Chapter 25
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian made his way up the limestone steps of Brisden House.
Copper braziers lined the water’s edge, their fires dancing with unnatural persistence despite the salt-tinged breeze, as gondolas moored at regular intervals in the careful choreography of Gilt society.
Miss Almarien’s approached from the eastern canal.
He couldn’t see her through the latticed window of the cabin, but he instinctively knew she was inside from the warmth spreading through his mark.
He waited by the entrance for her to join him.
She was a vision of twilight, silk in the deepest shade of slate grey, shifting between storm clouds and starlight with each movement.
The dress clung to one shoulder in an asymmetrical drape that pooled behind her like a flowing cape, leaving the other bare save for an intricate collar of silver embroidery that caught the braziers’ light like captured moonbeams.
She’d abandoned any remaining shreds of pretense that she might fit in within the Gilt’s rigid standards, and instead wore her defiance like an armor of shadow and starlight. The effect was breathtaking and dangerous in equal measures.
Her eyes widened when she found him still atop the stairs. “You were waiting for me.” It was not a question, and so Azrian offered no answer. She continued, “How did you know I was coming?”
He reached out, almost unconsciously, and brushed his thumb over the bare skin at her collarbone, where her gown dipped to reveal the mark. The warmth that radiated from her skin into his, and then into the root of his entire being, left him momentarily disoriented.
Immediately, he jerked his hand away.
What had possessed him to touch her so openly, so brazenly, on display for every passerby to witness, as if she were… no.
She was not his. The simple thought was laughable and not something Azrian would entertain.
If Miss Almarien belonged to anyone, it was only herself.
She drew a sharp intake of breath. “Of course. I should have known.”
He dredged the remnants of his composure from some unmarked reserve and offered her his arm as they made their way inside the estate.
Shadow weavers had created illusions convincing enough to seem real.
Illusory birds, each one a different species, dove and wheeled through the air, sometimes perching on guests’ shoulders or vanishing in showers of sparks as they swooped across the dance floor.
The shadows cast by the candelabra flickered out of sync with their flames, some coiling around the ankles of Gilt matrons like living serpents, others freezing in place as exquisite silhouettes during the stops in music.
Most uncanny of all were the glowing lines of amber light that occasionally mapped invisible connections between pairs of guests, fading as quickly as they appeared.
“This ball is quite the spectacle,” he observed, allowing an edge of irony to season his tone. If the evening hoped to awe or disorient him, it would need to attempt far more than this.
“Everything about this Season has been a spectacle. I find myself longing for some predictability, in all honesty.”
“You?” Azrian asked with mock stupor. He squeezed her fingers wrapped around his arm with his free hand and leaned closer to her ear. “But you are this Season’s most spectacular appearance…”
Under her pale rouge, her cheeks colored a deeper shade of crimson. She looked away, mouth twitching.
In all his cycles of service, he’d moved through scenes far more choreographed than this one, delivering precisely scripted lines, never breaking character even in private moments.
Yet tonight, in this carefully arranged pageantry of shifting lights and social masks, Azrian felt the dangerous temptation to simply be himself.
Whatever that meant anymore.
Soon, couples began moving toward the central floor’s red-gold wood for the first dance.
“Shall we?” Azrian offered his hand, the gesture feeling less like duty and more like desire.
As they stepped onto the polished floor, the shape of the dance awaiting them struck him with a sharp ache of homesickness.
The pattern was unmistakable. Brisden, like Corven, belonged to the Eastern Frontier, and so the language of their dances was shared—a private dialect, familiar yet made strange here for the amusement of the Gilt.
The Countess was fond of such touches, importing what she thought her peers might find foreign and exotic.
This was no stiff quadrille, no rigid march through prescribed figures.
Here, the dance required something more: trust, the willingness to yield, to be led by music that seemed to have a will of its own.
It began with a slow circling, partners never quite facing each other, always half-turned, always moving in jagged, precise angles.
And then it built and built, until very little space was left, until each step was more embrace than dance.
No wonder so few dared it—with one wrong step, one could easily slip into scandal.
Luckily for them, he was a marvelous dancer.
His hand settled at Miss Almarien’s waist with practiced precision. Beneath them, amber light traced their steps across the magic floor, blazing brighter than most couples’, enough to draw curious glances from those on the sidelines.
“It never ceases to amaze me how well you dance for someone trained in combat.”
“Before I was ever a weapon, I had excellent instruction in how to be a proper noble. This feels like remembering something I’d forgotten.”
The truth of it struck him with blazing clarity. Dancing with Miss Almarien felt like recovering a piece of himself he hadn’t realized was missing. Not the Emperor’s weapon. Not the Registry’s enforcer.
Simply… Azrian.
A man who could move to music for pleasure, who could hold a woman simply to enjoy the feeling of her in his arms, who could exist in a moment without weighing its tactical implications.
When did he last feel so simply alive?
They passed under a swirl of enchanted birds, their wings throwing refractions of peacock blue and violet across the floor.
“Before you came to Ilvarenne, you mean? In… Corven, is it?” Miss Almarien asked.
His stomach clenched at the mention of his home. “Yes, in Corven. My mother is the Duchess.”
She nodded. “I have heard that. Is your father…”
“Oh, very much alive,” Azrian reassured her. “But the Corven royal line has been matriarchic since before the Empire existed. Is that not in the books governesses use to teach?”
Miss Almarien’s eyes widened. “In truth, no.” Then, her mouth twisted in a scowl. “The Empire only cares to tell the story of its conquests. It doesn’t much care to remember the history of what it conquered.”
They reached the midpoint of the floor. Here, the lights burned hottest, and the ceiling above was painted in a mural of a starry sky.
Azrian saw it only peripherally; his entire focus was on the minute inflections of Miss Almarien’s movements.
She was not, in truth, a world-class dancer.
But she gave herself over to the music with a reckless honesty, and that made her every misstep seem deliberate.
“Well, my father only sired two sons—something my mother never fails to remind him of—so when I was younger, I was well trained in the role of a consort.”
The ghost of a smile faded across her lips. “And then, what happened?”
He had expected the question, but not the way it unspooled the tightness in his chest, leaving him hollow and raw in its wake.
The music slowed, the partners drew near, only inches apart, moving in a slow spiral, one partner supporting, the other letting themselves be swept along the current. He tightened his grip, careful but unyielding.
“Then I was Weighed, and manifested Destruction. And suddenly, I became much more valuable to my mother as a bargaining chip with the Emperor than as a spare for her duchy.”
He felt her focus sharpen through the delicate pressure of her fingers at his sleeve; Miss Almarien had a gift for attention, and now she was giving all of it to him.
It was at once unbearable and— threads, how shameful—something he craved.
He looked away, letting the swirl of the dance and the ball’s mesmerizing illusions distract him as her gaze threatened to undress him entirely.
Azrian could tolerate most things, but not pity. He tried to laugh off the confession, but the sound curdled in his throat and died there.
The music built again then, tempo cresting, signaling for another shift in the dance. He let her spin out and then pulled her back, the momentum carrying her flush against him for a single beat before they separated once more.
He used the dance’s natural movements to bring his lips closer to her ear. “We need to discuss what happened at the Valdris estate.”
The music’s crescendo offered cover for their conversation.
“A second marked couple dead is a pattern, right?” The words emerged from her bitter as hemlock. “I don’t believe the murders are unrelated, and I assume neither do you.”
The rawness in her voice made something twist in Azrian’s chest. He spun her around, letting their steps trail fire across the amber-lit parquet.
“No, I don’t believe so, either,” he admitted after a moment.
“But something is certainly amiss about the whole thing. The Children could be responsible. They’d certainly have motive.
But I don’t see a reason for them to orchestrate the murders in such a way.
And if the Children are not responsible, then who is? And why?”
“And why is Registry covering all of it up?” she asked, and the words struck him with a cold clarity that left him momentarily dizzy.
It was the most frightening question of all.
The Registry was not just the arbiter of legality and magic in the Empire; it was the Empire’s most ruthless instrument of control, even more than Azrian’s own destructive magic.
If it wanted the evidence of murder erased, it was for a reason more dangerous than the murders themselves.
“The Registry has ordered me to handle the memories once more. Family, servants, anyone who might have witnessed their marks. A much shorter list this time, since Marianne planned to announce them at the banquet.”
The familiar chill of dread flickered across her features. When the dance called for them to separate briefly, circling other couples before returning to each other, he watched her process the implications with the same careful composure she brought to every crisis.
“Have you already executed this?” she asked as his hands claimed hers again.
“All but one.” He met her gaze directly, accepting the weight of what he was admitting. “Miss Celastra has… intimate knowledge of the couple’s marks.”
The transformation in her expression was immediate, fury blazing to life like flame touching kindling. Azrian catalogued every nuance of it as he guided her through a series of turns: the way her breathing shifted, the slight tremor in her hands.
When had he begun reading her so carefully? Or maybe more aptly, when had her emotions started to matter more than tactical assessments?
“Please,” she said when the dance drew their bodies closer. “Don’t erase her memories.”
The simple request struck him like lightning seeking ground.
“That carries risks,” he said, though if he’d been honest with himself, he would have admitted Miss Celastra’s memories had been saved the moment Miss Almarien had pleaded for them. “If she speaks of what she’s seen, proves I did not complete my assignment…”
“She won’t. I’ll ensure it. Virelle is not our enemy. She’s as much a victim as we are.” Her voice lowered still. “She carries a mark, too. I cannot help her survive it if I cannot even explain its risks.”
He must have hesitated a moment too long in his response, because she shifted her approach. “You know she’s likely Caelen’s match.”
“Are you saying this is purely for his sake, then?”
“For—” She caught herself, her eyebrows climbing higher as he drew her against him for the dance’s final pose. “Yes, for his sake. He cares for her.”
Azrian studied her face in the shifting light of the orbs, noting her slight breathlessness, the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat. When he spoke, the words emerged from some deep well of honesty he hadn’t known still existed.
“I will spare her,” he said, both hands still at her waist. “But not for his sake. For you. Because you asked it of me.”
The confession hung between them as the final notes faded and polite applause erupted. For an interminable moment, they remained still. Then, clearing her throat, Miss Almarien stepped back.
“Careful, my lord. If you continue defying the Empire for my sake, I might start believing you care.”
His lips curled in that rare, genuine smile that felt like shedding armor. “My reputation would never recover from such a scandal.”