CHAPTER 40 #2
The last notes of a fast melody faded out. The opening dance had just ended. Perfect.
The who’s who of Rellas mingled around me. The ocean of monsters, Everard murmured in my memory. Truer words had never been spoken. In these stormy waters, I was prey. I needed to get my thirty seconds of spotlight out of the way and then I would fade into the background.
The music had died. The next dance would begin in ten minutes.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward to the front of the gathering loosely ringing the dance floor. The floor didn’t crack under my feet and swallow me up. So far so good.
I scanned people’s faces. Where is he?
A clump of red and silver—Wynand Bors holding court directly across from me.
He was easy to spot. He stood five foot five, but he weighed about two hundred pounds, all of it bone, sinew, and muscle.
He was enormously strong, and he’d been known to pick up taller opponents in full armor and throw them if they pissed him off enough.
His doublet mimicked armor, as if his tailor had tried to reproduce a cuirass with cloth and leather.
A bright red cloak dripped from his left pauldron in artful pleats.
To the right of Bors, a group of people in copper, cobalt, and gray watched the crowd with flat expressions.
The Yolentas’ faction. Dreantia Yolenta stood with her two sons and her daughter, who sat in a wheelchair.
The resemblance between them was unmistakable.
All four had the same squarish faces, the same arrogant bend to their eyebrows, and the same rare shade of ash-brown hair. No DNA test needed.
No sign of her niece, though. She was the only blond of the lot.
I looked to the left of the Yolentas. Scarlet, gold, and black. Ulmar Hreban.
I didn’t jerk. I stayed calm.
He had the same look he had worn on his face in the Garden.
The pale woman next to him was his wife.
Her black and red gown was beautifully tailored, and her dark hair was studded with jewels.
She was about ten years younger than Hreban, which put her in her early thirties, but there was something petulant about her expression.
She was like the most popular girl at school who was forced to attend someone else’s party, and not being the star was eating at her.
Everybody under the sun was in the damn ballroom except for Everard. Had he been poisoned?
I took a tiny step forward, trying to move past a large man next to me to take a look at the rest of the dance floor to my right.
Rust and cream. Solentine.
Even among all this finery, he stood out, cutting an elegant figure in a tailored doublet that also resembled armor.
That must’ve been the formal fashion, and it was perfect for Solentine.
Everything my new cousin did, from the tilt of his head to the casual gesture of his hand as he spoke to an older man next to him, was refined and graceful. Solentine dripped sophistication.
Our gazes met. Solentine Dagarra did a double take. And then he looked to the side.
I turned slightly to follow his gaze.
Everard. Alive.
Thank God he was alive.
He wore black from head to toe, leather and cloth with a green inlay on the chest. Black leather pauldrons broadened his shoulders, his green cloak dripping from them in structured folds.
He looked like some infernal prince in armor forged of cosmic darkness.
Behind him, the retainers of Selva stood shoulder to shoulder, in black and green.
His face was glacial. Cold and unyielding, as if cut from stone.
I never should’ve come. Seeing him like this, in those clothes, was not good for me. I had won my freedom from him, and I had to keep it.
Wait. He was fine. So was Solentine. Both of them were here, in perfect health, and neither of these assholes had thought it was worth their time to let me know that they had arrived safely or that Everard wasn’t dead.
I had driven myself up the wall worrying, I had lain awake at night thinking he might have gotten poisoned, and they didn’t even bother to send a note. One word: Alive. That’s all I needed.
It was crystal clear to me now. I was a weapon.
A tool, like a dagger. Ramond vi Everard was content to use me when it suited him and to ignore me when it didn’t.
That Solentine did it bothered me less, but Everard had lived in my head rent free almost since the moment I came to this wretched city.
He’d lied to me, he’d saved me, and then he’d lied again by pretending he cared for me, and I kept deluding myself and buying into his lies.
You know what, screw this.
Shock slapped Everard’s face. He had finally seen me. His eyes flared with green.
Yes, yes, here I am. Didn’t expect that, did you?
The entire Selvan delegation was focused on me now. Somebody would notice this. They were painfully obvious about it.
I glanced at Solentine. He started moving to his right, the shortest path around the room and to me.
Okay then, time to impersonate Homer and the hedge and fade into the background. I took a careful step back.
A taller woman walked into me. She stopped at the last moment, so she didn’t quite knock me over, but we did bump into each other.
Blond hair, piercing blue eyes, rose, teal, and white crest. Eliarde. Arvel’s second cousin and the Butcher’s would-be victim #3. Crap.
She glared at me. And she was pissed off. Awesome.
“Who are you?”
“Excuse me, my lady.” I took a small step back toward the wall, clearing her path. She preferred to be addressed as dame, but in the formal setting the noble title took precedence.
“I asked you a question,” she ground out.
The two women following her stared at me. The one on the left, in a blue dress, sighed. “Let her be, Elie.”
“No, I want to know what makes her think she can stand in the front row.”
I saved your life, you ungrateful cow.
“I don’t recognize these colors.” Eliarde took a step toward me.
No surprise there. Izarn Demarr was a border commander, who visited Kair Toren once in a blue moon, while Eliarde was a Silver Eagle, part of the royal garrison.
The only way she would ever see the Trihorn would be if Sauven personally went there.
But recognizing the colors or no, I was a woman with a crest in an expensive dress who was allowed to enter the joedurar.
Most people would’ve taken that into account.
Eliarde was not most people. I could tell by the set of her jaw that common sense had left the station. Something had irritated her, and she was looking for a lightning rod to scorch. She’d done it multiple times in the books. When something annoyed her, any target was a good target.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
“Because I was invited,” I told her.
“By whom?”
“By His Majesty, Sauven Savaric.” Chew on that.
“Isn’t it blindingly obvious?” another female voice said.
I glanced to my left. A stunning woman with light brown skin and a wealth of curly hair braided into a gorgeous arrangement bore down on us. The bodice of her dress, a beautiful gray, resembled armor, and her skirt was like a gush of arterial blood. Two women accompanied her, waiting a step behind.
Lady Ilandra Bors.
Great. Just great. The two candidates for the deadliest female knight in the kingdom who hated each other with the passion of a thousand suns and me, the gnat stuck between them.
“She is here because she was invited,” Lady Bors repeated.
“By the king,” a taller woman on her left added. “Imagine that.”
“Isn’t that why all of us are here?” the shorter woman asked. “Unless Lady Eliarde somehow snuck in? Could it be that you didn’t receive an invitation?”
“This doesn’t concern you, Magrefondretta,” Eliarde snarled.
Hurry up, Solentine.
“Why can’t we take an interest? It is so amusing to watch,” Lady Bors said. “I can’t wait to see how you will embarrass yourself further. Perhaps you should throw her to the ground to vent your ire.”
The two women behind her chuckled softly.
This was not helping. Eliarde couldn’t attack Ilandra Bors directly, not without issuing a formal challenge and disrupting the joedurar, which would bring Sauven’s wrath down on her head, but she sure as hell could attack me. As far as she was concerned, I was a nobody.
Eliarde pivoted to me.
Yep, just as I thought.
“You still haven’t answered my question.” Every word dripped with menace. “Who—”
“Lady Maggie,” a deep rumbling voice said behind her.
Eliarde spun out of the way. Lord Bellen looked at me.
His colors were blue and white, and his clothes were cut like Everard’s, armor replicated in cloth and leather with exquisite detail.
His white doublet clasped his frame, widening already huge shoulders.
A stunning inlay of pale blue curved across his chest, accented with gold.
His sky-blue cloak dripped from his left shoulder.
He looked enormous, his blond hair nearly glowing in the light of the enchanted chandeliers.
Everyone stared at us. Suddenly we were the focal point of the room.
“Lord Arvel,” Eliarde gasped.
Please no. No, no, no . . .
He was looking at me. “My lady, you’ve made me the happiest man in Rellas by accepting my invitation.”
Some woman behind Eliarde made a choking noise.
You have got to be kidding me. What the actual fuck?
Arvel leveled a stare at Eliarde. It was flat, heavy, and cold. She took two steps back. He turned to me.
“I have been so looking forward to our reunion.”
I needed morr beads. Or a drezmur. I needed to not be here.
He bowed. Bellen—Arvel—was bowing to me.
Eliarde’s eyes were as big as saucers. Lady Bors would need a crane to lift her jaw off the floor.
“Will you grant me the honor of a dance?”
Oh fuck me.
He held out his hand.
All around us people went quiet. I had no choice. None at all.
“The honor is mine, my lord.”
I rested my fingers on his. His hand swallowed mine, and he led me onto the dance floor.