Chapter Three
It felt as if it took Mavis an eternity to make it across the dining room and into the hallway that led to the exit.
Each time a table of Lusters stopped her to congratulate her on the engagement and admire the ring Thaddeus gave her, Mavis wanted to scream.
She knew she couldn’t show that anything was amiss, and that meant smiling and chatting like she would have any other day, but she was sure that at any moment, Arden would stand up and declare her a fraud.
But he didn’t.
She felt his eyes on her with each step she took, but he didn’t do more than watch, and by the time Mavis finally reached the hallway, she just about sagged against the wall in relief, but she’d lost too much time already, and she couldn’t waste another moment.
She picked up her pace, but she wasn’t fast enough.
The exit was mere steps away when she heard footsteps behind her breaking into a run, and a hand closed around her arm.
Mavis tried to wrench herself away, whirling around to face Arden, but there was no one there. He was invisible—a far rarer gift than Thaddeus’s ability to manipulate water, but one that made him far more dangerous.
“Let go of me.” She kept her voice low. “Or I’ll scream.”
For a moment, he didn’t speak, though his grip on her arm was unyielding. “No. We both know you won’t.”
The words stole Mavis’s breath, and she tried, again, to break free of him.
When that didn’t work, she kicked the air where she thought he was.
Her movements were hindered by her voluminous skirts, but she felt the satisfying collision of hitting something.
But while his sharp inhale of breath let her know her aim was true, he still didn’t release her. If anything, his grip tightened.
“Stop fighting, Arabella.” Arden gritted out the words through his teeth. “I just want to talk.”
Arabella. It felt like a lifetime ago she’d worn that identity, a name that fit her as poorly as Delphinia did.
It had been a sloppier alias, the first one she’d made for a con of such magnitude, and Mavis had feared the illusion would shatter under a single ray of sunlight, but it had somehow held.
“That isn’t my name,” she said before the second part punctured her panic. I just want to talk.
Mavis didn’t believe that—what was there to talk about, after all? But Arden had been a terrible liar five years ago, and unless he’d managed to master the skill since, he seemed to be in earnest.
“I realize that.” Arden’s voice was still strained. “It took me five years, but I finally realize that.”
At that, Mavis stopped fighting. Five years? Surely he’d put it together before today. But as soon as she thought it, she remembered his shock when their eyes met, like he was seeing a ghost.
The brief pause in her struggle was all Arden needed.
In the space of a breath, he pushed open a door off the hallway and pulled her inside, sealing them away in a small, dark room.
The cloakroom, Mavis realized when her eyes adjusted enough for her to see the outline of metal railings and empty hangers.
In the middle of Garlin’s balmy summer, the room seemed to be little in demand.
In the tight space, Mavis found her back pressed against the far wall, Arden’s invisible presence directly in front of her.
He held her shoulder, she held his opposite arm, but neither pushed or pulled, the contact merely holding them both suspended together—at least until he shifted his grip and his thumb pressed against her diamond bracelet.
Before Mavis could pull away, light exploded around them in a kaleidoscope of colors.
Flowers floated in the air, shimmering and bright and beautiful, and the shock of it must have caused Arden to drop his invisibility.
He stared at the flowers of light, wide eyed and slack jawed as he’d been the first time he saw her illusions back in Strall.
Mavis wrenched her hand out of Arden’s grip, and the flowers disappeared, the darkness of the cloakroom enveloping them once more.
Arden’s eyes found hers. “Well. That answers one question.”
Mavis clenched her jaw and tucked her arm behind her back, as if hiding the bracelet could undo the damage of him realizing what it was.
She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dim light.
When they did, she allowed herself a moment to study Arden, up close and no longer invisible—the familiar hard angle of his jaw, the foreign shadows beneath his eyes, the curl of his mouth that, five years before, had always been ready with a smile but now seemed etched so deeply into a frown that she couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since he’d laughed.
There were pieces of the man she’d known back in Strall, but they were all wrong now, twisted and hardened into a new person altogether.
Her chest ached, but she pushed the feeling aside before she could name it, and lifted her chin.
“You wanted to talk?” she asked, even as her mind ran through every outcome, every escape route out of this room and away from him.
There weren’t many, and with his gift for invisibility, there were even fewer that prevented him from following her.
She needed to stall him long enough for her to think of another plan. “So talk.”
Mavis was close enough to see the bob of his throat. His eyes searched hers, but he didn’t speak, apparently not so eager to talk now after all.
“Who are you?” he managed finally, voice low and rough. That was new too, but the sound of it reverberated through her bones. She liked it.
“I’m Delphinia Lindcourt,” she told him with a tight smile that was nothing at all like the one she usually wore as Delphinia—all sunshine and vacant thoughts. This one felt strained and fragile.
Arden’s nostrils flared. “No. You aren’t.”
“You have me confused with someone else.” She didn’t expect him to believe her, but she was desperate enough to try. She made a show of sniffing the air between them. “You reek of whiskey—I suspect you’ve had entirely too much to drink.”
It was true there was a faint smell of whiskey, but beneath that he smelled just as he had five years ago, of freshly pressed cotton and spearmint.
“I’m thinking clearer than I have in years.” His eyes swept over her in a way that made her skin burn, as if he could see through her layers of silk and corsetry. “You’re a con artist.”
The words hung between them, the truth laid bare. But even if she couldn’t deny it, she could still use it against him.
“If that was true,” she said, “it would make me a very good liar, wouldn’t it? Good enough to circumvent any story you might be thinking of telling about me.”
“Good enough to circumvent the truth, you mean,” he corrected.
Mavis shrugged. “The truth is whatever you can convince the most people to believe. And I am very convincing.”
Arden did smile then, but it was a hard-edged thing without an ounce of mirth.
“Oh, I remember that well.” His voice dropped an octave.
Mavis felt it along her spine, as if her body refused to forget the effect Arden had on her five years before.
Her breath hitched. Arden noticed, his twilight-blue eyes locking on to hers.
He wanted her still, that was plain to see, and Mavis could use that want if she needed to, though it was a dangerous game to play.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have a fiancé to get back to.” She straightened up, though he refused to step back, putting her close enough to feel his breath ghost over her cheek.
“You aren’t that good of a liar.” His gaze traced over her face.
She wondered if he was mapping her the same way she had him, charting the differences and similarities to who she had been before.
The last time he’d seen her, she had been half starved and nineteen, more child than woman, but five years and a belly that was always full had changed her.
For the better, she thought, but would he agree?
She shouldn’t care if he thought her beautiful still, but some small part of her did.
“Aren’t I?” She allowed her mouth to curve into a smile.
“Not to me,” Arden said. “Not anymore. I know if you walk out of this door, you aren’t going back to the poor sod who stumbled into your trap. You’re going to run.”
Mavis shrugged again. “I fail to see what business it is of yours what I choose to do.”
Arden opened his mouth to answer but closed it quickly—so quickly Mavis found herself achingly curious to know what he’d stopped himself from saying.
“How many others have there been?” he asked.
Mavis had no reason to answer him, certainly no reason to do so honestly, except for that she didn’t want to leave the cloakroom just yet. If Arden was here, with her, he was a problem she could control. It would only be when they went their separate ways that he’d become a threat.
She counted them off in her mind. “Eight. Not including you and Thaddeus. Ten altogether.”
Arden’s mouth twisted like he’d bit into a lemon. “You’ve been busy. Surely you’ve put together a nice profit by now.”
That was one truth she wouldn’t reveal, one card she refused to play. Her last nine cons should have earned her enough to live comfortably for the rest of her days, but Mavis barely had more to her name now than she had the last time hers and Arden’s paths crossed.
“I get by,” Mavis said finally.
Arden seemed to read something between her words. “Unless you’re working for someone else.”
He was getting too close to the truth about Minstead, and that was something Mavis wouldn’t discuss—certainly not with him. “Did you really drag me into a coatroom to discuss how my business is structured?”
He snorted. “Oh, we’re calling it a business now?”
Mavis gritted her teeth. “You’ve asked your questions, now it’s my turn, and I only have one: What the fuck are you doing here, Arden?”
Arden didn’t know how to answer that question.