Chapter 13
CHAPTER
Azrian
Three escape routes. Five Registry officials. One woman who could destroy everything Azrian had sacrificed fifteen cycles to build. From the edge of the mezzanine, he catalogued them all with the same stone-faced precision.
The Duke and Duchess of Velmarch had transformed the cavernous Symphony Hall into a dazzling display.
Violin notes spiraled into silver ribbons towards the vaulted ceiling, percussion showered over dancers in golden sparks like momentary constellations, and flute crescendos erupted into ephemeral butterflies.
Below, the Gilt’s elite moved in tides of silk and velvet, each gown more ostentatious than the last. For the Symphony Ball, tradition insisted on subtle magical enhancements: Light-woven threads to create trailing echoes of color, Wind-charmed jewels to harmonize with the orchestra during dancing.
“Quite the extravagance, isn’t it?” Caelen materialized beside him, forest green coat complementing his chestnut hair.
Azrian adjusted the metal pin over his heart. “An indulgence that could fund the Imperial Navy’s eastern fleet for a quarter.”
Caelen chuckled. “Yet here you stand, participating nonetheless.”
“We all fulfill our assignments, however distasteful.” Azrian’s tone betrayed nothing of the tension beneath. “Have you made progress with Miss Celastra?”
A flicker of something crossed Caelen’s features, but he smothered it quickly.
“There’s something about her... a connection I can’t quite define.
When she’s near, my mark…” He stopped, checked the crowd, then lowered his voice.
“I feel drawn to her, though I have no confirmation she bears a mark at all. “
“Remember what we discussed. Discretion above all else.“
“I haven’t forgotten. But it’s becoming harder to ignore. If she is my match—”
“ If ,” Azrian emphasized the word with uncharacteristic force. “The Registry’s experiments are not to be trusted blindly.”
“Yet you pursue Miss Almarien with singular focus.”
“I have no choice.” The words escaped before Azrian could temper them.
The fact that she looked like midnight given form in her dress of navy blue, vast and impossible to possess, only managed to anger him further.
He should not notice how the silk clung to her slender frame before cascading from her hips, embroidered with silver thread that caught the light like distant constellations.
He doubted she’d dressed to impress anyone, least of all him, yet his first sight of Sabine Almarien at the summit of the ballroom steps struck him with a violence that left his pulse ticking in his throat.
“You might want to close your mouth before someone sees,” Caelen murmured, laughter lurking behind the words.
Azrian realized he had, indeed, allowed his composure to slip. He corrected it immediately, schooling his features into their familiar mask of indifference, all while hating Miss Almarien a bit more for managing to fluster him when no other could.
“I shall return shortly,” Caelen added with a knowing smile. “Miss Celastra has arrived.”
Across the ballroom, Miss Almarien’s gaze found Azrian’s with no de mure games, no fluttered lashes. Azrian descended the stairs to meet her, hyperaware of the Registry officials tracking their movements. Everything about this interaction would be reported directly to the Emperor and High Binder.
“Your Grace.” He bowed.
The Duchess smiled. “Lord Vaelros. How fortunate you’ve stationed yourself to intercept us.”
“A soldier’s habit. Vigilance serves in ballrooms just as battlefields.”
“Indeed. You will find there are more adversaries here than on any battlefield.” She gestured to Miss Almarien. “I believe you and Miss Almarien might benefit from further acquaintance. Perhaps a turn about the room while the first dances are arranged?”
The command beneath the suggestion was unmistakable.
Miss Almarien stepped forward with the slightest hesitation, extending her hand. “My lord.”
Her skin was warm against his when he bowed over it. Lavender and parchment clung to her, and the faint rouge on her cheeks did nothing to conceal the freckles scattered across her skin. He suspected she actually only wore it to enhance them.
“Miss Almarien.“ He offered his arm. “Shall we?”
They circled the perimeter of the lower gallery, her arm feather-light on his, the subtle flick of her thumb along his sleeve a barely perceptible staccato.
“You look…” He meant to offer a placation, something to undercut the tension in her jaw, but the words tangled with another sensation, one he could not neatly categorize.
“Adequately presentable for public consumption?” she supplied, one eyebrow arched.
“I was going to say remarkable, but your assessment works equally well.”
Surprise flickered across her features. “A compliment, my lord? How unlike our last encounter. I believe you called me a maddening creature. Have I improved so much in but a few days, or did you simply take Lady Delarine’s instructions to heart?”
Heat crept up his neck from the memory of their last exchange. “The two are not mutually exclusive, I’m afraid. You can be remarkably maddening.”
He steered her past a group of matrons, who quieted their whispering when he passed. At the edge of the room, three Registry officials weren’t even attempting to disguise their observation. Azrian nodded in their direction. “We have quite the audience tonight.”
She followed his gaze, then shrugged with a carelessness he did not believe for a moment. “Then we should give them something worth watching, shouldn’t we?” A dangerous glint appeared in her eyes. “The first dance is about to begin.”
Azrian hesitated. Dancing required a closeness he had carefully avoided for cycles.
“Unless,” she added, taking obvious pleasure in taunting him, “the Emperor’s Hand is not trained in the social graces expected of a proper suitor?”
Azrian found himself responding to the challenge despite his better judgment. “I assure you, Miss Almarien, imperial service requires mastery of many skills. Dancing merely ranks among the least lethal.”
“How reassuring.” Her tone suggested it was anything but. “Shall we proceed with our performance, then?”
The orchestra struck up the opening bars of a stately gavotte, and suddenly the floor was alive with pairs falling into step. As they moved into position at the head of the line, her gown caught the light with every movement, casting fleeting glints when she dipped into her curtsey.
She gave herself away in the smallest gestures: the slight roll of her shoulders when the orchestra shifted key, the way she studied the spacing of the other dancers before stepping into the pattern. Miss Almarien was an analyst, a tactician.
And much more similar to him than Azrian cared to admit.
“Do you approach all aspects of life with such calculation? Or is it reserved for particularly unpleasant duties?”
He deflected with a question of his own. “Is there another approach worth considering?”
“Enjoyment, perhaps?” A strand of hair fell across her cheek. “Or have they trained that out of you entirely?”
“Enjoyment is not a factor in my assignment,” Azrian replied, though the scent of her, subtle but persistent, threatened to cloud his focus each time their paths drew close.
“Right, and this is nothing if not another assignment, to you.”
He might have answered, but the music pulled them apart, spinning them through unfamiliar arms, scattering any words that might have formed.
It was just as well; he had no tidy response.
It was true that he had no interest in courting her, but then again, she did not wish to be courted. They simply shared the same cage.
When she found him again for the final sequence, there was a change in her eyes, a glimmer of steel beneath the surface.
“I know you think me beneath you,” she said, not so much accusing, but simply stating a fact of nature.
He found himself at a loss, briefly, which in itself was a kind of defeat. Her candor left him no angle of easy attack.
He opened his mouth to refute it, but she pressed forward.
“As much as I find you cruel. We both know Velyar might freeze solid before we ever come to genuinely like one another.” Her mouth quirked, somewhere between bitterness and humor, like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh at him, herself, or both.
Azrian’s steps never faltered, though the admission caught him off guard. “What is your purpose in telling me this? Aside from the obvious intent to vex.”
“I need to see my sister settled properly. It’s the only reason I’m here, entertaining this farce, instead of on a ship to Keshira.”
Azrian caught the direction of her gaze, to where her sister was radiant at the refreshment table, striking easy conversation with some young man. “She seems to be thriving. Whatever could you possibly need to do to help?”
A shadow swept across Miss Almarien’s features. “I made a vow.”
From the thickness in her voice, Azrian knew there was a story cycles long behind those four words as certainly as he knew she would never share it with the likes of him.
“She’s everything the Gilt values—charming, beautiful, graceful in all the ways I am not. I simply need the Gilt to look past its own prejudices to see it.”
“You underestimate yourself, Miss Almarien.”
She glanced at him, startled into a half-laugh. “Another compliment from the Emperor’s Hand? I should mark this day in my diary.”
Azrian kept his tone neutral despite the unexpected urge to elaborate. “The Gilt craves predictability. You present a variable they cannot easily classify, which makes you far more dangerous than mere charm.”
“Dangerous?” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one with Destruction at my fingertips.”
“There are many forms of destruction. Some far more subtle than unraveling matter.”
She cleared her throat. “About my sister, though. She’ll never make a good match as long as the Gilt associates her with our parents’ name.
But if, instead, she was associated with yours, my lord—between your influence, the Duchess’s sponsorship, and the potential for Creation in our blood, it might be enough to make her the Season’s Singular. ”
“You’re not suggesting I court your sister, perchance?” Having to deal with one Almarien was torture enough. He didn’t wish for another.
“Threads, never in a million cycles. But you are bound to me, whether we like it or not. So we must behave as if this union is exactly what we both desire, like we’re on the very precipice of a proposal. That ought to be enough to sway them.”
The music swelled, filling up the space between them.
For an instant, Azrian saw not the strategic problem Miss Almarien presented, nor the complication to his ordered existence, but simply a woman ensnared by the same imperial machinery that trapped him, both of them desperate to shield those they loved from the bars of the cage.
“I still don’t wish to bond myself to you.”
“Nor I you,” she confirmed.
“Then pretend we shall,” he agreed, even if, for once, it meant he would have to lie.