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Today, seeing Kleos was different.

I knew she smelled of sea and salt and sun. I knew her red hair was ever so soft. And I knew the rows of diamonds around her neck belonged to the Saltzins.

I wasn’t the only one.

“Well, well,” Damian said, offering me a glass of champagne. “Way to make an announcement. Great-Aunt Geraldine’s parure, hm?”

Count on him to have catalogued and memorized every piece in our collection.

“And I see you have your ring, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s a friend. I enchanted it for her. It’s a protection.”

“Certainly. It says, property of Lucian Regis. Approach at your own risk. Don’t think Mother won’t notice.”

Ha, fuck.Frankly, I didn’t even think about my mother’s reaction. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t identify the provenance of the necklace as fast as my brother had. It came from my father’s side of the family, and it wasn’t her style.

“You already owe me six months of freedom. Tell Mother, and youwillwake up completely bald this time.”

My brother shrugged, offering me his best smile. “I can pull it off. If there’s one thing to say about every single one of us, it’s that we’re pretty.”

“Not without hair, you won’t be.”

“I’d take that bet. But, brother mine? Touch my hair, I’m coming after yours. Wouldn’t it be nice in blue?”

I considered the threat, and decided to think of another payback. No one was fucking with my hair.

“Look what we have here. It seems like someone didn’t get the very large memo you tied around the girl’s neck.”

I was about to repeat to my brother that it had only been a spell—maybe argue that I’d technically only lent it to her—but his meaning became clear to me, and instead, I whirled back toward Kleos, still standing between a column and velvet curtains as though attempting to conceal herself as much as possible. The pink-haired bitch by her side, in a dress fit for a funeral, was glaring daggers at the newcomer: a man who smiled too much, leaned in too close, and took Kleos’s hand while chatting, though she hadn’t offered it and wasn’t inclined to give it, I could tell.

“Right. Just a friend, huh?” My brother laughed. “I won’t tell Mom. By the look of it, I won’t need to, after you assassinate anything with a cock who dares to talk to her.”

“Fuck off, Damian,” Ronan drawled, walking towards us.

As usual, he was fashionably late.

Damian wasn’t bothered. “Just telling it like it is.”

“I have no clue what you said. I just thought you should fuck off.” My friend wasn’t fond of my brother.

As the feeling was reciprocated tenfold, Damian made his way to a nearby group of nobles he tried—and likely succeeded—to charm with his winning Saltzin manners.

“How’s Phobos?” Ronan asked.

I would have replied, except the moron—a dark-haired man in a boring shiny white suit he couldn’t pull off—was dragging Kleos towards the middle of the ballroom where a few couples were dancing.

She still had a glass in hand, and protested all the way.

Wait, I knew him. His general lack of anything noteworthy or interesting—too bland to be either ugly or beautiful, too weak to register on a magical level, too badly dressed and with too much hair gel to deign having him in my list of acquaintances—meant that it took me a while to place him. He’d been at my last trial though, screaming about how the founders had too many rights.

I still didn’t know his name.

Ronan followed my gaze and whistled low. “Well, nice knowing you, Valmont.”

“That’sa Valmont?” I asked, grimacing.

I’d taken him for a new blood.