Chapter 35
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian stood at the edge of the ballroom, surveying the gathering.
Lady Delarine had not spared a single dram of spectacle.
The ceiling soared in impossible arches from which chandeliers hung.
Even the air seemed sculpted, all chill and citrus.
At the ballroom’s heart, Sabine held court with a naturalness that should have alarmed him, if he hadn’t seen her perform under greater duress.
She caught him staring across the ballroom and shot him the same look he was certain she’d used on endless unruly but amiable pupils before. He chased away his first instinct to avert his gaze.
This was his wife . In the eyes of the Gilt, it didn’t matter that she hadn’t chosen him out of love, or that the Emperor had all but forced their hands. They were married, and he could stare as much as he pleased.
And so, as a mischievous smile tugged at the corner of his lips, stare he did.
Sabine excused herself from whatever dull and lifeless conversation she’d been having with the Countess of Tessalin and wove through the crowd with singular focus.
He extended his hand to her, and she reached for it, allowing him to pull her into his orbit, lips finding the edge of her knuckles in a whisper of a kiss.
“Did you enjoy your tactical assessment of my performance, Lord Vaelros?” she asked.
“A study in restraint, Lady Vaelros. Consider me impressed.”
He didn’t miss the way her breath hitched at his use of her new name. It felt foreign in his mouth, yet truer than any he’d spoken in months. Evara had been a friend, but he’d never found himself wanting to brand her with his name.
He could not say the same about his new wife, and the realization was a dangerous one.
In a blur of pale rose and charcoal, Virelle and Caelen appeared at their side, arms interlocked. Virelle greeted Sabine with an embrace so swift and sure it shocked a smile out of his bride. Azrian clapped Caelen’s shoulder, pulled him in for a brief, awkward embrace.
“You survived,” Caelen whispered.
Azrian gave him a look designed to wither lesser men. “That was, indeed, the plan.”
Virelle, oblivious to the undercurrent, was already whispering in Sabine’s ear, the two women sharing a smile that banished the steel from Sabine’s posture.
Caelen kept his voice pitched for Azrian’s ears only. “How does it feel, the bond?”
A dozen answers, all of them wrong, crowded Azrian’s mouth. He settled for: “Like wearing armor several sizes too small.”
Caelen’s brow furrowed, but Azrian touched the younger man’s arm, warning him off with a glance. There would be time, later, to explain. This was not the place.
Across the floor, the music shifted into a Corvenian melody with a dangerous, seductive undercurrent.
The tune was not unlike the song they’d danced to at the Thornevail’s reception.
The Gilt expected a stately waltz for a couple’s debut, and the music of his youth, all staccato and cycling, served much more intimate displays.
He searched the ballroom until he found Lady Delarine by the lemonade fountain, tipping her glass to him in an imaginary toast.
What was her aim, this time, in meddling in their first dance?
He did not have time to dwell on it as the music crescendoed. He bowed, crisp and deep, every inch the perfect husband. “Shall we, wife?”
The word landed like a thrown gauntlet. Sabine’s brow arched, and she answered it by placing her hand in his, fingers cool and resolute. He led her onto the dance path.
The audience closed in, ring upon ring of curious, predatory faces, all hungry for what would follow. For a heartbeat, they all disappeared. There was only the tension in her arm, the quicksilver pulse under her skin, the faint, electrical charge that leapt between their joined hands.
As they moved through the opening figures, Azrian’s magic stirred beneath the veneer of his skin, a familiar predator confused by its uncharacteristic confinement.
It started as a low tremor, familiar enough from a lifetime of careful practice.
But as they circled each other, as their bodies drew closer, the tremor rose to a buzz.
Azrian tried to breathe, to center the power. But the pressure mounted with every step.
The music quickened. Sabine pivoted, the train of her dress cutting through the air like a blade. He countered her movement, their bodies moving in opposition and then in union, the steps a silent conversation, only the two of them spoke fluently.
And yet, the wrongness grew.
Azrian’s affinity lurked at his fingertips, testing the perimeter of his body as if seeking escape.
Normally, a blood vow should appease magic, quiet it.
But his affinity was as uncontrollable now as he’d ever felt it, even worse than when he had to learn how first to weave it.
His fingers dug into her skin tighter than necessary, warning her with every fiber of his being.
Something was off, something was wrong.
He could not push her away now, in the middle of their first dance, without alerting the Registry officials to what was happening inside his skin. But he could not allow harm to come to her, either.
Never, in his fifteen cycles of wielding Death itself, had he feared he’d wield it accidentally.
Until this moment.
Until the person it might destroy was the same he was bound to protect.
As if sensing his panic, Sabine adjusted her frame, drawing closer, matching his steps with perfect precision.
Magic crested inside him, hovering on the knife’s edge. The ash of his threads began to form under his fingertips. His breaths turned shallow and quick.
After Evara’s death, the gossips had named him the wife-killer.
Tonight, Azrian feared he was about to become one.
This time, in truth.
Sabine changed the pattern, drew closer, their bodies near enough that every spectator would see it as evidence of passion rather than panic. “Azrian. Breathe.”
He tried, but the magic would not listen. It crowded behind his sternum, sharp and black as broken obsidian. His grip on her waist tightened.
The pressure reached its crescendo as the music demanded a sharp turn, Sabine spinning out and then back into his arms. At the point of contact, Azrian’s magic surged to the surface, wild and unfiltered, ready to burst. The world constricted to this one instant.
He was going to hurt her.
He was going to kill her.
Then, warmth spread from their point of contact. Azrian dared to look at their hands.
The brightest golden light he’d ever witnessed met his fraying magic, weaving into and around the Destruction that sought to unmake it.
For a single, impossible moment, the two magics locked in perfect equilibrium, neither devouring the other, both humming in a single, electric current.
Azrian pulled her closer, his lips lowering to her ear.
“Are you—?” he began, but she cut him off by pressing her forehead to his, grounding him with the certainty of her presence.
The music ceased. The ballroom exploded in applause, the Gilt so delighted by the display that they missed the near-catastrophe at its core.
Azrian led his bride off the floor, where a tide of congratulation instantly surrounded them. Virelle and Caelen reached them first, the younger man’s face pale as death as he recognized what had just transpired.
Sabine laughed at something Virelle said, her eyes never leaving his.
The music started up again, a gentler melody, and the crowd flooded the floor. Azrian and Sabine stood together at the threshold. When the throng of bodies turned dense enough to mask their retreat, he pulled her away from the ballroom.
He found the library by instinct more than intention, Sabine’s hand folded neatly inside his own. Only once the door was closed behind them did he release it. She drifted to the window, her silhouette outlined by dusk. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Azrian waited. He could still feel the afterimage of their dance. They’d come terrifyingly close to disaster. Did she understand the risk she’d taken?
She spoke first. “Is this what magic is supposed to feel like?”
Azrian considered embellishing the truth—he could tell her that every bond was unique, that in time the jagged edges would soften.
I do not find comfort in gilded lies, my lord. However brutal, I’d prefer the truth.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
She exhaled. “I could tell something was wrong.”
“The bond isn’t stable. It should contain our affinities, instead it feels as though it’s goading them.”
She turned from the window, the lamplight catching the faint pink along her cheekbones. “Have you ever felt this before? With Evara?”
The name stabbed him—not for the pain of the memory, but for the reality that Sabine spoke it so easily, as if she’d already decided that ghosts should be dealt with, not hidden.
“No,” he said, the word raw in his throat. “Even when our bond started to fail, I still felt in control. And when she was gone…” He swallowed a lump in his throat. “I had to learn to weave without a counterbalance. This is different from all of that. With you, the power is… excessive.”
She crossed the room to him. “Do you think it’s because of the marks?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it would seem the most plausible answer.”
Sabine watched him, her gaze unblinking. “We still have to perform our First Weaving. And if what happened on the dance floor repeats—”
“We’ll keep it short. Minimal. We don’t have to perform miracles for the Gilt; we just have to prove the bond exists.”
She finally smiled, but it was a smaller, sadder one. “Will that be enough for the Registry?”
Azrian stepped closer, lowering his voice as if the walls themselves could betray him. “They want a display, not a massacre.” His fingers gently brushed against hers. “If anything feels wrong, if you need me to stop, just signal. I’ll cover for us. I promise.”
Sabine nodded, the movement slight, every muscle taut. “I’m afraid, Azrian.”
He wanted to offer comfort, but words seemed paltry. He opted for truth. “So am I.”
They stood together, not quite embracing, not quite letting go.
“We should return before they send a search party,” Sabine said at last.
He nodded, but neither moved.
She reached up, fingers grazing the side of his jaw. The touch was featherlight, but it startled something loose inside him. He wanted to hold her, to promise safety, but all he had to give was his presence.
“I’m glad it’s you,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what’s happening to us, but I think I’d rather not know with you than be certain with anyone else.”
When they returned to the ballroom, the crowd parted, clearing the silvered inlay of the central stage. Candles had been snuffed in the outer rings, so that the focus narrowed to a corridor of mirrored light from the chandeliers, reflected in the marble and the faces of the waiting Gilt.
Sabine’s arm, looped through Azrian’s, was steady, even as her pulse thudded against his sleeve, frantic as a trapped bird.
He led her to the center of the ring. The moment his touch left her arm, he felt the backlash of his own magic, bottled and furious, prowling for a crack.
He kept his expression cold, impervious.
He raised both hands, palms outward. The darkness gathered at his fingertips, a fine mist at first, turning into threads of fraying ash. Sabine summoned her own weaving: pale, gossamer threads of Creation, spinning into a net designed to catch and reshape his force.
The collision, when it came, was a physical impact, enough to rattle his teeth and make his vision strobe with ghost-color. For a heartbeat, the room vanished, replaced by the unfiltered fury of their two magics locked in mortal combat. Azrian felt himself stagger, almost lose control.
Abandoning protocol, Sabine caught his wrist.
The touch quelled the caged animal of his magic, and suddenly, he felt like he’d regained control. In the end, they wove a knot with their threads—not as a clean bow, but as a double helix, imperfect and inseparable.
For a moment, the silence was sepulchral.
Then, Lady Delarine’s loud applause broke the spell. Soon, the remaining guests followed suit, thundering their appreciation for a display that had been dangerously close to disaster.