14. Chapter 14
Istorm across the ballroom like a chaotic force of nature, my glass heels clinking with every step I take.
Along the wall, there’s a buffet table littered with drinkware and what smells like spiked punch.
Perfect. I pour myself two cups of gelatinous-looking liquid, alternating them back and forth, lifting each one to my lips in salutation of this shitty predicament.
One for me, two for me.
Gods, this shit is strong.
As I’m drowning in my sorrows and minding my own goddamn business, someone bumps into me.
I spin around to find a woman garbed in a feathered gown who reeks like salty perfume, reaching for a glass of punch.
I scowl at her, only to be sidelined by a man with no sense of personal space whatsoever.
He reaches over my shoulder to pour himself something to drink.
I scooch away from him, only to bump into a matronly woman dressed in an oversized crinoline skirt who gasps as if I’m the problem.
I duck beneath the buffet table to get away from them, inadvertently bumping my head on the way down.
Ouch. Well, at least I have this burgundy tablecloth to keep me company, and two glasses of alcoholic punch to numb reality.
Perhaps if I close my eyes and chug these glasses both down, I can pretend that I’m not here right now.
Augustine will never find me.
“Return back to dancing, the lot of you,” a threatening voice booms out. “My brother and I require a moment of privacy.” Oh no. That sounded a lot like Thalmos, the God of Wisdom. My ears perk up from beneath the table.
“What my brother means to say, is that you have three seconds to scatter, or I will personally pluck out your spines through your throats and use them to whip you with,” another voice resounds. That one is definitely Rhaziel, the God of War.
“We have a problem,” Thalmos says after the flurry of footsteps fades away.
“What kind of problem?” Rhaziel inquires casually, as though he didn’t just threaten to murder everyone in his general vicinity.
“It seems that the dragons have returned, and they’ve acquired themselves a new king,” comes Thalmos’s pained voice.
“Oh?” I hear Rhaziel pause mid-pour. From the sound of his exasperated sigh, I imagine that the veins in his head must be visibly throbbing. “And how in Hell’s gates did the dragons escape from Purgatory?”
The music comes to a grinding halt as Thalmos swallows. It’s an audible gulp that echoes like a stone dropping into the abyss of a canyon. “I’m not sure,” he admits with a gruff.
“That’s impossible,” Rhaziel growls. “There’s no escaping from Purgatory.”
“It shouldn’t be possible, and yet…” Thalmos drifts off.
“Who told you about this?” Rhaziel barks over the music as the orchestra picks up steam once again.
Thalmos draws an exhausted breath, his feet shifting from beneath the tablecloth.
I clutch my drinks tighter and try to hold still, even though my insides are squirming.
“We received a notice, one signed and sealed by the King of Skaldrathia himself,” Thalmos finally admits.
“Our scribes have already confirmed the legitimacy of it.”
Rhaziel taps a finger on the table. I imagine that tendrils of impatience must be wafting from his nostrils. Soon, he may morph into a dragon and switch sides. “Tell me, Brother. What is this pretend king’s name?” he inquires.
“They call him Sylas Skornborn, the Veilbreaker.”
“And what did his note have to say?”
“That our pets are targets.”
Hands shaking, I accidentally knock over one of my cups and spill juice all over my dress. Goddamnit, now I smell like sour cherries and rum. As if this day cannot get any worse.
“Let him come,” Rhaziel declares brazenly. “I would like to meet this pretend dragon king for myself. Plus, you know how I’ve been itching for war, Brother. It might be fun.”
“We’re not suited for war right now,” Thalmos reminds him, voice hushed. “Not with the curse weakening us.”
“Only more of a reason to find a way to break the curse! You and I both know that our pets aren’t capable of falling in love. The only way out of this predicament is to cheat.”
Hang on a damn second. Why does it sound like we are the pets who are being threatened by the not-so-dead dragon king?
No. That’s impossible. Because if it were true, that would mean that by choosing me as his pet to fulfill the conditions of the curse, Augustine has unknowingly stuck multiple targets to my back.
Mother of pearl, I think I’m going to throw up.
After their voices fade away in a heated disagreement, I crawl out from beneath the table, my beautiful gown now soaked in punch.
As I’m searching for the ladies’ room, a pool of yellow hair whizzes by, paired by freckled cheeks that fill all the holes in my gaping heart.
Sunshine reaches out and squeezes my hand, as if to remind me that I’m not alone in this world.
Then she twirls away just as fast, rendering me utterly speechless, because my dress is suddenly flawless again.
She’s the most talented Dressweaver I’ve ever met.
“Shadow!” someone hisses.
I spin around, only to find Solara waving at me.
“I told you that the brooding god would deliver you straight to the Mother of Chaos, didn’t I?
” she says as I approach. “You’ll never believe it, but she’s right through this door.
” She motions to a carved-out door behind her, which is embellished in tiny wooden scrolls and illuminated by a single torchlight.
“Hurry. Before someone notices you’re gone. ”
The door brings me right back to the Conservatory, an enclosure now humming with sleep.
Owls are perched on support beams beneath a starry ceiling, and crickets are chirping in thickets of ragweed.
Surrounded by clusters of roses and petunias, the statue of the old woman stares back at me.
I take in her neatly arched eyebrows, her angular cheekbones, her beguiling smile.
Admittedly, I’d been expecting the great Mother to be seated on a bench awaiting my arrival.
Not staring at me behind these cold, lifeless eyes.
To say that I’m disappointed would be an understatement.
“You are aware that you sent me here to chat with a chunk of carved stone?” I call out to Solara through the door, but my voice falls on deaf ears.
Her sudden absence makes me snort. She always disappears at the most inconvenient of times, returning later with claims that her apparition pond prematurely ran dry.
I like to imagine that she lives in a land spilling with magic.
That it floods through the gullies and pours into the cracks and crevices of her home.
I even pretend that she tills that magic up every morning in a pail and then uses it to draw the attention of her make-believe handsome neighbor.
At least, I hope that’s what Solara’s life consists of, because the alternative would be too hard to swallow.
I can hardly bear the thought of her sitting beside a dried-up pond, begging for the sky to rain.
It makes me angry. Outraged that someone took my sister away and refuses to return her back to me.
Furious that I have yet to uncover who would have the power to do such a thing.
Irate that I had not seen it before, until the information was sitting in the palms of my very hands, slicking them with sweat.
Whoever stole Solara from me was a god. It had to have been.
“You just had to involve us mortals in your stupid Curse of Love, didn’t you?
” I point an accusatory finger at the statue in a delirious manner, as though the chunk of swirling granite can hear me.
Then I scoop up a stone from the walkway and throw it without thinking.
“Do you even realize how unlovable your children are?” My stone makes contact, knocking the corner of the statue’s ear straight off.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” I dive to the ground in search of the fallen ear, knowing full well that if I don’t attach it back on, Regent will come looking for me, and I cannot handle a pissed-off butler hunting me down while I’m trying so desperately to escape.
“What are you doing in here?” A deep voice surrounds me in a veneer of warmth. I whirl around, my pulse racing as I find myself staring up at a god. My god. Ugh. I just had to be on my knees for this moment, didn’t I?
“I could ask the same of you,” I retort, glancing between him and the bush that I swear gobbled the statue’s ear up only a moment ago. Now if only I could get it to spit it out.
Augustine looks down at the drink in his hand and sets it on a nearby bench. “I had to get away from my sister’s watchful eye,” he says, his voice grievous. “She seemed rather concerned that you had abandoned me. Did you lose something, by the way?” he asks, tipping his head.
“It’s nothing,” I mutter as I continue aimlessly reaching around in the bush to no avail. “Just an earring.” Gods, I can already feel the heat rising in my cheeks beneath the weight of his unforgiving scrutiny.
“You weren’t wearing any earrings this evening,” he recalls, his body casting a dark shadow over me with his enormous silhouette.
“Exactly.” I nod as I search for my composure somewhere amongst the weeds. “Because I lost them.”
“How about I buy you two new pairs of earrings tomorrow?” he offers, his expression impassive. Although considering how I am apparently his pet and whatnot, he’s probably secretly deducing how to teach me to bark.
“That sounds great,” I grit out, my jaw tightening beneath the pommeling of my pride. Hopefully, he doesn’t notice the fact that my ears aren’t even pierced, or I’ll never hear the end of this one.
“As far as the statue goes…” he says, his presence like a damned hurricane, wicking all the air from my lungs. “Let me worry about its repair.”
Shit. He saw me break the statue?
My stomach plummets in a free fall. “I didn’t mean to.”