Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
THE PALACE HAD COME alive in the time it took for Raleigh and me to dress.
Droves of vampires roamed the halls. Some were clearly entranced, with vacant faces and unfocused eyes, while others held themselves with a cool elegance, eager to crane a look at the prodigal prince and his besotted bride.
It felt as though they had all been lying in wait, watching from the shadows on our arrival, and now that it was too late to turn back, they had emerged from the dark.
A reminder, perhaps, that she was always watching.
The ballroom was magnificent beyond words.
There were more mirrors inside, filled with the glittering reflections of a thousand candles.
They illuminated the dancers to their full resplendence, men and women dressed in centuries of fashion, waltzing in the modern style.
Each dancer was beautiful in their own ethereal way, elegant to the point of eeriness.
One final enormous mirror crowned the ballroom, worth more, perhaps, than the rest of the palace combined.
Mine was the only face reflected back, alone in an empty room, arm linked with nothing but air.
‘Why are there so many mirrors?’ I asked Raleigh as he led me through the crowd. The rooms were spacious enough without the need to resort to illusions, and I was fairly confident the Queen didn’t use them to preen at her reflection.
‘For safety,’ Raleigh explained. ‘It’s not always easy to tell human from vampire, and at a ball like this I doubt even she would know everyone by sight. The mirrors help us spot any hunters who might have slipped inside.’
‘I thought you could smell human blood?’ Most of the books I’d read mentioned this, and it lined up with what I knew of his heightened senses.
‘Once the banquet starts it’s impossible to sift through the smells.’
A pang of dread jabbed at me. ‘The banquet?’
‘Raleigh.’ A venomously sweet female voice rang out behind us. Was it her? I wondered.
But Raleigh bit out a smile, spun us both to face her and said equally sweetly, ‘Seraphina.’
I found myself facing a woman who was almost as tall as Raleigh, her dark hair piled high in two buns at the top of her head.
Her gown looked like a player’s costume, with dramatically bulging sleeves I couldn’t imagine having graced any other court since the Reformation.
‘Is this the bride I’ve heard so much about? ’
‘It’s the bride no one should have heard anything about,’ Raleigh replied, matching her wide smile. ‘Tell me, cousin, have you seen Her Majesty tonight?’
‘Impatient, are we?’
He snatched his hand from her roaming fingers.
‘She’ll join us soon, no doubt. We know how much she wants to meet your new pet.’
‘I’ll ask someone else, then,’ Raleigh said. ‘Always a pleasure.’ He spun me away.
‘Who was—’
‘Prince Raleigh!’
Raleigh swore under his breath and pulled me into another sharp turn to avoid an approaching man in a powdered wig. ‘Are you ready to dance? I really fancy a spot of dancing.’
‘To avoid your old friends?’
He contorted us into a waltz hold with no reply other than a withering look, which I frankly deserved.
We didn’t know the steps. The other dancers spun in precisely choreographed movements, which made us stand out more than we already did.
The waltz had reached Orlfen around the same time Raleigh did, but Father had forbidden me from learning it, deeming it improper for a girl my age.
Raleigh knew enough to lead me, but he had hardly spent the last fifteen years attending balls.
We followed our own steps, music billowing around us and tuning out the danger lingering at its edge.
The other dancers were no longer looking at each other.
Without missing a step, their eyes were attuned to the only couple out of line. Or to the lonely dancer in the mirror.
‘Everyone’s looking at us.’
‘Ignore them.’ He let go of my hand to tilt my face upwards. ‘Look only at me.’
It was an act, I knew that, but his words still sent a thrum through me.
When he reclaimed my hand, I was certain he could feel my pulse quicken, my skin growing hot.
We twirled in time to the music, and suddenly I was closer to him.
His hand landed higher up my back, pressing our chests together.
His face tipped to mine. To anyone watching, he must have appeared entirely in control, the picture of pure confidence.
Only I was close enough to note the uncertainty darting across his features.
‘We should kiss,’ he whispered.
I tightened my grip on his shoulder. Ever since we left home I’d suspected this moment would come and the feeling it evoked was far from dread. Half a lifetime ago the prospect would have been abhorrent. Now, I didn’t know.
‘I’ll try to make it convincing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and put his lips on mine.
His kiss was tender, but brief. This was a transaction. An act. None of this was real for Raleigh, and if it was real for me, it was only because I’d fallen for a performance.
And yet, in that moment I was truly and utterly lost to him.
His kiss wasn’t believable. That’s what I told myself when I pushed myself to my toes to kiss him again.
What I continued to repeat like a mantra when I tangled my hands in his hair.
When he snaked his hands up my back to pull me close, until we were so entangled in each other I no longer knew where I ended and he began.
Kissing Raleigh was nothing like kissing Yann.
There was something inevitable about kissing Yann, and there is nothing thrilling about the inevitable.
Kissing Raleigh was like plummeting from a cliff, and whatever awaited at the bottom was at once terrifying and captivating.
If his touch was once electrifying, it now felt like being struck by lightning.
I could feel every movement, every caress right through to my core.
If this was how it felt to kiss him, the mere thought of going further was almost enough to make me come undone.
It took all of my willpower to break the kiss. Raleigh’s eyes were glazed, his lips begging to be kissed again. ‘I think we convinced them,’ he murmured.
Them? I blinked myself back into reality, back into the nightmare.
I’d been so lost in the moment I’d all but forgotten our audience.
We’d been so dreadfully indecent. As every one of my emotions spiked at once, all I could do was laugh.
And as soon as I started, Raleigh did too.
Soon we were doubled over in a fit of infectious giggles.
The situation was absurd. Here the two of us were, one wrong move away from being ripped apart by a court of vampires, and we were giggling like children.
The song faded, the dancers dispersed and in the mirrored wall I watched as a line of humans were guided into the room and lined up along the back.
The oldest could have been Waltz’s sister, the youngest no older than five or six.
Each stared at a spot on the floor just beyond their knees, expression vacant, eyes blank.
Raleigh tried to spin me so we couldn’t see them, but there was no wall that didn’t reflect their empty stares.
Any desire to laugh was quickly extinguished. ‘Is that …’
‘The banquet,’ Raleigh confirmed, his voice numb. He turned away. To avoid looking at me or to avoid looking at them, I didn’t know. ‘Come on.’ He put a hand on my waist, as the music swelled again. ‘We should keep dancing.’
I didn’t move. I couldn’t take my eyes off the youngest. Someone had lovingly braided ribbons through her hair that morning.
Her grass-stained dress had been patched and re-patched and her shoes were new, two sizes too big.
Shoes meant to be grown into. I thought painfully of whoever had woven those ribbons into her hair searching the woods for a child who would never come home. ‘I can’t leave them,’ I said.
‘This is how it is at court.’
I swayed, wondering if I was going to be sick. And then the woman Raleigh had called Seraphina was once again at his arm. She tried to unlatch his hand from me. ‘We must dance,’ she said, ‘for old time’s sake.’
Raleigh redoubled his hold on my waist. ‘I have no desire to do anything for old time’s sake.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ she cooed. She slid her fingers under Raleigh’s and forced him to peel his hand away. There was something hazy about her movements. ‘I’ll have him for one song,’ she said to me, ‘and then you can have him back.’
‘I don’t—’
But she was stronger than him. The music crescendoed, catching them both on the breeze and spiriting them away into the throng of dancers. I tried to follow but was cut off by two couples swirling close together. He was lost. I was alone.
No one appeared to be looking at me, but I could feel the whole room’s awareness fixed on the only non-enchanted human.
My leg itched against my dagger and I fought the urge to drag it out and start cutting until Raleigh was by my side again.
I extracted myself from the dance floor instead, seeking somewhere quiet to take refuge, when someone placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.
‘Are you all right?’
I whipped around, trying not to let all my feelings spill out.
The woman who spoke looked concerned, her head tilted in appraisal.
I would be stating the obvious to say she was beautiful: there wasn’t a soul in this room who wasn’t.
She was ethereal. Her blonde hair, almost white, cascaded down her shoulders.
She had been slightly older than me when turned, old enough to mature into her beauty, but young enough that the ravages of hardship had never touched her body.
Her skin was soft, lips full, her black slip of a gown draping enticingly over her curves.
She repeated her question, hand slipping down my arm to articulate her empathy.