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CHAPTER NINE

No transformation cuts more deeply than that of a friend to an enemy.

—Auverrani proverb

I deeply hate this dress.”

Gabriel shot her a sideways glance. His new clothes amounted to a rich-green doublet embroidered over with gold vines and breeches to match, topped with a billowing white shirt whose sleeves could probably hide an entire roast turkey. The refined clothes made the scarred leather of his eye patch stand out, vicious and out of place. “You look nice,” he hedged, though the way his eye darted quickly away somewhat belied the statement.

“I look like a plum pudding.” The long skirt caught beneath one of her heels; Lore swore, kicking it away. “A plum pudding that is apparently meant to be stationary.” Her bodice slipped downward, and Lore yanked it up. “A plum pudding meant to be stationary and possibly eaten.”

“Compared with some of the things the courtiers wear, this is demure.”

Lore itched beneath the domino mask that had come with her costume, a lavender bit of silk speckled with darker purple. “This party should be quite the education for you, then.”

Gabriel scoffed. His costume hadn’t come with a mask, like whoever had sent the clothes wanted his face uncovered. They could only assume it was the Sun Prince’s doing. Not only did Bastian know Gabriel was here, Bastian wanted Gabriel to be seen. Seen and recognized by the court who thought him a traitor, the heir to his father’s sins.

The skirt of Lore’s dress caught under her foot again. “Bleeding God and his bloody wounds.”

“Yes, good, get it all out of your system now.” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Dukes’ cousins generally keep a civil tongue. Match the script to the costume.”

“I’ll be sure to start peacock squawking, then.” The narrow, twisting stairs the bloodcoats had led them up would be entirely impossible in Lore’s heeled violet shoes, and so they took the long way, walking down each hall to the wide steps at their ends, twisting back in on themselves to funnel down the turret. “That is what I’m supposed to be, right? A peacock? Not actually a plum pudding?”

“Are we supposed to be something?”

“It’s a masquerade, Mort, the costumes are the whole point.” But she couldn’t quite puzzle out what their costumes were. The tulle of her skirt was layered shades of purple, wine-dark on the bottom and a nearly white lavender on the top. Embroidered threads of green lined the deep-violet bodice, ending in wide leaves around the plunging neck. Some kind of flower? Gabriel’s costume didn’t give any clues—regular court clothes, only odd for being all in shades of green.

“You should probably refrain from calling me Mort once we arrive,” Gabriel said. “Doesn’t exactly sound familial.”

“Just Gabriel, then?”

He paused. “Gabe.”

“Gabe,” she repeated, feeling out the word on her tongue.

He gave a solemn nod, a tiny tick of a smile in the corner of his dour mouth. Lore returned it, then reapplied herself to the arduous task of walking in her ridiculous dress.

Earlier, it had seemed like their rooms were miles from the center of the Citadel, but as the candelabras became more ornate and the iron-barred floor more polished with each descended stairway, Lore felt like they were getting there too fast. Her heart beat a nervous tattoo and sweat misted her skin, making the already-itchy tulle nigh unbearable.

“What’s your full name?” Gabriel—Gabe—asked after a moment. They’d turned a corner and found themselves in a wide atrium that she vaguely remembered from earlier. Rosebushes grew profuse in ceramic pots, traced in golden gilt, hiding delicate wrought-iron tables and tiny statues of frolicking nymphs. “Is Lore short for something?”

“No.” She shrugged. “It’s the only name I have.”

“We’ll have to make something up, then. Something that sounds like the cousin of a duke.” He looked down at her, brow thoughtfully knit. The gentle light of the fading sunset through the atrium’s huge windows strobed over his face, then pitched it to shadow as they turned into another hallway. “Eldelore.”

Her nose wrinkled.

The brow over his eye patch rose. “You have approximately two minutes to come up with a better one.”

“Two minutes?”

They turned another corner, and the doors of the throne room loomed up ahead. Gabe gave her a chagrined look from the corner of his eye. “I did say approximately.”

The entrance to the throne room somehow looked even more intimidating than it had this morning, the sunset light burnishing the Bleeding God’s Hearts on the door with pink and crimson and orange. Five bloodcoat guards stared straight ahead, swords sheathed at their sides, not a bayonet in sight. Lore assumed the weapon wasn’t elegant enough for inside the Citadel. Such slaughter was saved for outside the walls.

These guards weren’t the ones who’d been there earlier, though. “New bloodcoats?” Lore whispered out of the corner of her mouth, only loud enough for Gabe to hear.

“I’d imagine the ones who saw you this morning won’t be making an appearance again,” Gabriel murmured. “August is thorough. The guards who caught you in the Ward are probably gone, too. Keeps the circle of people who know who you really are as small as it can be.”