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Chapter 26

Lotte

“A ribbon around the waist might tie it together?”

“Not in green, though.”

“Gold, maybe?”

“Yellow makes you look sallow.”

“I didn’t say yellow, I said gold .”

The blandness of the conversation between Modesty, Constance, and Clemency was at odds with the restlessness in the room. It was obvious in the strained casualness of the conversation between her cousins, and Lotte could feel it rising in her too. Like a wave threatening to draw down her every thought into a maelstrom of anticipation.

She had been in the city for four days now.

Four days of dresses and parties and more dresses and parties.

A ball where the entire room was filled with pink clouds on which drinks and food drifted by. A gathering to show off a painting collection in which each frame was held by a beautiful young girl, standing perfectly still all night. A birthday with a flooded ballroom and ships full of champagne.

And no more trials.

She was starting to feel her eyes strain from playing the wide-eyed country girl in the city. She could feel her patience waning every time someone pointed at the magimek lights with a grin, saying, I bet they don’t have this out in the countryside . Last night it had been a gaggle gathered around, pointing at the flooded ballroom and prodding at her to say water in her non-city accent and laughing.

And every time their hands brushed against her arm in condescending kindness, the truth of them revealed itself. The ones who didn’t want to be here but needed to be seen here. The ones who bought things they didn’t even care for but needed to be seen having. The way they drifted toward the people they thought had power or popularity that would reflect well on them. The ones who weren’t having any fun but needed everyone to think that they were having more fun than the person next to them. The way all they were ever thinking about was what everyone else thought of them in their world, and outside it through the papers.

All except for Honora Holtzfall, who seemed like an unmovable island amidst the shifting tides around her. Lotte thought she caught Honora watching her a few times. But any time she turned to face her, Honora’s attention was elsewhere and Lotte felt foolish for thinking her cousin might care a jot about her.

All of them were on tenterhooks, waiting for the next trial.

But Lotte was the only one waiting for the chance to prove she was worthy of being a Holtzfall. And not just a temporary sideshow in their world. That, too, she read in their minds.

The papers were also spinning their wheels since the last trial. While they waited, they recounted tales of Veritaz Trials past. Waking up at dawn was a hard habit to break, which meant Lotte had hours before anyone was awake to read every paper cover to cover.

That was how she came to learn about the past trials of the Holtzfalls. About Valor Holtzfall, her mother’s youngest brother, dying on the ice. About Earnest Holtzfall III trying to flee his generation’s trials by going abroad and seeking refuge with the royal family of a foreign nation. But the trials didn’t care about man-made borders. The ruins of the royal castle, ripped apart by a trial of bravery, were a tourist site now. Lotte read about Charity Holtzfall ironically not winning the ring for generosity because she didn’t give her shawl to a shivering woman. That explained the strain in her cousins’ smiles as they stopped the automobile every time they saw a beggar on the street to give them a jewel or a coin.

Only Modesty seemed at ease, flaunting the wooden band on her finger. Sure of her place.

Last night, sleepless after yet another party thrown by yet another person Lotte didn’t know, her doubts had become harder to ignore. In spite of lying in the ocean of expensive sheets stitched with the Paragon’s insignia, she had a feeling of being at the bottom of the briar pit again, the voices whispering nastily in her head. What if the Sisters were right all along? What if she wasn’t good enough? Unworthy of all of this? What if she failed the next trial too? Where would she go if she couldn’t prove that she was good enough to be a Holtzfall? And just as she began to finally drift off, crawling out of some dark corner of her mind she had never looked at before, there came a new thought.

If her mother’s family didn’t want her, maybe her father’s would.

She’d awoken that morning with the idea firmly rooted in her mind. Growing and taking shape into a desperate need to know. Lotte had only ever fantasized about her mother coming back in her life. If she’d thought about her father at all, she’d imagined him as the type of man who would cast aside a poor pregnant woman and force her to abandon her child.

But now she knew her mother was far from poor, which meant her father was something else entirely.

She paced the suite at the Paragon Hotel, waiting for Grace to wake up.

“Who’s my father?” Lotte asked as her mother finally stepped into the sitting room around midday. For a second, Lotte thought she might have seen something flash over her mother’s face as she hesitated.

“Goodness, Ottoline,” Grace said. “Can I sit and have breakfast before I start trying to remember all the men I slept with seventeen years ago.”

Lotte wondered if that answer was meant to scandalize her into silence, little innocent country girl that she was. But Lotte stood her ground. “I’m not asking you to remember all the men. Just one.”

Grace took her time, pouring herself a cup of coffee from a silver pot. She took a sip, avoiding Lotte’s gaze. And when she looked up and found Lotte still watching her, she made a frustrated noise. “I honestly couldn’t tell you, Ottoline.”

“You’re lying.”

“And you are giving me a headache.” Grace rose abruptly, taking her coffee with her. “I’m going back to bed. Oh, good, Benedict,” Grace greeted the knight as he stepped through the door. His eyes darted between Grace and Lotte, taking in the tension. Benedict’s injuries from the night of the ceremony were beginning to fade, but they still made Lotte wince. “Can you drive Ottoline to…” She waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Her thing?”

“Dress fitting.” Lotte didn’t care about the dress fitting. But it irked her that her mother didn’t care enough to know. Didn’t seem to care where she went or what she did. Didn’t seem to want to spend any time with her after they’d been separated for sixteen years. “For the governor’s victory celebration.” The election for the governorship was two days away. Whoever won, the Holtzfalls were expected to show up in style.

“Yes,” Grace said, her hand dancing vaguely in the air as she faded back toward her bedroom. “That.”

They drove mostly in silence through the streets of Walstad, Lotte sitting next to Benedict in the front seat. Finally, they pulled up outside of the tailor. All of Lotte’s clothes so far had come from sprawling department stores. But this was a small white-fronted boutique, with a bell for entry. Lotte hadn’t seen her grandmother since the night of the ceremony, but she had apparently taken enough note of them to decree that they were all to procure their dresses for the governor’s victory celebration here. Instead of getting something flashy and modern at one of the department stores.

Through the window, she could see her cousins already there, looking through bolts of green fabric with the easy air of people born to this life. And Lotte made her decision.

“Benedict.” Lotte caught the knight’s arm, crossing the hindern into Benedict’s mind deliberately. “Do you know who my father is?”

She didn’t expect him to tell her. But she did expect the question to bring the answer to the surface of his mind. She’d be able to snatch it from there. But there was nothing.

When Grace Holtzfall had confiscated a few hours of memory from the servant girl, Lotte had been able to read the absence that was left behind. Like a gap in her mind that she was struggling to bridge. But in Benedict’s mind, there wasn’t a gap, there was a chasm.

His mind was riddled with so many missing memories that he had stopped trying to fight his way across them. He accepted them as scars born from serving the Holtzfalls. If he knew nothing, he could never betray them, even against his will. He could only do his duty.

By my oath. They were the same words she had heard in Theo’s mind the night he had pulled her out of the swarm of journalists. And again when he had draped his coat over her the morning after. The words she had learned guided the knights in their duty.

By my oath. It echoed around the fissures in his memory. His oath to protect Grace at all costs. Even if that meant forgetting.

Once, he’d known the answer to the question Lotte had asked him. But that memory was locked away now. One moment he was stepping into Mercy Holtzfall’s office, the next he was driving Grace down unsteady roads to a convent.

He sat with her in a stone chamber for months on end as she alternated staring out a window and screaming her rage into the empty fields that stretched on and on around it.

Benedict pulled his arm away, breaking the contact and pulling Lotte out of the memory of her mother.

In a swift movement he was getting out of the automobile, opening the door on her side formally.

“Benedict—” She felt a stab of guilt. He knew what she had just tried to do. She wanted to explain. She wanted to tell him about the gnawing feeling that she needed to find her father. But he had been the one to bring her here. To risk his life to get her here. She couldn’t tell him she wanted a different family.

“You are late to meet your cousins, Miss Holtzfall.” His voice was formal, and he didn’t meet her gaze.

Lotte felt shame pricking at the nape of her neck as she walked away from him. She had never felt shame for reading a mind before. Not even when she had thought it was a curse. But then, she had never been caught either.

The three younger knights who had been assigned to protect them were stationed just inside the door of the tailor’s. Lotte was aware of Theo watching her as she hurried into the small shop, but she kept her own eyes straight ahead. Sure that if she looked at him, he would see what she’d just done.

Now Lotte sat restlessly as dresses were draped and pinned. For three hours. She was waiting her turn, sitting on a plush sofa, when a small metallic bird flitted into the shop, landing between Theo and Hildegarde.

Hilde pulled the note it was carrying from between its talons, reading it swiftly before passing it to Theo, then Edmund. Lotte watched their faces shift one after the other. “We have to leave.”

“Now?” Constance asked into a glass of champagne she had just refilled.

“Now.” Theo’s tone didn’t invite argument. “Every Holtzfall is to go to the house immediately, for your own safety.”

“Fine.” Constance made an exasperated noise as Clemency sighed dramatically. Modesty seemed to be the only other person picking up on the sudden change in both Hilde and Theo. Something was happening. Lotte was already standing, even as the pair of cousins moved languidly. “I’ll just have to find my clothes.”

“No time,” Hilde said at the same time as Edmund said, “You’re wearing clothes.”

Even Edmund looked serious.

Lotte was not used to being in the dark like this. Her whole life, she had thought hearing people’s minds was a curse. But it had been part of her too. And now she found herself almost unconsciously pulling at the hindern on her finger.

“My dress isn’t even hemmed,” Clemency complained.

“Now.”

This time, even Constance and Clemency seemed to realize something was wrong.

The answer crashed into Lotte the second she took off her hindern.

Inside the boutique, it was still and quiet. The walls here, like most expensive places in the city, were charmed to mute disturbances from the street.

But Lotte’s mind was flooded with noise. A mass of seething hatred, desperation, and anger poured off the city, moving through the streets outside. The wave of voices crashing into Lotte threatened to carry her away into chaos. But, like flotsam among it, she managed to pick out some distinct shapes.

It had begun as civil protests against the governor and his curfew. Curfew that had cost people jobs, freedoms, what little distractions they had at night.

Civil protests that were meant to stay civil.

But anger stoked fast.

Protests turned to riot.

And Lotte could feel it now, echoing deep in her chest, the desire to rip the wealth of Walstad down to size. It was a moving storm that no Holtzfall would want to be caught in.

As she picked up the maelstrom of voices getting closer, the knights were already shepherding them to the back entrance of the tailor’s. One of the shop girl’s eyes followed them as they pushed through the stockroom, hands knotted around a silk sash.

Two black-and-silver automobiles were stationed at the back door. Hildegarde Rydder loaded Constance and Clemency into one. Modesty headed toward the second one.

Lotte was moving to follow her when the sharp edge of a thought cut across her mind. A second later, a small gaggle of rioters rounded the corner.

Two wore wolf masks. The third was a girl in a fox mask.

Next to Lotte, Theo jerked, his arm coming across her body, shielding her instinctively.

Your oath or your blood. Which do you value more?

She had heard those words, distantly, in Theo’s mind the day after the Veritaz Ceremony. Only now did she understand them. The memory was clear and focused.

His brother, Alaric, was alive.

And his life was in Theo’s hands.

A choice between Alaric and his oath.

Two impossible choices wrestling each other like wild animals as he hunted for another way. A third answer.

But here, in this moment, the choice had come.

He could hand Modesty over to them now and break his oath to save his brother. Or he could help the Holtzfalls all escape and let them kill Alaric.

His oath or his brother.

No.

Lotte spun to face Theo, so her back was to the masked figures. “I’m going to faint,” she said in a low voice. Theo’s eyes snapped to her face. “If you catch me, Edmund will get Modesty out of here.”

A flicker of understanding passed over Theo’s face. She could leave Theo’s hands clean. She could buy him some time to find a way out. A path between his oath and his brother.

And with that, Lotte let her knees go slack.