Page 20 of Rhapsody of Ruin (Kingdoms of Ash and Wonder #1)

Sylara slid away like smoke seeking a new crack in a door.

The crowd broke into petals of conversation again, soft, watchful.

My brother materialized at my left shoulder the way he had when we were small and he wanted to make me flinch.

“Sister,” Iriel murmured, not moving his mask, “you must teach me how to choose theatrics as well as you choose jewels. That went over as silk.”

“Music was your choice tonight,” I said, “not mine.”

“Don’t take all the credit,” he returned, almost bored. “You’ll strain your back.” He let his gaze slide past me and settle on Rhydor. “Did you enjoy the fable of a warrior who thought the bed was a throne?”

I turned enough to suggest courtesy. “If a throne were a bed,” I told him, “we would have fewer kings.” I left before his smile could sharpen.

He would file the exchange away as carefully as a hunter files the shape of a snare, but he would not forget that I had turned away first, choosing not to be bait.

He never forgot the people who denied him.

The court started the next game exactly on cue.

Veythiels loved a toss of the knife between masks so smooth no one saw the wrist move until the blade struck.

“A toast,” Sylara sang out brightly, and something in me smiled even as the rest of me braced.

“To our guest prince, who learned restraint so perfectly today, ” She let the pause do the cutting.

“, after yesterday’s charming… display.”

Soft laughter. A clinking of glass. The echo of a jeer hiding in silk.

Rhydor’s chin lifted a fraction. He did not flush. I have to give him that; he does not flush easily, and what court calls shame he has learned to call weather.

They watched me then. The whole room. There is a point where a court becomes an animal.

Its attention moves like a single head. It turned to me with that head now, waiting to see if I would defend, knowing how much they wanted me to stay quiet.

They can forgive cruelty if it keeps them amused; they never forgive grace that exposes them as small.

I lifted my goblet. “To restraint,” I said, and my voice carried to the walls because I meant it to. “Our hunts are prettier when no one has to bleed to show off how sharp they are.”

It landed as lightly as a flower on a blade, and then cut.

Half the room exhaled through laughter they would later call elegant.

The other half cooled a degree behind their masks.

Sylara’s fan slowed and then resumed with a beat that could have been applause or warning.

The Master laughed out loud, which bought me three minutes of safety and two enemies I had already owned.

Rhydor’s eyes found mine over the rim of his cup and the tiny muscle in his cheek flickered, a private acknowledgement, gone before anyone could decide what it meant.

I felt it anyway, like a warm coin dropped into a cold palm.

It wasn’t gratitude. It wasn’t alliance.

It was the recognition that we stood nearer each other’s fire than either of us expected to, close enough to keep hands warm and still swear we hadn’t meant to.

The music rose again, new measure, new dance.

Couples drifted toward the long oval of the floor.

Draven reappeared with Kyssa on his arm and twirled her into the first turn so deftly that she had no choice but to laugh; the sound brushed the underside of my ribs as if reminding me people are sometimes allowed to be alive for reasons that have nothing to do with politics.

I watched him dig her out of a fresh snare three minutes later, a pair of women playing at kindness with the soft efficiency of professional cruelty, and did not miss the way Kyssa watched him walk away, as if she had only just realized the map of his face didn’t belong solely to charm.

By then I had to move again; the court hates to be ignored when it believes it has built a trap.

I crossed the floor on a slow arc, slicing conversations that pretended to be important and were, in truth, only nervous.

Rhydor had shifted to the lee of a column, offering his profile to the room in a way that warned those with sense not to approach from his blind side.

When I reached him, the lantern above us dipped in a flaw of its orbit and sent cold light sliding down his cheekbone like the memory of a blade.

It flattered nothing and put everything in such relief my breath stumbled.

He turned it into something I couldn’t hate by not looking caught.

“Princess,” he said, and the word sat between us like a stone on a riverbed we could both see.

“Prince,” I returned, because we had not yet earned each other’s names in public. “You weathered that well.”

“I’ve survived worse storms than a woman with a fan,” he said, mouth almost quirked. “Though I confess the fan worries me more. I know what to do with storms.”

“You plant your feet and wait,” I said. “And sometimes you fly into the center and come out with your feathers in place to scare the children.”

He glanced up toward the musicians, then past them, toward the far wall. “The song,” he said. “Aelvorne. He was real?”

The breath I took next was not as steady as I would have liked. “Real enough,” I said. “Real in the way that costs more when you begin to count.”

His gaze stayed on my face a heartbeat too long. “You want to see where he stood,” he said, and it was not a question.

“I want to show you what the archives weren’t written to hide because no one believed anyone would know where to look.

” I angled my head toward the northern wing where servants’ corridors stacked like ribs against the outer wall.

“Varcoran Hold keeps too much in the dark because it has grown used to this light. The Vale doesn’t lie, not where the ground has a memory for bones. ”

For a fraction his mouth softened, not toward pity, but toward something like… respect. “Tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” I echoed, and the agreement hung between us like a string tautening over a canyon, thin, gold, stronger than it had any right to be.

We did not touch. We did not move closer. The court would have loved that too easily; it would have swarmed like wasps on sugar, and the memory we were building needed to be free of their tongues.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked, so perfectly polite I understood he was offering me a way to refuse that would cost neither of us a bruise.

“No,” I said, lightly. “You step on too many feet when you’re waiting for the hunt horn.”

“Fair,” he said, and the smile that flickered then wasn’t for the court. It wasn’t even for me. It was for the tiny, rough stone of humor he had carried in his pocket all day that had finally found a palm to warm it.

“Two hours,” I said, glancing toward the clock that had been disguised as a wreath of ivy in the far corner.

“Smile when the Master tells the story about the stag that let the hunter climb to its back and carried him across the river. It keeps him from crying. He does that at home later no matter how it goes, but this way the servants bring him the blue wine instead of the red.” I paused.

“You’ll be approached by a Rell with a mask of willow leaves.

She wants to talk in whispers about trade.

She means dowries. Don’t let her trick you into accepting one you can’t refuse, and don’t let her see how annoyed you are. ”

He looked at me steadily. “You are very good at building bridges I did not ask for.”

“I am very good at pretending to be a bridge while I lay foundations,” I said. “Survive the rest of this and meet me at dawn where the kitchens smoke.” I let my voice soften a fraction. “Bring boots you don’t mind ruining.”

“Everything I brought here is already ruined,” he said.

“Good,” I answered. “Nothing breaks twice the same way.” I turned before the court could stage our departure for us. He let me. It pleased me too much that he let me.

By the time the chandeliers lowered a single chain-link, that polite signal the Master of Veythiel preferred to the Queen’s sharper chimes, I had given six more pieces of advice dressed as jokes, stolen three more glances at the boy whose father had died on a night that had taught me the shape of silence, and collected the names of four people who would try to hurt me more quietly tomorrow.

I had also watched Kyssa color when Draven returned a strand of hair to its pin with a sweetness I had thought he had lost, and watched him watch her leaving as if he had just realized her collar was not a necklace but a crest and did not know whether to kneel or run.

The court wanted blood again before it left.

It tried for mine as always; I gave it flowers with thorns and saw it pretend not to prick.

When I made my way to the door at last, Veythiel Hall smelled of sugared fruit and stale triumph; the lanterns’ moons had lowered enough to make every mask’s eyes look hollower than laughter could cure.

I stood in the narrow throat of the columned arch and let the last draft of music wash over me. Somewhere near the center of the room, Sylara lifted her goblet toward me, a little forgiveness, a little threat. I lifted mine back like a nod to a storm I would not hide from.

The night air outside had the clean bite the hall never let in.

The stars were absent; the twilight had eaten them long ago over Shadowspire, but the dark felt less false here at the threshold.

Footsteps fell softly behind me. I did not turn; I didn’t need to.

I knew the sound of his stride now. I could feel the way heat warps air when it moves.

“You don’t love me,” Rhydor said, voice low enough the ivy at the arch might not have heard him. It was not a plea. It was not a wound. It was a statement of a thing that would not be forced to bloom. “I don’t love you.”

“No,” I said, and exhaled the truth as if it were a coin turning. “Not today.”

“But tomorrow,” he said, and there was neither promise nor threat in it. Only recognition of a new road cut through old rock.

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

We did not touch. We did not look.

I walked down the steps where the marble gave way to dark earth and smelled dew and ash.

The kitchen smoke wafted from the far wing, baker, hearth, a human hour tucked under the palace’s throat.

I thought of boots and maps and a ledge in the Vale where the wind sings if you stand still enough to let it pass through you.

Behind me, in the hall, the singer began the ballad again at someone’s request. The notes carried like a rumor.

Let them sing their old songs. Tomorrow, I would write a new verse with my feet.

And if I led a dragon into the places the court had forgotten how to look, and he followed me without chains, and the ground remembered the weight of a man who once broke a queen, then perhaps the story would remember it could still change.