldn’t figure out why. Clearly, Fortuna’s party had attracted all the greatest people in this kingdom and beyond. But why on earth had she allowed both of them to enter her home undisturbed?
Gut churning, he moved forward with everyone else. There were guards out front as they had seen before, again wearing Leon’s colors. A statement of Fortuna’s favor with the king, no doubt. One that they should not ignore.
As they approached the guards, Elric could feel himself stiffening.
Perhaps this was the moment Fortuna would make her move.
Perhaps someone would approach them, because certainly everyone could tell that he and Jessamine were different.
They were far more than any of these people could ever dream of being.
A guard placed a hand on his chest as Elric started to walk past him. He looked down at the guard coolly, hoping the hatred in his gaze would sear his face into the man’s memory for years to come. “Yes?” he growled.
“Name and…” The guard cleared his throat, looking down at the paper in his hand. “And where you are from? Sir?”
The faintest movement beside him suggested that Jessamine had covered her mouth. If she started laughing, then he would do the same and everything would fall right apart. His woman needed to get herself together.
“Lord Martin from Castlery,” he replied, sighing as though it was the worst thing anyone had ever asked him. “By the gods, man. Pull yourself together and look for the name.”
The guard didn’t rise to Elric’s bait, but the exaggerated way he looked at the paperwork, running his finger down the list, was clearly to make it seem as though he was doing far more than he actually was.
“I’m sorry, I don’t see your name on the list—”
Jessamine leaned across him and gently tapped her finger against the paper. “Here. Lady Farah and Lord Martin.”
Elric didn’t have even a moment to bemoan that his name had been second on the list before the guard straightened and nodded. Really, what was Agnes thinking? “Yes, yes, of course. I see now. You may enter.”
They strode past as though they hadn’t a care in the world, even if Elric was already fuming.
He wanted to let all of his shadows fly so that no one in this place would ever question them again.
He wanted to show them what angering a god looked like, and if they weren’t capable of seeing that, then he would prove to them—
Jessamine’s hand slid beneath his vest, close enough to his skin that he could feel the heat of her palm against him. “He was just doing his job, Martin.”
He hated that she had to call him anything other than his name. Few people knew what his name even was, so to have her calling him something else? He would lose his mind by the end of tonight.
“I dislike this,” he muttered, walking into the gardens with her. “This is all far too dangerous.”
“We’re rubbing elbows with so many people who know what happened,” she whispered. “I recognize many faces from the castle in here. This isn’t just about Fortuna anymore.”
“From the castle?” He racked his mind, trying to remember what he had seen in her memories.
Nothing of note that he remembered, although perhaps there was more he hadn’t seen.
Elric called upon the shards of her soul that he’d kept to peer into.
What he found there surprised him. “I thought they all died?”
“All those I saw that day did, but it seems as though quite a few survived. I had assumed after my death that Leon killed the rest of them.”
They both stepped to the side as a couple walked past them, both the man and the woman dripping in so many jewels that Elric wondered how they could walk. The show of wealth was tacky, in his opinion, but that was what Fortuna liked and thus, that was what the Pleasure District liked.
Elric had seen the few people who tried to deviate from that style while he walked the streets. They were ridiculed, shunned for their difference. It was like someone walking into the town square naked. Fortuna’s control over this place seemed infinite.
Jessamine tugged him just off the garden path, toward a cluster of roses that were so pungent he felt a headache splinter at his temple.
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “I want to talk with some of them and see what they’re thinking about, knowing that the princess might be back.”
“Why would we do that?”
“I just have a feeling.”
He groaned. “Your feelings get me in trouble. I thought we weren’t going to start anything tonight.”
“And here I was thinking you enjoyed me getting you in trouble.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him back onto the path.
“I do,” he growled. “I just prefer to be the one starting it. It’s entirely unfair that you told me to be on my best behavior tonight, while you don’t have to be.”
Two young men startled at his words, looking them over with clear suspicion. One of them had a bright mop of chestnut hair that he’d carefully curled into unnatural spirals, and the other was wearing the most gods-awful puke-colored doublet dotted with rubies.
Elric grinned at them. “She can’t keep her hands off me, but the moment I want to put my hands on her, suddenly I’m the problem. You know how it goes, boys.”
The two of them eased their suspicious stares, but Jessamine slapped him hard on the chest.
Worth it.
Together, they strode through the crowd and mingled. He hated being around any of these people, let alone having to talk to them. He was certain they were all part of the problem, and now that he knew many of these people had stood by when Jessamine was killed, he itched to return the favor.
She dragged him toward a knot of people standing around a bar made out of fine golden filigree, looking as though it were held together by sugar rather than sturdy metal.
“Darling Martin, would you get me a drink?” Jessamine batted her lashes at him.
“Ah, Farah. Anything for you, dearest.” He ground the words out through his teeth, and he wasn’t certain they were very believable.
She seamlessly fit in with these people, though.
Even as he watched, she meandered through the crowd, reintroducing herself as someone she wasn’t, the story they’d memorized note-perfect.
And they believed her. They adored the Lady Farah, who had only recently married the rake Martin.
No one had ever been able to get the man to settle down.
Wasn’t she so pleased she was the first and only who had managed to do so?
“Whiskey,” he told the man at the bar.
“Sir, there are themed drinks for this function. If you would like me to tell you about them—”
He silenced the bartender with a glare. “Whiskey.”
“Right. Very good, sir.”
In moments, he had a glass of whiskey in his hand as he turned his back on the bartender and watched Jessamine shine.
For all she had bemoaned the fact that she wasn’t the same person she once was, she was the same stunning woman who had captured his attention in her memories.
The guests were all eating out of her hand in moments.
A crowd had gathered around her, laughing at what she said.
Soon enough, she was the person at the party.
Everyone wanted to be around her. They all wanted her to look at them, to listen to their gossip, for her to laugh and tell them they had the best story she’d heard all night.
It likely took her half an hour at best.
Why were they all still out here in the gardens? Wasn’t this supposed to be a ball?
Looking down at the glass in his hand, he was disappointed to see that it was empty. “Another whiskey,” he said, only to pause when a firm hand touched his.
Frowning, he looked at the man who stood tall and broad beside him.
This wasn’t a man like the others here. He wore a suit of navy blue, but it wasn’t quite as pressed as the others.
The buttons gleamed with gold, but he could see the bottom one had a few pieces of that gold paint flaking off.
His hair wasn’t perfectly in place either; there was one piece that wasn’t slicked back like the rest, right at the top of his head like a cowlick that wouldn’t settle.
“Do I know you?” Elric growled.
“Can you please get him the gin and tonic?” the man said to the bartender. “It is the special of the night for the gentlemen, after all.”
Elric frowned. “I already ordered what I want.”
“Trust me on this. You want the gin and tonic.”
He did not, in fact, want the gin and tonic. But he did want alcohol, so he took what the bartender offered and wondered idly if the drink was poisoned. He stared down into the clear liquid, then looked back at the man standing beside him. “If you poisoned this, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”
“I’m sure a man such as you has encountered much poison in his life. Whatever tincture I picked to kill you would certainly fail.”
Elric could only frown. “Now, what would make you say that?”
The man nodded toward Jessamine. “Any man who has claim to a woman like her knows better than to assume another won’t try to take what’s his.”
His hand clenched around the glass. “Is that a threat?”
“Merely an observation. After the loss of the princess, I think all of us are watching our women a little more closely.” But there was something in the man’s gaze, a tightness as he looked at Jessamine and then back at Elric.
“Most of us have heard the rumors, you know. That the princess isn’t dead. Have you?”
“I heard she fell off a cliff after getting her throat cut. That she plummeted into the ocean, which, from that height, would have shattered every bone in her body.” Elric knew better than most. He’d knitted every single one of those bones back together.
He drained the gin and tonic before setting the glass on the bar top.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, it sounds as though this place might be a little too dangerous to leave my wife alone in. ”
“I think anyplace might be too dangerous for that.” The man leaned a little closer, so that no one would overhear their words. “The walls have ears in this place, and so does everyone within them. Keep her safe.”
And then he walked away, slipping through the crowd, which gave him odd looks, sensing he was out of place.
Frowning, Elric walked back to Jessamine’s side and tugged her against him.
“Oh,” she said with a small chirp that was entirely unlike her. “You’re back! I was just talking with Lord Henry here about his time in the castle. Such a sad thing to lose so many nobles at once.”
He hummed low under his breath, bending down so it looked like he was nuzzling her neck. “Not everyone here is what they seem.”
“I’ve already discovered that,” she whispered in his ear. “Who was just talking to you?”
“I have no idea.” He dragged his lips up her throat to her ear. “But he knew who you were, princess. And he knew I am a god. So keep yourself alert.”
And he would do the same. Just because he’d promised to behave himself didn’t mean that he would if someone dared to touch Jessamine.