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Chapter 16

Nora

“Who does she even think she is!”

It was the third time Clemency had asked the question in that indignant tone. The four cousins were clustered in a small circle in the aftermath of the chaos, under the floating stars that littered the garden’s dark sky. Nora could sense the crowd casting them sidelong looks.

Nora kept her face carefully, pleasantly impassive. But her cousins were doing a terrible job of pretending.

“Did you see how outmoded her hair was?” Constance sneered.

“I mean, I knew Aunt Grace was a mess, but who knew she was this much of a mess?” Modesty scoffed into her drink.

“And Ottoline ? What kind of name is that?”

Nora had been seven when she’d memorized the entire Holtzfall family tree, in preparation to take her place on it. Ottoline was the name of Honor Holtzfall’s wife. Her name was as weighted by Holtzfall history as Nora’s.

Nora knew what she was supposed to do. Join in against their new common enemy with something insipid and superficial. And did you see how she was gaping at the cameras? You’d think her father was a fish.

Who was her father anyway? Aunt Grace had had many dalliances since Nora had been old enough to know what a dalliance was. But why not just marry her child’s father? Ottoline would hardly have been the first Holtzfall born suspiciously early. Constance came seven months after her parents’ wedding.

Nora disliked the furtive undertones and the glisten of gossip in the eyes around them. And now, running on close to thirty hours without sleep, she could feel her patience running thin. She’d lost track of August somewhere in the chaos and, to her annoyance, kept catching herself looking for him. Of course he’d be with the other journalists, waiting for the reemergence of the new scandalous creature from wherever Theo had whisked her off to.

“Sneaking in here like she has any right to be here,” Clemency carried on loudly when she didn’t get the reply she was after. “Who even is she?”

“She’s a Holtzfall,” Nora replied impatiently, finally cutting her cousin off. “Obviously.” That milkmaid-pale skin that flushed pink delicately, and that pale hair that teetered over the edge of blonde, falling into nearly white. The kind that made all Holtzfalls except Nora look like every heroine tied to a railroad in the moving pictures. Waiting for someone to run in and save them.

And Theo had done exactly that.

“But she won’t be allowed to compete, will she?” Constance was fretting. “She missed this morning’s binding of the magic, it’s the rules.”

“There are no rules,” Nora snapped again. She could sense her temper fraying. Only tradition.

“Besides, it’s too late for her to bind her magic now,” Modesty said witheringly. “The ax is already in the Huldrekall’s hands deep in the woods. We can’t just ask for it back.”

“Then she shouldn’t be eligible.” Clemency all but stomped her foot. “We all had to wager our magic. She should too!”

“Modesty, dear!” Eudora Binks, the gossip reporter from the Herald , was approaching, wearing a frankly offensively canary-yellow dress. Modesty’s expression of scorn shifted to one of placid silver-screen charm as she turned to face the journalist. “Darling, can I get a quote?” Eudora tapped a charmed pen against her notepad, releasing it so it began to write on its own, recording her every word. “How does it feel to have worked so hard, for so many years for your fame, and to have it so very overshadowed in just a few seconds by your cousin?”

Nora almost choked on her drink, turning away as she started to cough. Even for Eudora, that was a forward question. Usually journalists tried to stay on the Holtzfalls’ good side when they were face-to-face, no matter what they wrote behind their backs.

For a moment, Nora thought Eudora was about to be on the receiving end of one of Modesty’s famous eviscerations. More known for their volume than their verbosity but effective nonetheless. She made servants cry regularly.

But after a long tense moment, Modesty flashed the falsest smile Nora had ever seen. “Oh, don’t be silly, there’s room enough in the spotlight to share it with my new cousin!”

“Enough for her?” Clemency piped up angrily. “There’s barely room in it for us all without her!” She gestured around the group of them. Nora was already moving away. She didn’t want to be included in Clemency’s point.

Nora became aware of a rustle running through the crowd of journalists. Eudora turned away from Modesty. Five figures were emerging from the house. The cuckoo in the nest herself, Ottoline.

She was no longer wearing the maid’s uniform. They had changed her into a green evening gown. It was a little outdated, but not enough to be noticeable. In fact, the dress would have been unremarkable, except that Nora recognized it. That dress had belonged to Nora’s mother. One of hundreds of slightly outmoded dresses she had left behind in her childhood bedroom in the mansion when she left the house to marry Nora’s father.

She was wearing Nora’s mother’s dress. Her aunt and her grandmother flanking her.

And her knight standing guard.

Nora knew that spite wasn’t fair. But neither was life. It snatched people away without warning. Either to death or to some intruder.

So many of Nora’s people were gone. Her father. Her mother. Alaric. And now three more people who had unequivocally belonged to her were flocking around Ottoline Holtzfall. And the clawing vindictiveness was climbing rapidly through her. She briefly wondered if this was how her cousins had felt about her for sixteen years. Watching her have things while they craved them. She could hardly blame them for hating her. Nora certainly hated Ottoline.

“Well.” Mercy Holtzfall smiled magnanimously at the crowd. “How blessed I am to discover I’m a grandmother all over again.” That was a lie. There was nothing that happened in this family that Mercy didn’t know about.

Lying to the city, Nora would understand. But she’d lied to Nora. Hidden another competitor from her. A cousin Nora knew nothing about, had no way to prepare for.

Nora knew, without question, that she was better than Modesty, Clemency, and Constance. But this wide-eyed creature, looking around the crowd like a newborn fawn seeing the world for the first time…she was a threat.

“And I do hope that you’ll let my newest granddaughter enjoy her first party without badgering her too much.”

The photographers in the crowd snapped pictures eagerly. Some had already rushed back to their offices. It would be a race now to be the first on the stands with this breaking news. Extra! Extra! Another Candidate for the Holtzfall Heirship!

Before she knew what she was doing, Nora was cutting through the crowd. Headed straight for Ottoline even as the remaining journalists flocked in around her, calling out questions. Where have they been hiding you? Did you know you were a Holtzfall? Aunt Grace gave a laughing response to a journalist, moving Ottoline’s unfashionably long hair back off her face absently. The way Nora’s own mother had done with her a thousand times.

Ottoline turned, answering a voice behind her. And in a second, her gaze locked with Nora’s.

Nora didn’t think it was possible for those eyes to go wider than they already were. But Ottoline’s turned from saucers to dining plates as she caught sight of Nora. And just like that, she didn’t look like Grace anymore. Nora had never seen Grace’s face betray so much. And then the journalist who had called her name leaned forward, asking a question, breaking the moment between the two of them. Nora watched as Ottoline’s face displayed every single thought that passed through her mind. Shock, then anger, then…tears sprang to her eyes.

The new Holtzfall was crying . She was trying to cover it up but doing a miserable job. And the journalists were fluttering and cooing over her. Nora could practically feel the resentment pressing against her ribs. If Nora had ever cried in public, the only thing she would have got from the papers was disdain.

“Do I know how to choose them or what?” Freddie Loetze draped himself over Nora’s shoulder uninvited. He was drunk, obviously. But even sober, he was about the last person she wanted to see right now. “Here I was thinking she was just some country girl ripe for the picking.” Freddie smirked. “Good thing I didn’t get any further with her, since she’s the secret Heiress-to-be.”

“I’m still the Heiress-to-be.” Nora had meant it to come across cool and flippant, but it slipped into defensive. Usually she was far better at tolerating Freddie Loetze. It had been a long day. And it had already started with her leaving Freddie Loetze at a club at dawn.

Freddie shrugged in that infuriating okay, if you say so way that people did when they were being patronizing and wanted you to know it. A sudden unintelligible screech of outrage came from a few paces away, drawing both their gazes. Constance spun away from her companions in a hurricane of skirt and huff. Nora caught a few in the crowd snickering behind their hands.

The hairs on the back of Nora’s neck stood up as she glanced around. It was the same feeling that had come upon her the moment before the Grims attacked, a sensation of wrongness she couldn’t put her finger on. If she could just concentrate…

“I mean, let’s be honest. She probably is, though,” Freddie muttered into his drink. “She doesn’t just look more like a Holtzfall than you do. She looks like every worthy peasant girl who turns out to be a princess. And you’re…” He waved at her.

Nora’s fingers tightened around the glass she was holding. “I guess we’ll find out what I am.”

“Oh, come on, Nora.” Freddie flashed her a grin. “You’re one of us.” Nora could feel her anger rising, even as she looked out across the garden toward Ottoline. The newest Holtzfall was surrounded by people fascinated by the perfect pretty doll. Theo stood protectively at her shoulder. Aunt Grace beamed on. Meanwhile, Nora stood alone with one of the most loathsome boys in the upper circles.

“Face it,” Freddie was saying, “you can try all you want, you’ll never be as good as—”

Nora’s temper snapped. In one quick movement, she flung her champagne straight into Freddie’s face, stopping him midsentence. She had absolutely no regrets. The champagne had gone warm anyway.

And suddenly Theo was across the garden in a few steps, coming between her and Freddie. “What happened?” He looked braced for a fight. Not that Freddie could do anything except retaliate with his own drink. And even that, Nora didn’t think he had in him. “Nora, are you all right?”

But Theo was too late. Nora’s embers of anger had risen into a flame, and she was stoking them.

“Oh, good, you’re here. Give me your watch,” she ordered Theo. She gestured at the locanz charm designed to look like a wristwatch. It was linked to her diamond earrings. She had worn them tonight as a gesture of goodwill to Theo. That she wouldn’t vanish and lead him on a wild goose chase again. Her goodwill was long gone.

“Nora—”

“You can call me Honora or not speak to me at all, I don’t care, but do pick one of the two.” She ignored the sting that passed over him. “Now give me the watch. Neither of us wants me to have to ask a third time.” Theo’s lips pressed together, but he knew better than to argue with Nora when she was in a mood. He took off the wristwatch and handed it to her. She wrapped it around her palm before turning to address Freddie’s inevitable ire.

He was sputtering as he blinked the drink out of his eyes. “Nora?” he asked, as if waking from a dream. He glanced down at himself. “What is this? Lustenberger Fine Reserve? Why is it all over my collar? I didn’t think I was that drunk yet.”

Realization dawned over Nora. But too late.

First, Eudora prodding at Modesty.

Clemency’s little pique.

Constance’s outburst a second ago.

Ottoline’s sudden waterfall of humiliating tears.

And now Nora’s own display…

Another cry split the garden, this time of delight. Nora felt her heart sink, already dreading what she was about to see as she turned toward the noise.

Modesty was holding her hand up to the lights of the party. On her ring finger was a plain wooden band. Nora’s treacherously quick mind already understood, even as everything in her resisted the knowledge.

The ring was blackthorn wood. For temperance. Also known as the virtue of having enough self-control not to throw a drink in someone’s face.

It had been a trial.

The first trial of the Veritaz.

And Nora had lost.