Chapter Fifteen
I felt the burn of the coin in my pocket almost as soon as I made it back to my room: a dull white pulse like the beating of a heart.
Ensuring my door was firmly shut behind me, I slipped my fingers into the discreet slit in my dress and withdrew it, feeling its warm thump-thump , steady and unceasing, against my skin.
The surface of the coin shone in the low light, no longer tarnished and old but gleaming with a sleek luminescence like a dragon’s eye.
Eliot was calling me.
My gaze drifted to the empty trunk at the foot of my bed, impulse telling me to drop the coin at the bottom and shut it—to sleep and forget.
If I went to him now, I knew, I would only find his fury.
Better to let the night stretch out between us, to allow the dark passage of the hours to steal away some of his rage before I faced him.
One did not fire a shot and then rush to their victim’s bedside, after all.
Yet Noé’s praise aside, I had barely survived the Alaires’ first trial—and two of my fellow maidens had not been so lucky.
Nathalie Moreau and Mireille Laurent had been dismissed at the end of the ball, our pack of ten already cut to eight.
If I wished to succeed in future rounds, to remain in Fortblanche long enough to piece together the mystery of Ophelia’s death and claim the payment Eliot had promised me, I would need his help.
I could not afford to ignore him, and I knew he understood that as well as I did, and I despised him all the more for it.
Cursing myself, I slid on the slippers I’d tossed off upon entering the bedroom and tucked the coin back in my pocket, exiting into the hallway.
A giggle from farther down the corridor stopped me short. My hand flew to my middle, where Eliot’s coin bled heat like a small bird tucked against my stomach as I squinted into the dimness, trying to pinpoint the origin of the noise.
Ah. I stepped back instinctively as my eyes, adjusting to the darkness, picked out the shape of two forms entwined around one another in an archway up ahead of me. As if they could sense my gaze, the taller figure’s head lifted, swinging my way.
“Miss Lovett.” Dorian Drake’s low voice cut easily through the silence, curious but unashamed.
He was dressed in the same suit he’d worn during the judging earlier; his features were stark in the monochromatic wash of the starlight seeping through the arches from the cloister and the open sky above it, like a portrait rendered in ink. “Out late, aren’t you?”
“I—excuse me.” I feigned embarrassment, though I was not particularly scandalized by the sight of the judge, so much as intrigued by his partner, still hidden in the shadows. Was it one of the maids he had romanced? Surely, none of the silkwitches would risk such an entanglement.
“No need to apologize. We like nocturnal animals. Care to join us?” Dorian pushed away from his companion, and I blanched as Anais Tremblay’s golden head came into view, her face half humiliation, half annoyance.
Of all the girls who remained in Fortblanche, I had anticipated her being the figure in the judge’s arms perhaps the least—for a number of reasons.
Meeting her gaze with my questioning one, I cocked my head to the side. Why?
Scowling, she turned her chin defiantly away, the knitted shell of her caul glinting in the moonlight. Ah, well. It was to be the hard way between us, then.
Facing back toward Dorian, I smiled. “I believe I’ve seen all I need to,” I said, careful to enunciate so that Anais could hear. “I’ll not impose on you any longer—forgive my interruption.”
I left them behind, making my way hurriedly through the estate.
The journey went more quickly now that I knew my destination; my thoughts clipped off only when I came to the hunched green door at the top of the spire where Eliot and I had met that morning.
Though it was shut, soft light filtered through the crack at the bottom, giving away the presence of a person beyond.
This time, Eliot was standing in the center of the chamber, facing away from me with the wall lamps burning softly around him. Beyond the windows, the air was black and dense. It made the space within feel narrower—not cozy, as it had before, but claustrophobic, tense.
Eliot did not turn at my entrance. “Are you going to closethat?”
His voice had the deadly flatness of a razor. Without saying a word in response, I pulled the door shut behind me.
At its click, he eased slowly around. His handsome face was smooth, his expression impassive—but I could feel his anger buzzing through the atmosphere, turning it electric like an approaching storm. “I’ve been trying to decide whether you’re exceptionally brave, or incredibly stupid.”
I met his gaze evenly. “And?”
“I think you are neither—you are purely selfish,” he answered, and though I didn’t mean to, I flinched.
He drew a single step in my direction, the gap between us contracting like a drawn breath.
“Did you think, even for a second, of what would have happened to me if Noé had not been so enchanted by your careless little stunt?” he asked tightly.
His hold over himself was slipping—I could hear his wrath now, growling beneath his speech. “If he thought I’d betrayed him?”
I held my ground, stiffening. “I told him it wasn’t you whom I learned his secret from—”
“I know what you told him.” Like a tripped wire, Eliot’s temper broke.
In three strides, he closed the remaining distance separating us, stopping less than an arm’s length away from me.
“I’ve spent the past two hours convincing Noé of the truth of it,” he said a moment later, his eyes hot on mine.
“Forgive me if I don’t thank you for that kindness. ”
I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the adrenaline that had coursed through me at his advance fading to a whine in my ears.
Backed against the door as I was, I had nowhere to run should he raise his palm to strike me, but though I tried to summon fear, it would not come.
Instead, I felt strangely foggy, as if his physical nearness was a finger in the waters of my mind, stirring up silt—preventing me from thinking clearly.
His gaze honed in on mine, the gold in it blazing as if touched by flame. “I want you to answer my question,” he murmured, his speech sending a trail of goose pimples over my skin. “Did it matter at all to you, how your decision tonight would affectme?”
I stared at him, unspeaking. Had it mattered? Part of me wanted to protest, yes—I hadn’t been trying to endanger him when I’d made my decision earlier—but I knew the truth was wickeder than that. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him…but I’d wanted to win more.
In the end, my eyes gave me away before my voice could. Shaking his head, Eliot backed up, an incredulous laugh slipping from his throat. “You really are a rat,” he said, his tone bitter. “I should have known when I pulled you from the gutter.”
The insult knocked the pity from me. “I did what needed to be done in order to stay in the race—for your sake, may I remind you,” I rebutted, squaring up to him. “If that makes me a rat, then fine. I’d rather be a rodent than a sheep, hiding behind those I think will protect me.”
Eliot’s nostrils flared. “You would stand there, in my family’s clothes, and accuse me of seeking protection?
” He drew another pace nearer, our unequal heights such that he was forever towering over me—not to the extent that Dorian did, but enough to infuriate me, certainly. “Of leeching off another’s goodwill?”
I pushed my chin forward. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that your sister would despise me.”
Another laugh, softer and more deriding than the first. “On the contrary,” Eliot said. “I worry you and she are proving quite similar.”
I blinked, thrown by his pivot, and Eliot smirked.
“You think me too noble to stoop as low as you have—it is why you feel confident enough to make plays against me,” he went on from above me.
“But I am warning you now, I am the proud son of a proud man. I dislike being made a fool of. And if you do so again, I will not hesitate to show you just how hard I can bite.”
Abruptly, he leaned forward, bracing one arm against the door and bending his neck to mutter directly into my ear.
“There are worse places for a silkwitch to end up in than the gutter,” he breathed. “Do you understand me, Miss Tamerlane ?”
My stomach dropped at the use of my true surname, his intentions clear: He wished to remind me that any mask I wore in Fortblanche was one he had given me, that my very identity here was reliant wholly on his influence, his word to vouch for me. That he could take it all back if he liked.
And that argument, I did not know how to dispute. Instead, I glared at him, hoping that my eyes conveyed the loathing my tongue could not. “Perfectly, Mr.Lear .”
Satisfied, he dropped his arm, backing away.
For a minute, only quiet tension filled the air, the remnants of Eliot’s anger like embers burning low around us.
I waited for him to dismiss me; then, when he didn’t immediately do so, I stepped toward the center of the room, where Eliot was preparing to sink into one of the twin armchairs.
“Did you know that our hair would be taken?”
He glanced back at me, frowning, but some of the thunder in his eyes had dimmed, replaced by tight-jawed irritation. “What?”
I advanced another pace forward, studying him through the lamplight.
“When my maid came to dress me tonight, she collected my shed hair after she’d brushed it,” I replied, keeping my voice low to hide the indignant shake in it.
“Said it was a tithe, for the Weaver King. I am asking you if you knew.”
“A tithe,” Eliot repeated. His befuddlement seemed genuine; I could see it in the way his emotions played slowly across his face, as if stumbling over themselves. “But that is illegal.”