Chapter 19
CHAPTER
Sabine
Newly-bonded couples spun out onto the dance floor of the Registry’s Grand Ballroom, radiant and breathless.
In their wake, the freshly-engaged swept along, hands locked and eyes bright in that way that made Sabine’s chest tighten, the beast of longing rearing its head in the depths of her spirit.
She tampered it deep, deep down. Now more than ever, she had no room to consider silly romantic notions.
She kept to the fringe, her gown a storm of emerald silk, and watched the dancers, unblinking, dissecting every partnership. Some pairs were fluid, so practiced that they seemed to share a single thought; others were brittle, smiling too widely, their connection little more than mimicry.
The orchestra crashed through its finale, and applause rippled through the Gilt.
Then, the musicians regrouped, and in a practiced tide the unmarried Gilt pressed forward, displacing the bonded couples.
Liora appeared among them, accompanied by Lord Blackwell.
Even at a distance, Sabine recognized the tilt of her sister’s chin, the way she gazed up at her partner as if he held the secrets of the universe rather than merely a respectable income and decent prospects.
The performance was flawless, heartbreaking in its perfection.
Heat pulsed along her mark, then. Magnetic, undeniable.
Lord Vaelros materialized at her elbow with the fluid grace of shadow given form, offering his arm.
Across the room, Caelen stood in conversation with a group of courtiers, all casual amusement, but his gaze flicked, mapping guards’ placements with a soldier’s precision.
They all kept to their parts, cloaked in the illusion of polite conversation, all the while watching the pageant unfold.
A duchess adjusted her daughter’s posture with the staccato of a fan.
Two valens traded pleasantries while calculating the relative worth of each new debutante simmering on the edges, waiting for a dance partner.
“Now,” Lord Vaelros murmured, and at once they began to slip away, each step measured, every pause for conversation serving only to mask their retreat.
Caelen drifted toward the main entrance, still speaking with the courtiers, blending into their circle so completely that no one would mark his progress.
They had nearly reached the tall ballroom doors when a Registry clerk appeared in their path, gaze sweeping the room, blocking the only exit with the stillness of a monument.
Lord Vaelros halted.
But before either of them could engineer a solution, Lady Delarine’s voice rang out, cool and arch. “Oh, marvelous—a Registry official, just who I needed.”
She glided across the marble, her fan flicking open.
With deft precision, she angled herself so his back turned to the doors; her smile was all distraction, and her eyes, when they met Sabine’s over the clerk’s shoulder, held a silent command.
Sabine didn’t know what price she would have to pay for this aid, only that there would certainly be one. But right now, she was glad for it.
The three of them slipped away and into a staff corridor—high-ceilinged but dim, lined with unadorned tile, the scent of hot wax and lemon oil clinging to the air.
Here the world contracted into a series of right-angled turns and short, abrupt hallways; the Registry was famous for its public grandeur but infamous for its internal labyrinth, a centuries-old warren of service passages and concealed stairs.
Lord Vaelros moved with absolute familiarity, his stride lengthening as he navigated the maze.
At each turn, he paused, head canted, listening.
A pair of guards in full ceremonial armor appeared at the far end of the hall, speaking in the guttural dialect of the western provinces.
Sabine tensed, but Lord Vaelros simply turned a brass handle, ushered them into a darkened room, and closed the door without a sound.
Inside, the air was thick with the odor of ink, parchment, and the mineral tang of iron shelving.
Sabine took a moment to steady her breath, counting each one, while Lord Vaelros pressed his ear to the door.
She could hear the guards’ steps slow, then resume, then fade.
When the corridor was silent again, he opened the door a hair and peered out before nodding them onward.
For several minutes, they spiraled downward through narrower and narrower halls until the architecture seemed to abandon all sense of symmetry and logic.
At last, they emerged onto a landing at the top of a stone staircase so old that the center of each step had hollowed to a gentle curve.
They descended. Above them, the noise of the Gala faded, music and laughter dwindling to a distant, muffled pulse, three levels of rock between them and the world above.
When the footfalls of guards echoed closer, Lord Vaelros seized her by the forearm and pulled her into a shadowed recess in the stone, impossibly narrow so that they fit only by virtue of pressing together, chest to chest. He angled his body to enfold her, broad palms braced flat against the wall on either side of her head to shield her from view.
“Do not make a sound,” he whispered in her ear, lips dangerously close to her skin.
She didn’t. Couldn’t. His breath grazed the side of her neck, the scent of cedar and caramel dizzying in its closeness, and every rational thought she possessed narrowed to the singular, consuming task of remaining still.
The guards were close enough that each strike of their boots echoed against the stone. She counted them, instead of thinking about the warmth radiating from Lord Vaelros’s chest, or the way his jaw brushed her temple in a whisper of a touch when he turned his head to listen.
Four. Then six. Then eight. Then silence.
The silence was worse.
The guards were gone, but Lord Vaelros hadn’t moved, and neither had she, and the alcove was still impossibly narrow, and he was still impossibly close, close enough she could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against her own.
Cold stone pressed against her back. Warm body caged her front. And her hands…
Somehow, her hands had found their way to Lord Vaelros’s lapels, fisting them until the fabric wrinkled in her desperate grip. She didn’t remember reaching for him. Even beneath layers of fine clothing, he felt solid and unyielding, honed by cycles of training.
She should’ve released him. Now that she’d noticed her improper touch, she should’ve let go.
The sensible, logical part of her knew this, and yet, her fingers remained curled in the fine wool.
He looked at her hands like they personally offended him, eyebrows knitted in the strain of divining something from their small point of contact.
Then, he looked up to her face with the same indignation, the same hunger.
The space between them felt impossibly thin.
“Coast is clear,” came Caelen’s whisper from the other side of the passage.
She yanked her hands away at once. The moment of contact left a phantom ache. Lord Vaelros stepped back, freeing her from the alcove and the prison of her own senses.
They pressed on, moving with renewed urgency. Somewhere ahead, the corridor bent sharply, and the faint glow of a sconce illuminated the narrow stone steps that led deeper into the archives. No maps adorned these walls—one either knew the path or was meant to be lost.
They were nearly to the archive when the third guard rotation approached.
Lord Vaelros moved Sabine behind him. Caelen, ever the quick study, pried a loose stone from the wall with feline grace and lobbed it down a side passage.
The stone bounced with a raucous echo, and the guards, to Sabine’s amazement, followed it without hesitation, drawn by the noise.
They had only a single breath to act. The three of them pressed flat against the wall and slipped past the intersection.
Sabine’s heart battered against her ribs, heat crawling up her throat.
She forced deep, long breaths through her lips, counting each one, to keep the feeling at bay. It would not get the best of her now.
At the next landing, the corridor opened into a long, arched antechamber.
The archive’s door bore the Registry’s twelve-pointed star seal, carved into wood that looked ancient enough to have witnessed the Empire’s birth.
Sabine studied the lock with the thrill of a master meeting a worthy adversary.
It was old but well-maintained, sophisticated. Yet it was still merely metal and mechanism; more elaborate, maybe, but no different at its core than the locks she picked as a child in her father’s study.
“May I?” she asked, a pin already plucked from her hair.
Lord Vaelros’s only response was a subtle arch of brow and a courtly gesture. “You continue to surprise me.”
“A lady must have her accomplishments.” She knelt, emerald skirts pooling around her.
Caelen’s voice carried dry amusement. “How fortunate for Lord Vaelros that his intended has such… nimble fingers.”
Sabine felt her cheeks flush, but didn’t look up. “I’m certain Miss Celastra would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on feminine pursuits.”
“Focus on the corridor, Thornevail.”
The lock demanded patience and delicacy; Sabine closed her eyes, relying on feel rather than sight in tracing the lock’s secrets with her barrette. One by one, the tumblers fell into place, each click a thunderclap in the quiet hall.
“There.” Satisfaction flared in her chest when the lock surrendered with a soft, final sigh.
The archive unfurled before them, shelves rising into darkness, each section marked with brass plaques. Medical records. Affinity classifications. Blood vow documentation. Life, love, and death, catalogued with the same detached precision used for livestock or grain shipments.
“Threads be damned,” Sabine whispered. “How many names are in this room?”