Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

T he night's decor had transformed the ballroom into a golden sunset, filled floor to ceiling with gilded everything, a mockery of the vivid colors that had painted the evening sky before the red mist had descended. Through the deep orange tinge from the shroud, I watched from the hall for a moment before entering. It was objectively beautiful, a feat of decor to have made it so drastically different from the night prior, but all I wanted to do was rip it down. Everything was dripping in gold, from the chandeliers to the silverware set out along the long table at the end of the room. All of it an obscene show of just how little the prince cared for anyone besides himself.

My breath fluttered the fabric of the veil. The music in the hall picked up, and I had no more time to wait.

There would be no mistakes tonight. Whatever purpose Tallon had behind playing his games with me, he would not be able to protect me if I continued to draw attention to us. I needed to be the perfect servant, unnoticed and unremarkable. It was the only way I would be able to find the treatment, and it was the only way I would be able to get out of the castle to get it to Emyl once I had it.

I could not trust someone to take it for me, nor could I trust if I tried to smuggle it out in the mail that it would make it to the intended destination. No, if I wanted to get it out of the castle, I would have to take it myself.

I pushed the second part of my mission out of my mind for the moment. The castle and the Soulshades would likely not make my escape easy, not if they were under the prince's control. And I could not afford any apprehension. I would puzzle out my escape once I had what I was here for.

My tray empty, I returned to the kitchens to refill it and continued my path through the castle and back to the ballroom. Focus, that was what I needed. I would excel, becoming the best servant of us all. I would flit about, ensuring the happiness of these callous people while I collected information and tucked it away to be used against the Coward Prince later, to be used to save my family when the opportunity presented itself.

The bells had just begun their midnight toll when Tallon finally appeared, sweeping into the ballroom and turning every head, though they quickly looked away once they saw who had arrived. Yet still, like every night, people watched him out of the corners of their eyes. Mostly in fear, though some looked as if given half a chance, it could easily morph into desire.

Instead of his normal mask, the top of his face was visible tonight and the mask instead covered his jaw. A golden skull gilded to fit the theme. It emphasized the coldness in his eyes better than the silver mask ever could have.

His presence here at these parties was far different than the Tallon I'd experienced in private. Whether that was intentional or not remained to be seen. Likely, it was part of his games, and despite my best efforts, I kept falling right into the thick of them.

It frustrated me that I could not seem to keep away from him despite my continued promises to myself. I tightened my grip on my tray and turned back into the crowd.

Still, I felt his gaze on me for the rest of the night.

Though the ball lasted until the first vestiges of the dawn, as it did every night, this one felt as if it were over in the blink of an eye. I could hardly complain, but my skin was still crawling, too tight for my body, and I readily took over cleaning, whisking around the ballroom, gathering empty glasses and dirtied plates and anything else I could to burn off the anxious energy.

Tallon was still watching me from the same balcony I'd watched him from that first night. He wasn't trying to hide it, leaning his forearms against the banister and peering down at me. The Soulshade cat was perched on the banister at his side, its too-long claws curled around the wood as if it were a bird instead of a cat. As if it were not a spirit and needed to hold on to keep its balance.

I avoided looking up as I cleaned.

Maricara and Elena were with me in the ballroom tonight, the others already back in the kitchen. In a way I was glad for it, as it meant I could work in silence and without the pitying looks from Talyssa or the polite and stiff conversation I knew Zaharya would turn to as a way to ease the strain my nightmare had put on our interactions.

I was alone with all of them, in different ways, and at least Maricara and Elena made no disguises about it.

My tray filled with precariously piled glasses and silverware, I began my path through the ballroom and towards the kitchen. Two sets of eyes, one pair gray and one pair yellow, tracked my every move.

Sour and bitter and heavy, ash and smoke filled my mouth at the same moment as a Soulshade appeared in front of me, fully formed. There was no flickering, no burgeoning taste to forewarn me of its convalescence. The Soulshade merely appeared in my path. I stumbled back, cursing the thick orange haze that clouded my vision. Glasses rattled on my tray as I struggled to keep it aloft.

The Soulshade tipped its head back and screamed. I struggled to not react and forced myself to keep my eyes on the Soulshade rather than searching out Tallon to see if he was reacting. Tightening my grip on the tray, I changed my path, going towards the other doorway near where Maricara worked.

I tracked its approach in my periphery, but I had no time to react before it was on me, just as the one the previous night had been. Frozen talons burned as they clawed through my chest and I faltered. Time slowed as, clutching at my breastbone through the veil, I watched the tray fall to the ground. A cascade of shattered glass echoed, falling in a maelstrom across the floor as I fell to my knees. The stone floor of the ballroom was typically frigid, but now seemed ablaze compared to the icy grip around my heart.

I could not breathe . My heart thumped wildly in my chest and my mind was besieged with flashing visions that were not my own.

A library's vaulted expanse and rows of wooden shelves, the silhouette of a man's nape, a goblet raised in a toast, corridors stretching throughout the castle, a return to the library, and finally, a man's hand, adorned in rings and reaching forth, clasping my throat.

The visions that ensnared me felt so real, so true, though I could still see the ballroom around me through the vision. Maricara and Elena continued gaping at me, their lips moving, but I could not breathe, the spectral hand tightening around my throat as it did in the vision. My heart constricted in my chest, the regular thumping of my blood against my veins in my throat slowing as the cold seemed to spread, pervasive through my body.

A slightly warmer cold brushed against my leg, and then the sensation and visions were gone. I slumped forward, hands falling to catch myself and narrowly missing embedding more glass into my flesh. The cat wove its body between my arms and my knees, winding itself around my wrists in a figure eight and looking up at me.

Relief washed through me and I let my eyes fall closed.

"What is wrong with you?" Maricara's voice finally cut through the haze. Footsteps stomped towards me and she yanked my veil from my head. Fingers twisted in my hair and hauled me to my feet. I didn't resist her, though I likely should have.

Tallon was still watching me from the balcony. The cat hissed at her from my side.

"Did you just hiss at me?" Maricara demanded. She'd let go of my hair but was still in my face, her shoes crunching against the glass shards I'd spilt.

I couldn't help the smile that stretched over my lips, couldn't stop the laughter that bubbled up from my chest, uncontrollable and far from humorous. Of course she would hear that.

In a small way, I was honored the cat was defending me. This strange, wrong creature, an echo of a soul that clung to the living, was trying to comfort me. How sad that this was the first being, living or dead, that had ever defended me in my entire life. It was equally pathetic and endearing, and only made the laughter crescendo.

Not for the first time, I had an overwhelming desire to be able to pet it.

Once the laughter finally stopped spilling from my lips, Maricara and Elena were standing in front of me, looking at me curiously. "You will be the ruin of us all, and I will not stand for it. Camelya will be hearing about this."

"She already has," Camelya's voice echoed into the nearly empty ballroom from the doorway. "Odyssa, come with me. The others will clean up the glass."

I hardly questioned following her. The Soulshade had ruined the only night I'd had since I started that had not ended in some other catastrophe, and it seemed I was out of chances. Idly, I was aware that I no longer felt Tallon's gaze on my back, but I could not muster any care to turn back and search for him. He did not care about me, nor should he.

I followed Camelya into a sitting room down the hallway from the ballroom's entrance. The door swung silently on its hinges behind me, shutting us in with a soft thunk.

Camelya stood by the window, and though her attempts at dismissal by turning her back to me were obvious, they were weakened by the quick darting of her glances over her shoulder back at me, and the way her clasped hands trembled at their place at her lower back. "I understand you are grieving, Odyssa, but this cannot keep happening. Some of the others report you are being careless."

I said nothing, though I kept my head high. Observing. Perhaps it made me a bad person that I enjoyed the sight of her fear, but the knowledge was a comfort. I did not know why my Death marks had begun reacting to my emotions, why they came to life to protect me, but I was hardly in a position to wish they had not.

"If patterns hold, your paycheck will be withheld and any opportunity for communication outside the castle will be revoked." She let out a little breath on a nod, as though proud she got through her declaration without her voice shaking. "Tomorrow's party is your last chance. Any more mistakes after that will be taken to the prince."

The words resonated in my ears, but they took a moment to settle before I truly understood the implications. If you mess up again, your brothers will pay the price and they will die without a word from you. The letter I had written Emyl weighed heavily in my heart. It was still sitting there on my desk, waiting to be finished. Now, perhaps it never would be.

The threat of the prince held no dominion over me. There was little he could do that would be worse than that. My brothers may have written me off, but my mother watched from the land of the dead, and I would not fail her.

Slowly, I removed the shroud from my head so that I could see Camelya without the tinge of orange.

She tracked each movement closely with narrowed eyes.

"Do you enjoy being cruel? Enjoy being able to play puppeteer to these lives in your hands? Does the control make you feel powerful?" I took a step towards her with each question. To her credit, she did not flinch or back away.

"Life is cruel, Odyssa, and cruelty often keeps you alive." Her eyes slipped down to my arm again, but the marks remained still. "Loyalty is a foolish notion; we all must look after our own interests and safety."

"Be cruel unto others before they can be cruel unto you?"

She smiled wryly. "Precisely."

"How shortsighted. To be cruel unto those who would never have been cruel unto you only makes you enemies you otherwise would not have. You should be careful: one day, you might make an enemy who can be far crueler than you."

Her passive face flickered into a frown for a moment, fear flashing in her eyes before she was able to school her features back into placidness. "You are naive to think there are people who would never wish cruelty upon you. Especially in this place."

Wind whistled through the partially open window.

"Return to your duties, Odyssa. See to it that you don't mess up again." This time, she turned fully away, hands clasped in front of her.

Escape could not come quick enough, and I left the room behind, intent on returning to my room. The others could clean up the party themselves. After all, if some of them had their way, they would be without help again soon enough.

Turning the corner towards the stairway, I stopped short at the sight of Tallon leaning against the wall. His shoulder pressed against the stone, his body tilted at an angle and one ankle crossed over the other. He lifted his head when he heard me, the skull mask firmly in place across his jaw. Still in his costume, it seemed.

Neither of us moved, intent on waiting the other out.

Slowly, so slowly, he reached up and unfastened the mask behind his head with one hand, letting it fall to dangle in his fingers by the strap. "What did you see that made you drop the glass?"

He may have removed the physical mask, but the dull gray in his eyes and the tightness in his brow revealed he was still in his persona of Tallon, the prince's companion. I raised an eyebrow, the most defiance I could risk in the public view of the hall, still so close to the end of the ball. "Grief, my lord. It was merely my own grief."

His eyes narrowed. Powerful muscles carried him off the wall and into my personal space. Fingers traced up from my wrist to my inner elbow. His voice was hushed, words meant only for me. "What did she say to you in that room, Odyssa?"

Despite the shivers that erupted on my arm where he touched me, and the heat that flared at the base of my spine, I stepped away. "Nothing out of step, my lord. A reminder of what is at stake should I cause problems again."

"And what exactly is at stake for you?"

"Besides my own life, you mean?"

"Do not concern yourself with that," he said, stepping back up into my space and twisting a piece of my hair around his finger loosely, letting it fall away. The gray of his eyes swirled, no longer flat and dull as before. He tucked the hair behind my ear, fingers trailing down my neck along the marks. "No harm will come to you under my watch."

I scoffed, pulling my shoulder back to force his hand away. "Pity you cannot be constantly watching me, then." Twice now, I had been physically injured in this castle. Twice now, I had been run through by a Soulshade, subjected to the cold burning sensation of whatever they had done to me. The latter incidents had both happened in his presence, under his watch.

"Odyssa—"

"Why do you care, Tallon?"

He stopped short, narrowing his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Why do you care if I am harmed or not? You do not interact with any of the others, and you've said yourself that everyone fears you. Why concern yourself with me?"

I did not expect him to answer. I expected more diversion, more avoidance, but he surprised me yet again. "I told you before, you are not what I was expecting. And it intrigues me."

Somehow, the answer made me even angrier. I curled my fingers into the silk of my dress at my hips. "You do not need to feel responsible for me, my lord. I can take care of myself."

I spun on my heel and left, intent on finding another path back to my room that did not involve Tallon. Intriguing, he said. And once he'd figured me out, I would be tossed aside and left to the whims of the castle along with the others. If I survived that long.

Cold brushed against my ankle, the gruesome cat arching its back and stretching up to rub its head against my knee while still keeping step with me. Its tail curled around my calf and then it sped up, keeping a step in front of me.

A smile curled on my lips, and I followed the unnatural creature through the castle.