Chapter 22
Victor’s hair was swept back and free of its wildness.
He was dressed in a military suit of white and gold, with intricate navy embroidery on the collar and sleeves.
His mask was a rippled deep blue, reminiscent of the sea in the dead of night.
It offset the copper in his hair and the sunned warmth of his skin perfectly.
It took all her power not to reach up and trace the scar on his cheek.
To see if he was real, to be sure this wasn’t a dream.
She stumbled in the next step of the dance, accidentally striking his foot with her heel. He winced.
Real, after all.
“Did you get the rose?”
She could say yes and let that be done. There was a way for her to come out of this with minimal pain and engagement. A glottal stop for their relationship. An end and a beginning. She could let this go.
And maybe it was the dizziness of the previous dance. Maybe it was easier to speak with a mask covering up who she was. Maybe the weight of the years had built up in her like champagne bubbles and the pressure of Victor’s hands on her skin was like a cork popping free.
“You think that a single gift makes up for the years? How dare you, Victor. How dare you come to me now after seven years of silence.” They were still dancing, moving to the slow rhythm of the song. Selene knew how to put on a performance.
Victor did, too. He took her through the steps of the dance with grace and charm. She didn’t want that from him. She wanted him to react.
“You said you’d come for me.”
“I’m here now,” he said quietly.
“It’s not enough.” Selene tried to pull the tremor from her voice, tried to be stoic and devoid of emotion. “You were all I had left and then you were gone, good as dead. You were supposed to be different.”
Victor’s eyes softened with sadness. Selene felt the cascade of it, and it made her want to lean into him and tell him it was okay. But it wasn’t okay. Nothing he said could make it okay.
He spun her out and pulled her back in, as the dance demanded. “Didn’t you get my letters?”
Selene’s mouth dropped open, the fury leaving her. “What letters?”
He pulled her closer than the dance required, his voice low in her ear. “I wrote to you every day, Selene. I wrote you letters until I was good at writing them. I sent you letters from Erramasque, from the mountains, from each port. Thousands of letters, Selene.”
He searched her face. Selene wondered what he was looking for. She didn’t have the letters. She didn’t have anything from him. Had he been waiting for her the last seven years, like she had waited for him?
“After years of silence, they stopped being for you and started being for me. You really didn’t get them? Not one?”
“No.”
Victor slid his hand from her waist to interlace with her fingers.
His skin was rough against hers. He led her effortlessly through the steps and she let him move her.
“The rose—that rose. I had that rose made for you weeks after you’d been sent away.
I’ve carried it with me across the world, waiting for a chance to see you again. ”
“You’ve been in the city for weeks.”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me.” He brought his hand up to brush away an errant curl from her face. “I didn’t want to disrupt your glamorous life.”
Selene’s laugh was short, all the fight drained from her. “I’ve lost hold of my righteous anger.”
“Shall I do something to bring it back? You know I can be a scamp.” He winked.
Selene looked up at him, fighting back tears. She was tired of the lights and the sounds and the bodies. She needed rest she could not have.
Victor regarded her carefully. “May we have a moment alone?”
“I’d like that.”
He took a few spun steps to the corner of the room and then pulled her behind a tapestry.
She knew this passage. They’d used it a hundred times to slip into the king’s events and steal fruit tartes and cream and centerpieces.
Turn right, and they’d go straight into the kitchens.
Victor took her to the left, and then to the left again.
The passageway was unmarred by cobwebs or dust: perfect and clean like the king preferred.
Once upon a time, Selene would have followed this boy anywhere.
She followed him, again.
Despite the years, he still knew the right place to take her. He guided her through a discreet door and into the night.
Selene breathed in the salt of the sea and the sweet fragrance of the garden: fresh-cut grass and the subtlety of the damask roses and petrichor.
This was the Queen’s Garden, separate from the sprawling grounds peppered with guests.
They were alone in this space: Selene, Victor, the roses, and the stars.
He still held her hand, his fingers rough against hers.
He was not a boy anymore. And she wasn’t that girl.
Selene took a step away from him, giving herself the space she needed.
Victor collapsed onto the grass, tossing his mask into the nearest rosebush. He was flat on his back, eyes glittering with stars. His white uniform soaked up the green. “That did not go as expected.”
Selene sat on one of the marble benches, letting her dress spill around her. She kept her mask on. “What did you expect?”
“That you would hate me.”
“I do hate you,” Selene said.
And part of her wanted to. But she could feel that slipping away from her. The resentment she’d carried for most of a decade replaced by the familiarity of their friendship.
“But only a little.” He smiled at her, unguarded and deeply relieved.
“Certainly not as much as I’d like.”
Victor undid the top few buttons of his military coat and turned onto his side, head resting in his hand. “Now what do we do? Are we friends again?”
“I don’t know,” Selene said, and wished she did. “How do you make up for seven years?”
“We could steal all the cakes.” He pulled himself up, a creature of perpetual motion. “No, we’ve done that before. We can do better.”
Selene looked over her shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the magical clock hanging over the ballroom, counting down the minutes to her fate.
He reached to the nearest rosebush, plucked the husk of a rose from the dirt. He put it in his pocket. “Someone would be whipped for that. Mother and her roses.”
Selene had forgotten about the casual cruelty of the queen until Victor mentioned it.
She had a catalogue of memories of the queen’s incivility that she’d tucked away in the corner of her mind.
Victor’s mention was like the unfolding of a piece of paper, memory after memory caught in the creases.
Once it had been Victor whipped for mischief in the garden.
“Do you want to feel the anticipation, or will you welcome a distraction?”
Selene was caught off guard by the question. Victor was paying attention.
“Distraction,” Selene said. “And someplace quieter.”
Victor nodded. He stood and placed his hand at the small of her back, guiding her through the Queen’s Garden and out to the main grounds. Enough had changed that Selene would have had trouble navigating alone in the dark. But she knew where he was taking her. Where she was letting him take her.
He bent down, whispering in her ear: “This will be in the papers tomorrow.”
Selene’s traitorous heart trilled. She would not let herself fall in love with this boy.
For years Victor had been a sputtering candle in her heart.
Now she was here and he burned like a torch.
She had to refocus her attention. Victor was one step closer to the king, a way to secure her path.
It wasn’t that she liked the heat of his skin through her gown or the way he felt like home or the brine and summer scent of him.
All at once, they were at the strand between the sea and the shore.
The grass tapered into sand. The tide was high with the new moon and the stars were bright as magic, sung into their constellations with a rapturous fervor.
The light reflected down to the shimmering water, dark and shadowed as the inside of a mirror.
A dozen steps and her feet would be in the water.
A dozen steps and she’d be close enough to drown.
“Do you want to—”
Selene already had her shoes off, was already sliding down the dunes to the water with Victor’s laughter at her back. He caught up to her in a few strides, tossing his boots behind him. She held up the edge of her skirt just as the icy water foamed around her ankles.
Victor hadn’t bothered to roll up his trousers. They were soaked, darkening the grass-stained white.
“How many tides did we follow, up and down, until we were practically fish?” he said softly.
“Enough.” Selene fought the ache in her chest. “And far too few.”
“I’d do it all again just to be with you.”
Selene breathed in the sweet, salted air and stared into the distancing endless dark.
She couldn’t tell him that she had wondered and dreamed, too.
In her mind, they had lived a thousand lives, each one more fantastic than the next.
Until they didn’t. Until she’d traded her dreams for her ambitions.
She had given up on him. And who could blame her?
Seven years seemed like a lifetime. She could see him looking at her from the corner of her eye, features earnest. She couldn’t stand the silence.
She needed to fill it—and maybe puzzle through the ghost’s request.
“Ask me a question, and I’ll ask one of you.”
Victor’s eyes widened with surprise—but only for a moment. He smiled, always ready for a game. “Do you really want to be the King’s Mage?”
What is it you want?
“We all want to win,” she said carefully.
“I didn’t ask about we. I asked about you.”
“Of course I do.” That hunger, that endless want seemed like too much to share. It left her vulnerable. She cleared her throat and leaned into diplomacy. “Though I’d be happy with any opportunity.”