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Iademos took his leave while Amalthea stood and dusted off her immaculate skirts.

“What ball?” Vampires have balls?

She read my expression with ease. “Courts always have balls, do they not? Our king has been gone for weeks with no word. It’s only right to have one to commemorate his return.”

“But… I don’t need to go to that.” I didn’t need to be around vampires any more than absolutely necessary. A ball was not, by any measure, necessary.

“Raphael claimed you. It’s only right you make an appearance. Besides, people are curious about you.”

Just what I needed: vampires interested in me .

“And you must be curious about them as well.”

“I’m really not,” I insisted. I knew everything I needed to: They were dangerous predators, and voids like me were their ideal prey.

As for the ball itself, well, I’d never been to one, though I’d watched from the corner of the room as my mother prepared to attend, layering disguise magic on top until her appearance transformed, making her unrecognizable—and in the eyes of a child, just a little scary.

My heart ached, in that fleeting moment, to be a child again and watching her. When the scariest thing was seeing her lips turn from pink to purple, her lashes long enough to graze her magically sharpened cheekbones when she batted her eyes.

She shrugged. “Well, too bad. You’re going.”

“Why?” I demanded, collecting my dagger from the bench.

“Because I’m not missing the ball, and Raphael left you in my care. Do you really want to sit by yourself in a room with a chair barricading the door shut because you’re terrified to be alone in the Vampire Kingdom?”

I glared. That was exactly what I intended, even if I’d come to see just how outmatched I was against vampire strength. “That’s a low blow.”

“Low blows work,” Amalthea countered. “Now, we’ve barely enough time to get ready, so let’s go.”

“How long?” I asked, alarmed.

“Less than three hours.”

Amalthea navigated the twisting hallways of Damerel with ease. I froze at the first pair of vampires we crossed paths with, but the witch just tugged on my arm to keep me moving while the vampires bowed their heads in respect—at us . Humans.

“Here we are.”

I didn’t recognize the hall where Amalthea’s rooms were, but that didn’t say much. Despite the fact we were under a mountain, the hallways were every bit the labyrinth as the castle in Ulryne.

“These are your chambers?”

“They are,” she replied, tossing the doors wide.

To say Amalthea’s room was chaotic was to greatly understate the level of disarray.

Dresses hung off every elevated surface, from the changing screen to the wingback chairs by the fire to the low table in the middle of the room.

The floor was a viper’s nest of shoes of every description, from practical, fur-lined boots I’d have killed to have in the prison to heels that rivaled the dagger I was anxiously clutching.

That was not to say Amalthea used her room as one big closet.

It was also part library, with books scattered throughout, left open to specific pages, and garden, with the remaining floor space eaten up by luscious purple and blue flowers that matched her hair .

“Don’t mind the mess,” she chirped, taking a big step over a particularly dangerous mountain of flats.

I thought of my mother’s immaculate chambers, which never had so much as a stocking out to be gawked at. “No problem.”

She pointed off to the side. “There’s a bathing room over there. You can wash up and then we’ll have some fun. Here, take this. It’s clean.”

She picked a ball of fabric from her dresser, and I unfurled it. A satin robe. Despite the wrinkled state, it actually seemed to have been laundered.

“Thanks.”

I ducked into the bathroom and stifled a laugh when I saw the shelving. It seemed I wasn’t the only one with a penchant for perfumes. Amalthea had dozens of half-empty bottles, some stacked on top of each other to fit. This time, I abstained, washing my body quickly before returning to Amalthea.

“Now, let’s see what we’ve got. Sit,” she instructed.

In my time freshening up, she’d unearthed both a stool and vanity that I hadn’t noticed. Obediently, I sat. Iademos may have been the general, but Amalthea certainly liked to give orders.

“I just love your hair,” she mused, running her fingers through it. “I’m going to have fun with you, Sam.”

She grinned at me in the mirror, gray eye brimming with mischief. Everything she did was with complete ease. Like having me in her room getting ready for a ball was no big deal. Was this what it was like to have friends? Despite the bizarre circumstances, I was touched. My eyes burned.

“What’s this? None of this,” she said quickly. She brushed away the tears that threatened to form.

“It’s just… you’re so nice to me.” She’d been ordered to babysit, but Amalthea had immediately embraced me, teasing, joking, teaching.

She shrugged. “I know we’re going to be friends.”

“Act like this and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” I joked.

“Aren’t all prophecies?” she replied glibly. “But even if we weren’t, it’s in my best interest to be on your good side. I’m rather invested in surviving.”

I frowned. “I don’t see how I could make a difference in anyone’s survival.”

The witch lifted a brush from the vanity and began to run it through my hair.

“Maybe not today,” she half-agreed, seeming far too focused on my hair as she answered.

Taming the wild strands of my hair was no simple task.

My hair was naturally straight, but nights spent sleeping on the forest floor without so much as a comb meant I’d made do with my fingers and little else.

A thought occurred to me. “When you say you know… you mean you got a feeling, or you saw with your magic?”

She divided my hair into sections, not answering immediately for the first time since I’d met her.

Had I committed some social blunder by asking?

Some witches were intensely personal about their magic—my mother made it a rule to never ask for details, though in private she seemed to know everything.

The last thing I wanted to do was offend one of the only non-vampires in the castle.

“It’s a sense, mostly,” she said at last. “Sometimes my power is clear. For example, I knew Raphael would be in the training room. Swear the male doesn’t believe in giving word because he wants to make sure my magic ‘stays sharp’ or some nonsense,” she grumbled.

“I get visions of the future. An image, a scene. But I have no way of knowing when.”

I watched her in the mirror, steadfast in her work on my hair. When I tried to grab another brush to help her, she swatted my hands away. “When I was a child, I wanted a little sister to dress like a doll. It seems my fantasies are at last to be fulfilled.”

“I suppose Iademos isn’t willing to let you oil his hair?”

Amalthea barked a laugh so abruptly that she yanked on my hair. “You really do have a humor about you when you’re coaxed from your shell. That’s good. Raphael could use some laughter.”

“You… you speak of him very casually.” I called him Raphael because that was all I’d known him as—the captured vampire I’d partnered with to escape Greymere. But here, he was a king.

She lifted her shoulders as if it was utterly inconsequential.

“He is who he is, no matter what he’s called.

In court, of course, I show proper decorum.

But as his adviser, it does no good to be falling over myself constantly and making sure I’m addressing him correctly and not cutting him off and curtsying for exactly fifteen seconds when he enters a room. ”

“You’re his adviser,” I repeated.

“If a king’s council’s duty is to warn him of future dangers, there could be none better than a witch who can see the future.”

That made sense. If anything, it was a wonder the witch king hadn’t repaired relationships with the oracles to use their magic to his own benefit.

The thought felt like a betrayal, so instead I focused more on analyzing what I’d seen of Raphael and Amalthea.

It was obvious they were familiar with each other.

Was there something more there? I’d assumed vampires nurtured the same disdain for witches that witches held for them, but perhaps that loathing went only one way.

Perhaps Amalthea and Raphael truly were close.

The thought made my stomach sour, and not just because it was antithetical to what I’d been taught as a child.

“There.” She poured some oil from a bottle into her palms and ran her fingers through my freshly brushed hair. “Lovely. Now we can start on your face.”

She reached around me and pulled open a drawer. Dozens of tiny containers and brushes filled the area, clattering as they rolled around. She selected one of the rolling bottles with practiced precision and uncorked it so I could look inside.

“Disguise cards are hard to come by, so I get by with colored powders. Turn,” she instructed.

I spun on the seat. Two things became obvious very quickly: Amalthea had been completely serious about wanting a doll to dress up, and despite her ability to see the future, she was utterly indecisive.

She pulled a powder up, compared the coloring with my own, and then switched to another.

The process repeated several times until she settled on her selections.

With my eyes closed, all my attention was drawn to the feather-light sensation as she brushed over my forehead, my cheeks, my neck.

My eyelids got an obscene amount of attention.

The brush was almost ticklish, and when my face quirked on reflex, Amalthea quickly ordered me to “not interrupt her work.”