Page 16

“I suppose that’s why they call it a tradition,” Rory offered kindly.

Serena smiled at him. No one else did.

Briony glanced at Toven and found his eyes flicking away, turning to the ballroom.

When the Hearsts and Veronika Mallow slipped away, Briony continued to watch Mallow as she took in the ballroom. She seemed deeply displeased.

“Who is that?” Briony asked her father.

“Mallow is the daughter of a soldier. That’s all I know. She’s fortieth in line, I believe.”

Rory snorted. “She certainly acts like she’s in the Ten.”

“Fortieth in line, and she’s invited to a state dinner?” Briony whispered.

“Briony, don’t be elitist.”

Her gaze snapped to her father’s. “I’m not. I … I didn’t mean to be.”

Her face flushed, and she looked down. She pushed back embarrassed tears as the Raquins stepped forward.

Finn winked at her, and she glared at him. “I hope you’ll save me a dance tonight, Miss Rosewood.”

Briony smiled patronizingly. “I’d rather throw myself from the tallest tower.”

“Briony.” Her father’s sharp voice caught her by surprise; the Raquins and her family had heard the exchange. “You forget yourself,” he said cuttingly.

Toven had flustered her. Hot embarrassment rose in her cheeks. She was zero for two with her father tonight.

Finn looked downright giddy. “Your grace, it’s nothing. We play like this at school all the time. Don’t we, Briony?”

She nodded without speaking, not trusting her voice.

Briony and Rory said hello to Finn’s mother, Ember, an Eversun woman with dark-brown skin and green eyes.

She had been a friend to their mother before she and Rory were born and had been married to Finn’s father, a Bomardi, in a peace treaty marriage.

Supposedly, Ember had been the first person to hold Rory when he was born, as their mother slowly bled out with Briony still in her belly.

They only saw her a few times a year at these state dinners.

A similar future awaited Briony, she realized, when she would only return to Evermore for state dinners. Her heart fell.

Ember reached out to touch both Rory and Briony’s cheeks with a kind smile.

“Is my son behaving himself at school?” she asked.

“Barely,” both Rory and Briony said together.

Ember huffed in exasperation and sent a chastising look to her son. He batted his lashes at his mother, innocently. “What can I say? I’m incorrigible.” He offered Ember his arm, and she took it, rolling her eyes at him.

Once the receiving line was done, Briony and Rory finally got to join Didion, Cordelia, and Katrina.

Cordelia snuck her a glass of wine, and Briony turned to the wall, drinking almost all of it in one swallow.

The herald announced that the dancing would begin in five minutes, and Briony stepped behind Cordelia, hoping Sammy had been offering the first dance in jest.

Didion cleared his throat from next to her, and she glanced at him as she took a final swig from her glass. “Briony, I was wondering if I could dance the first with you.”

She blinked at him, cheeks puffed with wine, and focused on swallowing. Rory coughed a smile into his hand and turned to speak to someone else.

“I … Sammy asked me,” she blurted. “Sorry, I mean to say, I would love to take the second dance with you, Didion.”

His brows pulled together. “Sammy? He’s six years older than you.”

“As a friend, surely,” Briony jumped to say.

“Not as a friend,” Sammy’s jovial voice boomed from behind her. She turned to him with a scowl. “As an avid admirer.” He swooped into a low bow and winked at Didion.

Briony’s lip curled. “Don’t waste your time flirting with me, Sammy.”

He grinned, but before he could spar with her, a deep baritone voice sounded from behind her.

“Your grace.”

Briony turned to find Toven standing in front of her. His hands were behind his back in a strange imitation of civility, and Briony stared up at him, praying he wasn’t here to do what she thought he was here to do.

“What?” she said shortly.

“Your first dance,” he said. “As we discussed.” He flashed a bright smile at her.

Every one of her friends was silent behind her.

She lifted her brows. “We didn’t discuss anything. I’m dancing the first with Sammy.”

Looking to Sammy for help, she extended her hand to him, waiting for him to take it. But he just glared at Toven.

“You’re serious, Hearst?” Sammy said.

“Absolutely,” Toven said. “I am accustomed to having the finest thing in the room, after all.”

Briony snapped her eyes to him. He was trailing his gaze down the bodice of her dress, where the lace pulled tightly across her breasts and fitted to her waist.

Didion stepped forward. “All right. That’s enough—”

“The first and the second dance,” Toven said, looking past her shoulder at Didion, then flicking his eyes back to her. “Your grace.”

Behind him, couples were entering the dance floor. They only had moments before the dance started.

“I am dancing the first with Sammy and the second with Didion,” Briony said, voice flat and stony. “I do not accept your hand.”

She started to walk past him, and his arm shot out and caught her elbow, pulling her into his side.

“And I ,” he said softly, “am exercising my right as eighth in line to cut in.”

“Your father is eighth in line,” Briony hissed. “Should he ask me, I’d be happy to accept these terms.”

She glanced at Sammy, trying to encourage him to follow her to the dance floor. But he was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking resigned. “He’s a member of the Ten, Briony,” Sammy said.

“He’s not ! He succeeds eighth in line. He’s sixteenth at best!”

Toven turned her to him gently, and horror filled her as he placed a hand on her cheek. His fingers were warm, and his eyes might have looked kind to anyone who didn’t truly know him. Briony heard Katrina gasp.

She blinked rapidly up at him, not daring to move. If he kissed her at a state dinner, it would be as good as a declaration of courtship. But if she danced the first dance with him, was that not just as good an announcement?

“Don’t try to make a fool of me in front of everyone here,” he said.

“You’ll do a fine job of it yourself. Get your hand off me.”

“Or what?” he asked lightly. “Will you cause a scene? Don’t look now, but everyone is watching us.”

Her breath stuttered in her chest. The air in the room thickened, and she knew without looking that he was correct. There were eyes on them.

He smiled then and leaned toward her. She held her breath until he swerved at the last moment, moving his lips to her ear. “You’ll come with me to the dance floor now, or I’ll put in a formal request with your father for courtship. It’s your decision.”

Briony’s eyes were wide. They met Katrina’s over his shoulder. She was frozen still as well. Didion’s jaw was clenched. Across the ballroom, she saw Canning Trow watching them calculatingly.

It didn’t matter, she realized. He’d made a move on her publicly. If she danced with him first after this show, they would be assumed to be courting.

The music began for a waltz. Briony swallowed. She could do two dances and then be done with him until spring.

“Of course,” she said, pulling back from him. “Toven, it would be my honor.”

His grin seemed almost genuine, and for a moment, she remembered how shockingly handsome he was. He extended his hand to her with a flourish, opening his body to the room so it was clear to anyone watching that it was her choice to accept.

The dance floor was filling with couples, and she caught her father’s eye as she took her place across from Toven. He tilted his head at her in question, and she shook hers quickly, hopefully signaling to him not to take this seriously.

She faced Toven on the dance floor, and there was a self-satisfied smirk on his face as the musicians counted them in.

The itching was back between her shoulder blades—and in most parts of her body—as he reached forward for her, slipping one hand around her waist and with the other picking up her hand from where she’d let it hang limply.

It wasn’t until the moment she placed her other hand on his shoulder that she realized what dancing with Toven Hearst meant. It meant touching him. Breathing him in. Staring at his face from an arm’s-length distance—or not staring at his face, as she decided to do. She looked past his ear instead.

“You must be excited to be schooled in Evermore for our second year,” he said.

“We don’t have to talk,” she snapped.

A puff of air crested over her forehead, and she wondered if she possibly could have made him laugh.

As he twirled her, expertly shifting the pressure on her rib cage to guide her around the floor, Briony let her eyes move wildly over all the people who could see them.

Sammy, Katrina, and Didion were watching them from the corner, but Cordelia was missing. When Briony found a mane of auburn hair floating on the dance floor, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

The waltz moved Cordelia and her partner toward them. She gaped at her brother with her best friend in his arms.

“What is this?” she said incredulously to Rory.

“What is this ?” he returned, looking at Toven.

Cordelia’s lips opened and closed.

Toven chuckled. “You didn’t know?”

Briony looked up at him as they spun away. He was positively gleeful. She glanced back at her brother. The king’s heir choosing a partner for the first dance was just as impactful a statement as Briony’s mess of a situation.

“Oh, that’s rich,” Toven sang. “They’ve been making moon eyes at each other for a year, and you didn’t know?”

Briony snapped her mouth shut. He lifted his arm and spun her under it, then drew her back in.

“I’m sure they’ll be sneaking around the school this year, finding all the private alcoves—”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Do you really think anyone keeps their hands to themselves in year two?” He laughed. “You’ll need protection on the staircases now, Princess.”

“And are you volunteering?” she said dryly. “Is that what this is about?”