Chapter 16
"You look like you're already planning your escape route," Sage says, adjusting the pin on my collar with the focused expression she uses when she's trying not to laugh.
"I'm always planning an escape route. It's called survival instinct.
" I check the mirror above her desk and immediately regret it.
The Vampire House has a dress code for their formal balls that I can only describe as aggressively elegant.
The gown is deep blue, borrowed from Sage's emergency wardrobe because mine, predictably, was shredded three days ago by something Seraphina's people did to my closet.
It fits well enough. That's the best thing I can say about tonight.
"You look good," Sage says firmly.
"I look like someone who was dressed by committee."
"You look like someone who is going to walk into that ballroom and make three powerful men lose their concentration simultaneously." She steps back and surveys her work. "Which is its own kind of survival instinct, honestly."
"That's not reassuring."
"It wasn't meant to be." She squeezes my arm. "I'll be near the east corridor if anything goes sideways. Malik will be with me. Just get through the required dances and come find me."
Required dances. As if this is a normal social obligation and not an elaborate exercise in political maneuvering dressed up in candlelight and string music.
I go in alone.
The Vampire House ballroom is everything their aesthetic promises, which is to say it is stunning and slightly threatening, all black marble and silver fixtures and candelabras burning with pale blue flame.
The ceiling is high enough to feel like standing at the bottom of a well, and the gathered students and invited guests fill the space with the kind of careful noise that comes from people who have been trained since childhood to be decorative and dangerous in equal measure.
I get approximately four steps inside before a glass of something dark red and sparkling appears in my peripheral vision, extended by a pale hand.
"It's wine," Caspian says. "Not blood. Though I understand the concern."
He's in black, naturally, because Caspian Thorne has clearly never owned anything in another color.
The jacket fits him with the precision of something custom-made, and his red hair is swept back, and he looks like exactly what he is, which is a predator in formal wear at a party designed for his kind.
I take the glass. "Why are you near the door?"
"Waiting for you."
"That's not ominous at all."
"I thought transparency might be a refreshing change." His green eyes track across the room before settling back on me. "We're going to dance."
"Are we."
"House protocol. Vampire heir opens the formal dances with each of the honored guests. You're in the house roster whether you like it or not." He extends his other hand. "Don't make it strange."
"You extending your hand to me is already strange. You're usually trying to make my life worse."
"I'm multifaceted." The corner of his mouth moves. "Come on."
I put my hand in his and he leads me to the floor, and the music shifts to something slow and precise, and he settles one hand at my waist with the practiced ease of someone who has done this several hundred times and finds it unremarkable. I find it deeply markable, but I don't say that.
We move. He's a good dancer, which is somehow the least surprising thing about him.
"You're tense," he says.
"You just told me we were dancing and gave me approximately zero seconds to process that."
"Would more time have helped?"
"No. But the principle stands." I keep my posture straight because the room is full of people watching and I am not going to give them anything to work with. "What did you mean, waiting for me?"
He's quiet for a few beats. The candlelight moves across his face, and his expression does something I don't have easy words for, settling into something that isn't his usual cool performance.
"I'm sorry," he says.
I miss a step. He steadies me without comment.
"What did you just say?"
"You heard me."
"I heard something that doesn't fit into any version of Caspian Thorne I've encountered so far, so I need you to repeat it for accuracy."
"I'm sorry," he says again, quieter. "For what's coming.
" His hand tightens briefly at my waist, then releases back to its formal position.
"There are things in motion that I can't stop.
Not tonight, not the way things are arranged.
And I need you to know that I know that, and that I'm sorry for it. "
The music continues. Around us, other couples move through their own careful patterns, and none of them are close enough to hear this.
"What things?" I ask.
"I can't tell you specifically."
"That's helpful."
"I know."
"Caspian." I pitch my voice low. "If you know something is going to hurt me tonight and you're not stopping it—"
"Some things can't be stopped directly. Some things have to be moved around.
" He meets my gaze, and there's something in his face that isn't performance and isn't cruelty.
It sits there, bare and uncomfortable, like something he didn't intend to put on display.
"Just remember that whatever happens, I knew about it.
And I'm sorry. That's all I can give you right now. "
The song ends. He steps back and releases my hand with the smooth formality of a House heir completing protocol, and the moment closes like a door.
"Go drink your wine," he says quietly. "The next one's Valorix."
I drink my wine. I stand near a column and watch the room and think about apologies delivered in advance, which are either the most honest thing a person can offer or the most cowardly, and I genuinely can't decide which this was.
I don't have to wait long.
Thane finds me by the column, which I think is deliberate because he has the expression of someone who planned their approach and would rather not admit it.
He's wearing deep charcoal, and his dark hair is neater than usual, and he looks exactly as uncomfortable in formal wear as I would have predicted, which somehow makes him easier to stand next to.
"Protocol," he says.
"I know. Caspian already explained the format."
"Of course he did." Something flickers across his face. "Did he explain anything else?"
"Yes. It wasn't particularly illuminating." I set down my wine glass. "Are we doing this?"
He offers his hand without ceremony. I take it.
The way Thane dances is nothing like Caspian.
Where Caspian is fluid and practiced and slightly theatrical about it, Thane is direct.
He takes up space without apology, his lead firm and clear, and he keeps me close in a way that stops just short of possessive and then crosses that line anyway somewhere around the second measure.
"You're crowding me," I say.
"I'm leading."
"There's a difference between leading and claiming territory."
His jaw tightens. "Ashford has been watching you since you walked in."
"And your solution to that is to hold me like you're trying to block his sightline."
"My solution is to remind certain people that this floor has multiple occupants." His hand at my back presses fractionally closer. "He doesn't deserve your attention."
"You've decided that."
"I've observed it."
"Right." I keep my voice even. "And this possessive display is purely informational."
"It's protocol." But his gold-flecked eyes move across the room toward wherever Ryder is standing, and come back to me, and there's nothing protocol about what's in them.
"Thane." I wait until he looks directly at me. "Yesterday you told me not to give you hope. You can't have it both ways."
The muscle in his jaw works. "I'm aware."
"Then pick a lane."
"It's not that simple."
"I know it isn't." I hold his gaze steady. "But holding me like this and then stepping back and telling me I'm dangerous for you is a pattern that's going to wear me out eventually."
He doesn't answer right away. His lead stays firm through the turn, and we move through the next sequence in silence, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost the defensive edge.
"He has a bond with you," Thane says. "Ashford. I can feel the signature from here. It pulls differently than normal proximity magic." He isn't accusing me. He sounds like someone reporting a fact they find personally inconvenient. "That's not something you chose."
"No."
"I know." A pause. "That's part of the problem."
The music begins to slow toward its close. His thumb traces once, briefly, across my hand before he releases it.
"You looked good walking in," he says, and it sounds like it costs him something to say it simply, without armor around it.
I don't get a chance to answer because the song ends and he steps back with a short, formal nod, and then he walks away, and I am left standing in the middle of the floor with the ghost of his hand at my back and nowhere useful to put that information.
Ryder is already there when I turn around.
He doesn't approach the way the other two did.
He's simply present, which is a quality he has that I find consistently aggravating, this ability to occupy space as if he materialized directly into it rather than walked.
Black formal jacket, the silver reaper's sigil at his collar, dark hair sharp against pale skin.
He looks like the academy's entire aesthetic distilled into one person.
"Protocol," he says.
"I've heard. Third time." I take a breath. "Let's get it done."
His hand finds mine and his other hand settles at my waist, and the bond lights up like a wire pulled taut.
I keep my face blank. It takes effort.