CHAPTER TWENTY #2
Crystal chandeliers hung overhead, their shards splintering light across mirrored walls and glass panes. Outside, the sun had surrendered to the moon, its crescent glow sneaking through this cathedral built from ruse.
My feet ached from hours of twirling, the music playing endlessly, stitched through with laughter and sloshing wine. I danced with strangers, with friends, with faces I barely remembered, moving as though I belonged.
A phantom of poise, of grace, hidden in plain sight.
Perhaps Elva was right, a single night of elegance didn’t heal me, but it dulled the blade.
Duke’s hand steadied at my waist as we spun, our rhythm slipping from the orchestra’s command into something looser, unrestrained.
“You look different tonight,” he said, eyes alight.
We circled past Elva and Callum, the two of them locked in their own orbit, blind to everything else. Callum’s fingers had claimed her wrists the instant the crowd threatened to engulf her, and he hadn’t let go since.
Perseus had made his grand entrance, greeted his guests with a toast, danced with his bride, and then disappeared the moment the applause ended. Elva bore it with a laugh and a wry jest, her composure still dazzling the room.
“Well,” I smoothed a hand down the crisp cut of Duke’s jacket, “that’s hardly surprising. You’ve never seen me in a dress before.”
His laugh rolled deep, and still my eyes strayed, scanning the swell of bodies. Obrann had summoned every noble name within Luamis’ borders, and here they were. Each elegant, ravenous.
My stare caught on the Marquess and Marchioness of the Feyglades, their finery dyed the deep teal of the Tempest Tide they bordered. Those depths were no mere jewel of the realm; it was a graveyard, keeping its horrors chained far below.
Fitting, then, that Nezra had risen from those pits.
The Marquess had gone pale, his wife clutching jeweled fingers against her chest, as the man across from them let a wicked smirk curve across his face. The mysterious stranger stood with his back to me, offering only the imposing angles of his shoulders fixed beneath an obsidian coat.
“Well, that, yes,” Duke drawled. “But you seem more…free.”
I forced a swallow, answering lightly, “Oh, that’s definitely the wine.”
A servant weaved past, tray steady with crystal flutes. Our eyes caught, for a stolen moment, then her lashes dipped, and she hurried on. No one else noticed. But I did.
Mina. She looked…better.
“Maybe.” Duke slipped the glass from my hand. “Let’s go easy on that wine, yeah? How many have you had?”
The music dulled, thinning into the background as the crowd shifted, parting so I could see clearly as the man turned, his calculating jade eyes cutting straight through the room, locking onto me with precision.
The glass he held hovered near his mouth, then lifted in a deliberate toast. A godsdamn smirk pulled across his lips, before he drank, slow, savoring every drop, never once looking away.
My body stilled, venom tingling through my limbs, until it burned in my veins. The sour tang of the wine clung to my tongue as rage came easy, stirring awake, baring fangs against its cage.
What in the fated hel was he doing here? After the village, after everything—
“Have I lost you?” Duke’s voice crashed back, shoving focus back into my vision.
I blinked, but the dragon prince was gone, swallowed into the wave of royals as though he’d never stood there at all.
Laughter swelled again, the ballroom suddenly too loud, too false, too sharp against my skin.
“What?” I rasped.
Duke’s palm trailed the length of my arm. “The wine,” he said, nodding at my flushed cheeks. “How much have you had tonight?”
I stepped away, desperate for air, needing space. The music dragged me back in before I could escape as Duke caught my hand, spinning me once, twice, until I stumbled into his chest.
“Enough to twirl in endless circles,” I teased. “But not enough to want to fistfight anyone.” I jerked my chin toward the far side of the floor, where a Lord’s hand hovered too close to Elva as she swayed with Callum. “Yet.”
His laugh grazed my ear, his grip tightening around my waist. “Night’s still young.”
The floor tilted beneath me, my palm pressing to my forehead. Was I still spinning, or was the whole damned room?
“Water,” Duke said, steadying me. “Sounds like a solid idea. I’ll grab—”
“May I cut in?” The familiar voice slid through, all too smooth.
I turned, and my chest cinched. “Reve?”
He smiled, too bright, too damn polished. Not flat like mortal but predatory and sharp.
Duke’s chest brushed against my spine as he shifted closer while Reve only dipped his head in casual greeting.
His presence hit with force.
He was taller now, broader, muscles straining against a flaxen shirt fitted to his form. The sunburnt, sea-rough boy I remembered was gone. His skin had faded to an even bronze. His hair, once wind-tossed, was bleached and slicked back, each strand disciplined.
The crooked bump that had marked his nose was smoothed out, leaving symmetry so perfect it seemed sculpted as his blue eyes sparkled like gems cut to catch the light.
And then I saw them—his ears. They were elongated, tapered.
Pointed at the tips.
A chill slicked down my spine. Oh, fuck.
“You look,” the word snagged in my throat, “different.”
Understatement of the fucking year.
Reve’s chuckle should have been comforting; it wasn’t. The sound landed flat, off tempo, as he rubbed the back of his neck. A familiar movement carried on an unfamiliar body.
His hands were larger now, the tendons pronounced as he slid them into his pockets. Even the way he stood was altered—looser, but coiled, like a feral thing trying to mimic a man.
“Yeah.” He gave a small shrug. “It’s a long story.” A pause. “I don’t know if you heard, but they found my mother and sister’s bodies the other day.”
My gut clenched. Double fuck.
Of course I’d heard. Everyone had. Once their corpses were dragged from the edge of the Firen Forest, the whole village had been summoned to identify them, desperate souls combing through horrors, searching for familiar faces.
Whispers said their veins were black, their features unrecognizable. And now he was here, wearing someone else’s skin, smiling with too-sharp teeth.
I swallowed. “I did. I’m sorry, Reve. They didn’t deserve that fate.” And I meant it.
His head bowed, eyes slick with sorrow. When he lifted his hand, three black rings caught the light.
“This,” he gestured at the immortal frame the Gods should never have allowed him, “this is how I’ll get my revenge.”
Beside me, a sound caught in Duke’s throat, too soft to be called a cough. “I’ll get us some water,” he muttered, already flagging down a servant. But his eyes stayed locked on to Reve until the very last moment, before he forced himself away.
Reve didn’t watch him go. His focus stayed pinned to me, the weight of his stare pressing uncomfortably close where Duke’s absence had left nothing but cold air.
A hum shifted under my skin, scales rasping against my bones as I rocked on my heels. Whatever magic used to be traded by blood bargains in exchange for an immortal life had been outlawed for centuries. Yet here he stood.
The way his eyes dipped felt forced, and when they shot back to me, he extended a hand. “Dance with me.”
I stared, at the hand, at whatever hid behind the boy I once knew. We had shared summers and laughter, secrets and the kind of memories that lived. But the man before me, he was not summer anymore.
On instinct, my head shook, retreat already coiling in my body. Then, faint, subtle, there was a tug brushing against the edges of my mind.
It’s just one dance, it thought.
And some part of me wondered if I owed him that.
Reluctantly, my hand found his, and he drew me close, his palm bracketing my waist, his fingers threading through mine as the ballroom blurred into motion.
He still carried the sea with him, but now it felt tainted with metal. It sliced through my senses, lodging in my throat.
Leaving an oily slickness over my skin.
No words were spoken. His grip never wandered, never faltered. But his eyes, those never left me.
Did he know?
The chorus faded, slipping into a low, mournful melody, pain knifing my temples as his fingers dug deep into the bare flesh of my side. I staggered, stiff against the pull, panic searing as the pain turned to agony.
The dark pulse writhed awake at the base of my spine before curling back into itself. The floor tilted, then rushed up as sound thinned, the ballroom narrowing into a tunnel of sight.
I had just enough time to think, gods no, before a fog closed in, drifting between us, lifting from our feet, an intrusive ash brushing my nose.
Not fog. Smoke.
It glided past my hips, warming the air until it landed right where Reve’s hand rested. He hissed, recoiling as if he had been scorched. His arm flew back, eyes narrowing at the reddened skin now stark against his flesh.
I pressed a palm to the small of my back where his hand had retreated, gravity finding its way back to me. I felt no burn, no mark. All that remained was the lingering heat against my spine.
A wraith of something, someone, left behind.
That smoke, that curious, deadly coax…I knew it.
When I turned, Reve was already gone, slipping through the crowd, still clutching the back of his hand. Elbows jabbed into me, wine splashing from crystal as I stood stranded in the middle of the dance floor.
The music thundered on, strings bright, drums heavy as the pounding in my skull surged from my temples to the top of my spine. It remained unbearable still.
My vision splintered when my knees buckled, silk pooling useless against tile as the stone floor kissed my palms.
Vibrations roared through me, clawing under my skin until it rattled my bones. Tension shot from my spine to my jaw when my teeth clenched together, hands shooting to massage my scalp in hopes of relieving even a touch of pressure.