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Chapter 34

Lotte

The wealthy of Walstad handled a blackout like they did just about everything else.

With a party.

Leyla Al-Oman, Nora’s other grandmother, had cut the power to about three blocks last night in order for them to break into Johannes & Grete. Just one block would seem suspicious, according to Nora. The Bamberg mansion was within the radius of the blackout. And Angelika Bamberg was taking this opportunity to throw a blackout party.

There were no official invitations on such short notice, but Lotte had begun to understand that, as big as Walstad was, the upper circles didn’t work so differently from a small town. Somehow, when something was happening, everyone just knew.

Guests were to bring a candle for the price of admission.

Lotte took a long taper from the dining room of the Paragon Hotel. It would burn down quickly, but that didn’t matter. Lotte wasn’t planning on staying long. She and Nora had made a plan to find each other at Angelika’s, and then they would slip out for the short walk to Johannes & Grete to make another attempt at finding information about Lotte’s father.

When Angelika opened the door to the mansion, she was holding a thick pillar candle, like the ones the Sisters had used in the convent.

“You’ll need a light.” Angelika beamed, holding out the candle. Lotte thought of the small charmed pin she was wearing and the cascade of fire this morning.

She tipped her candle forward to catch the flame.

It seemed to Lotte like every mirror in Walstad had been moved to the Bamberg mansion. They were set up in such a way as to catch the light from the candles in people’s hands and those scattered around the room.

Lotte suddenly understood the dress that Nora had insisted she wear tonight.

It looked like old-fashioned chainmail, gathered tightly at her waist and loose around her shoulders so that it draped around her collarbone, before collapsing into a skirt of chain links so tiny that they looked like cloth. The silver chain links had been polished until they shone, and every step Lotte took, the light of the candles seemed to find her. And so did the gazes of the partygoers.

“Ottoline.” Modesty beelined toward her as she entered, her smile tightening. “I don’t remember that dress!”

“Oh, you don’t?” Lotte dropped into her act, although it felt more jarring this time. “It was just in my closet.”

Lotte’s eyes skated briefly past Modesty, looking for Theo before she was aware of what she was doing. He was stationed by the door, along with other knights. She could feel their shared secrets stretching out between them like an invisible thread. His eyes pulled toward her before she could look away.

Lotte quickly returned her gaze to Modesty even as her smile tightened further. “It’s a little flashy, don’t you think?”

If Lotte had any doubt that the dress was impressive, Modesty’s attempt to make her feel ashamed of it would have been all the confirmation she needed.

And then the party swept her away from Modesty.

Lotte drifted, keeping one eye on the door for Nora as she felt the wax of her candle growing warm under her fingers. She half listened to conversations she couldn’t take part in. The upper circles talked about the riots, by way of talking about restaurants they liked that had been looted for food. They talked about maids who hadn’t turned up to work this morning because they were locked up. Some for disrupting the peace. Some for breaking the lockdown and venturing out before dawn, trying to make it to work on time.

They talked about how terribly inconvenient it all was.

Minutes turned into an hour, and there was still no sign of Nora. Lotte felt the restless nervousness rising by the second. Nora seemed to keep to her own schedule at the best of times. But tonight wasn’t exactly the best of times. Lotte’s candle was beginning to burn close to her fingers, wax dripping on the marble floor of the ballroom.

Leyla Al-Oman could keep the power cut for another night, maybe . Tomorrow, people would start complaining if their power wasn’t back. If Lotte was going to find out who her father was, tonight was her last chance.

Her fingers danced nervously across the charms Nora had given her. She had spent hours this afternoon trying to spark them smoothly, like Nora did. But then there hadn’t been a good reason she needed to learn to use them.

Now there was.

Lotte couldn’t wait for Nora anymore. She made the decision abruptly, moving through the ballroom in a ripple of chainmail.

She headed straight for Theo.

His hand twitched toward her for just a second, and then he seemed to remember that he was Modesty’s guard tonight, not hers. Lotte had been brought here by Edmund Rydder, who was watching her now. He might not be the knight Theo was, but she had a feeling he would still notice if she tried to just walk out into the street on her own.

“I need you to pretend to drive me home.” Lotte kept her voice low, aware that Hildegarde Rydder wasn’t far out of earshot, though her attention was trained on her charges, Constance and Clemency.

Theo’s eyes traveled carefully over her, taking her in.

He knew she wasn’t just trying to escape another never-ending party. He knew she was up to something. But he just inclined his head ever so slightly.

“Then we should go quickly, before you have to faint again.”

She caught him up on the brief walk to the offices of Johannes & Grete. The light from the last of her candle illuminated the space between them on the dark street as she told him about wanting to find her father.

The building loomed large without Nora striding confidently next to her. But Nora’s grandmother was true to her word—it was still dark and seemingly empty, just like yesterday. Lotte fumbled a little with the charms she was wearing, conscious of Theo watching her, before finding the one Nora had said was made to open locks. She pressed her hand to the door with the ring on it, but no matter what instructions Nora had given, she couldn’t seem to feed magic into it gently.

The lock shattered.

Theo moved, instantly reacting to the explosion, pressing her back into one of the columns on the portico of the building. She felt that surge of protectiveness again as his body pressed against hers. She wasn’t sure whether she could feel his heart hammering through his mind or his chest pressed against her.

“It’s fine, sorry, it’s fine,” Lotte said hurriedly, feeling her face flush, although she wasn’t sure if it was with embarrassment or his sudden closeness. “That was my fault.”

Lotte pretended to focus all her attention on the lumen charm on her hand as he pulled away, keeping her eyes on it as she moved toward the doorway. But she had a feeling she might blind them if she tried another charm at this rate. So instead she held the still-burning candle ahead of her as they moved through the same hallway she and Nora had gone down last night.

Heading toward the Holtzfall vault.

In the cavernous marble-tiled records room, it took Lotte a second to orient herself. To find where they had left off this morning when sunrise had halted their progress. She pulled open a drawer, carefully keeping the flickering candle away from the sheets of paper.

She had seen the records for her cousins yesterday. Thick cream certificates of birth with proud official stamps and signatures. Declaring both parents’ names on them.

Patience Holtzfall and Georg Otto.

Prosper Holtzfall and Beate Brecht.

Verity Holtzfall and Zaid Al-Oman

She tried to summon it in her mind’s eye. A name printed in black and white next to Grace Holtzfall . The answers that she could feel her heart stretching toward even now as she flicked through the papers.

A movement caught the corner of Lotte’s eye. She whipped around, heart in her throat, a lie stumbling its way to her tongue as she expected to find a guard there. But there was no one.

“What is it?” Theo’s hand was already on his sword.

“I thought—” Lotte scanned the records room, hunting for the movement she’d seen.

There. Something in the shadows was shifting, barely visible in the moonlight streaming through the glass dome above. Lotte hesitated, her breath coming sharp and shallow. This time Theo saw it too. He drew his sword warily, moving in front of Lotte.

The movement rippled out toward them.

It was the floor. The floor was moving.

The white-and-black marble was cracking, crooked, bent shapes rising from the once mirror-smooth surface. Like a figure was trying to pull itself free from the glossy stone.

A hundred childhood stories told by Mrs.Hehn rose to Lotte’s mind. About the sorts of creatures that lived in the ancient woods, the Huldrekall that were born from trees, the Backahasten from water, or Mossmen from soft earth. And the ones that tore themselves brutally out of boulders and cliffs and craggy stone faces. And came to eat disobedient children when they refused to go to bed.

Lotte knew it with ancient certainty as it tore itself out of the marble flooring, a hulking thing born of glossy black-and-white checkerboard.

It was a troll.