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Chapter Eighteen

T he few days before our next big performance blend together.

We haven’t had much time to practice, Copelan and I, but we don’t need it.

Something about this next dance is visceral, as if my body knows the motions based on sense alone.

Even so, nerves coil within me. Not only for our proximity, the response we might provoke, but also from the message I am about to relay, however subtle, in regard to Razam.

But my time to fret is limited. Each night, I’m sent to entertain small parties hosted by drunk dignitaries from across the Miridranian courts.

It’s common, Laurent tells me. Large families are spread between the three territories, and the Gathering is the only time they make an effort to see one another.

So they kick back their chalices and carouse while I alternate with other troupes.

I find myself longing to know the other dancers, to interact, but I keep my distance. I am too dangerous a friend. So I fulfill my duty. I dance, and I hold my tongue.

Each night Anton is there—a familiar, recurring presence. He stays an hour, maybe two, entertaining the courts with his ridiculous tales, then retires not long after.

He never speaks to me, but I feel him watching me, scrutinizing me—especially when I dance.

It’s worse than an interrogation, the way his eyes rake over me. It’s as invasive as touching. Perhaps he is still suspicious—especially after the banquet. Or more so, because of it.

Yet I can’t seem to put a pin on him, either, though I watch him as much as he watches me.

It’s become a game at this point, as if we’re circling each other, waiting to see who might make the first move.

I don’t break his gaze until I’m forced to.

He doesn’t break mine until someone pulls him away.

Whoever breaks first seems to lose something—though what, I don’t know.

But I begin to notice things.

He smiles easily—much easier than Illian—and when he laughs, he laughs proudly, freely.

He flirts in abundance, seemingly enjoying the challenge of charming anyone willing to indulge him.

A new companion, or several, languish over him each night.

They come from every court by the looks of it, each more eager than the last. They rub his chest, dangle on his arm, massage his neck, no doubt eager to unravel the enigmatic king. And he revels in it.

Yet he drinks like a man parched, and that tells me he’s either unhappy or he’s trying to forget something—something that haunts him from dreams to waking, the way my father now haunts me.

I long to know what it is.

Tonight unfolds like any other. After my performance, I retreat into the shadows bordering the room, anticipating my dismissal.

However, an unexpected guest graces the soirée—Prince Raiden, the Prince of Zar.

So engrossed is he in a game of marble joust that he’s forsaken his customary silver headpiece, his dark curls falling freely.

Courtiers lounge with the seventeen-year-old prince around a table, musicians stringing an idle tune in the background. They forget about me entirely.

It isn’t until I back against a wall that I realize Anton is next to me instead of indulging in his usual proclivities.

“You have yet to answer my question,” he says, fiddling with the brass buttons on his burnished gold velvet jacket—his gaudiest piece yet, bedazzled in rows of hematite stones. Even locks of his hair are strung back with them. “About why you dance.”

“Why do you drink and flirt with anything that breathes?” I return, only to bite my tongue in regret.

Until he says, “Because I am exceedingly wonderful at both.”

“I think flirting is your way of interrogating.”

“I think you are scrumptious,” he says with a grin, proving my point exactly. “Care to answer me now ?”

“I can’t imagine why you want to know so badly.”

“Little is more revealing than one’s passion. Or lack thereof.” He glances at me pointedly.

“Are you always this presumptuous?”

“I am precisely the right amount of presumptuous.”

I let out a huff. “What makes you believe that dancing is not a passion of mine?”

“It pains you in some way or another, does it not?”

So he’s noticed that, too. “That hardly means it isn’t a passion.”

He swirls the liquid in his glass. “What I find most interesting about you, Minnow, is that sometimes you do seem to love it. You transform not only yourself but the room. You enchant us. We are spellbound to you, and you to your dance. Yet there are times you seem to loathe it, too.”

I loathe that he’s been watching me so closely.

Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, but I have nothing in me to combat him further, so I relent, if only a little. “I dance because . . .”

Because I must, I almost say. Because I am forced into it, now.

I hate that my passion, my greatest joy, my way to remember Emilia, is now a weapon in Illian’s hands.

“The first thing that comes to mind,” he says, nudging me with his shoulder. “What is it?”

“Power,” I blurt. “Because there’s power in it.” Power in commanding the attention of my audience, a power I lack in every other area of my life.

But that isn’t the whole of it, either. And it’s as if Anton knows, because he watches me steadily, waiting, and it makes me so angry, so seen, that I shove the rest at him, ready to be done with it. “And because it makes me feel less alone.”

And now he will no doubt dissect every word.

Heat crowds my cheeks, and I straighten, poised to walk away, when he says, “I drink because I cannot otherwise quiet my mind. Because I, too, feel alone. Because I want and wish for many things I cannot have, and that, Minnow, drives me absolutely wild.”

The breadth of his answer startles me.

But I say, merely, “Another way of telling me you are spoiled, then.”

Once again, my self-control has slipped.

He grins, leaning in. “Spoiled, pretentious, and far too wealthy. And devilishly fetching, I should add.”

I barely resist an eye roll. “Then what, exactly, can you not have?”

His eyes travel over me at that, but then he merely frowns at his drink. “At the moment? More wine.”

“Deflective.”

Even so, I run his words through my mind again. He revealed more than I did, if only I could understand how.

“I am flattered by your curiosity,” he says, chin inching up. “And by that adorable little blush.”

I throw a hand to my cheek before I can stop it, a futile attempt to halt the rising warmth. It grates on my nerves even more. “I am not curious, and I’m merely overheated.”

“You are blushing even more ardently now. Don’t worry, Minnow. I take it only as the highest tier of compliments.”

“With such dazzling confidence, Sire, I’m surprised you haven’t constructed a statue or several in your honor.”

“By the Fates, you’re right. I should pose for one at once.”

“Alongside your stacks of gold—”

“And preferably in the nude.”

“—with a companion draped across your lap.”

“Generous of you to offer,” he says.

A growl travels up my throat, along with a score of insults. It takes all my willpower to clamp my tongue and walk away.

Especially as his chuckle skitters down my back as I do.

The day before our big performance, whispers haunt the halls. At long last, King Estienne, Illian’s older brother, has arrived.

I’m told he’s in a foul mood after his delay, when Copelan informs me that I will be entertaining him this evening.

Before retrieving the last-minute costume Annais is stitching, I stop by the kitchen to grab her lunch.

Marian is there.

She greets me with a hug, which I’m not prepared for. When I tell her what I’m looking for, and how much, she tells me to wait where I am. “I’ll fetch a few platters I saved from a banquet.”

The moment she disappears, the kitchen doors fly open and two Brisendali guards stalk in.

They are trailed by the general.

For a blink, terror roots me to the ground. But then my brain catches up and I slink behind a stack of crates.

My father is not a particularly tall man. He’s average in height and build, but it’s his carefully crafted tone, the sheer confidence he wields like a king would a scepter, that makes it feel like he’s towering over the room.

“Who,” he says, thrusting up a serving tray piled with haunches of meat, “is responsible for this?”

Even his voice, deadly calm as it is, projects.

The cooks, all eight of them, pause, knives mid-slice, pots boiling over.

And then I watch with mounting dread as Marian returns from the pantry. Unaware, she flits past him, a garnished platter in hand.

“You,” he calls, halting her. “What is your position here?”

Marian blinks once, twice, before registering the emblem on his shoulder. “General,” she says. “My apologies. I am in charge of the cellars, stocking and managing their contents.”

“Then who is in charge of the food?”

His gaze rakes the kitchen, but no one answers, like prey frozen in the path of an arrow notched.

He whirls back on Marian. “Your name?”

My chest tightens, my heartbeat a hammer.

Don’t tell him.

“Ma—” She stops abruptly, then says, “Maria, milord.”

Because if she were to tell him her real name, and he were to investigate . . . I shudder.

“What seems to be the problem, milord?” she adds calmly, but I can see the tension in her hands, knuckles white from gripping the platter she arranged for me.

He studies her, and I wonder what he sees. She’s my height, my age. We could be sisters. And her scars do not detract from her beauty. They merely serve to highlight the strength in her eyes.

Eyes that are golden-brown, just like mine.

Does he think of me, here and now?

I wonder, then, how long he searched for me. What havoc he might have wreaked once he realized I was gone. Did he cry for me, even once? Or am I nothing to him but a lost mare, good only for fetching a price?

“Come here, Maria.”

Come here, Emilia.