Chapter 31

Thirty-One

Q uinn tiptoed through the studio door ten minutes late with soaking hair and a pristine tutu to find Emrys "entertaining" the room. He was having the male dancers teach him spins and jumps as the Royalle Ballet director glowered on. Shockingly, he had quite a lot of technique.

Did they teach heirs to the throne ballet at Castle Hill? Or had he learned to dance at some point in his long vampiric life?

Quinn walked to the side of the room as silently as possible, dropped off her pack, quickly slipped into her pointe shoes, and tied her ribbons around her legs.

"Are you okay?" Constance whispered. The girl was an empath and always knew when Quinn was upset.

"Yes, I am fine," she lied.

"Why is your hair wet?" Constance asked, her amused eyes fixed on Emrys doing a pirouette à la seconde.

"I received a lovely present filled with blood and threats that exploded all over my face."

"What?" Constance said far too loudly, causing the ballet director and the surrounding dancers to stare at them. Emrys paused his dancing, a look of triumph lacing his face. "Fuck, Quinn. Again?" Constance whispered.

"Yes, this time they're threatening you and Giselle and Jevon," Quinn murmured, her voice like the shattered blood glass.

Constance reached out a steady hand and comforted her friend. "We're going to be alright. I promise."

Emrys clapped, drawing attention back to himself. He embodied his role as a narcissist, needing all the limelight. "Well, thank you so much for your amazing instruction. I'd like to watch the auditions, if you would please." He waved his arm dismissively as if they were all his subjects and would all do his bidding.

It was an act, and perhaps it always had been.

Auditions continued as planned—almost. The director was supposed to observe their class for one week and then decide who would join the Queen's Royalle Ballet. With Jane's death, two of those days were postponed.

Today was another group number from Midwinter , the famous ballet always performed at the heart of the holiday season. Quinn danced the Waltz of Snowflakes, a dance normally performed on the stage as fake snow fell from the ceiling, causing the floor to become slick and lose all its friction.

As Quinn jumped a soubresaunt, she imagined what it would be like to do that move on a slippery floor. It would be a tough move to pull off, which is why the Royalle Ballet only took the best dancers as apprentices.

The dance flew by quickly. At the end of the number, all the snowflakes fell to the floor in a heap. Quinn executed the movement perfectly, nailed all the moves in the dance, and even managed a tinge of emotion.

Slowly peeling herself off the floor, Quinn made her way to Constance, who had a glorious smile on her face. "That was incredible!"

"Thanks." Quinn tried to breathe, her lungs tight and stinging.

"Truly, if they don't pick you after that, it will be blasphemy, and we shall all revolt." Constance rolled onto her stomach and stretched her quadriceps .

Quinn held her toes and stretched her calves as Emrys approached. "That was great."

"Thank you."

"Would you like me to escort you back to the lab?" Emrys asked, holding out a hand.

Quinn didn't take it. Instead, she forced a smile. He was being so kind and helpful, but she needed space, fresh air, and to be able to breathe again. "Thank you for your offer, but I would prefer to be alone." From his concerned expression, she added, "For now."

He bowed his head in respect. "Let me know if you need anything."

Clutching her ballet bag, Quinn strode out into the crisp night air, trying to walk off the emotions that clung to her core. Movement always helped clear her head. So she simply walked and walked and walked, the icy wind her only companion as the sun drifted off to sleep and the fifth night of the Blood Festival awoke.

It felt like Quinn hadn't been able to breathe for days—like she was lost out in the ocean with waves crashing down over and over again. And she couldn't feel or think, too stuck in a pattern, begging for survival . . . and it was just all too much. She needed space and time to get herself sorted. She needed the air and distance from her friends, but especially from the prince.

Hours passed in a blur. Her thoughts melted together like a potion brewing in a cauldron.

When awareness finally hit, she was in the middle of the Marina District, surrounded by a parade of masks and secrets. But her thoughts were still a mixture of thick, clotted paint.

The threats. The mirror bursting. Her parents. Jane. People kept dying, and now, if she didn't find the last mirror, she might get her friends killed, too .

She was always seven steps behind the murderer and had no way of catching up.

It was hopeless.

As she walked, people sang odes to celebrate the end of the Vampire Gods and glorified King Emrys, the savior of the Blood Rebellion. Wine poured freely, and inhibitions melted to dust, leaving a maze of revelry, lies, debauchery, and sin. Wonderful sin.

People with visible mirror consequences freely walked the streets. There was a boy who cried tears of tar, a man who projected all his thoughts to walker's by, and a girl who disappeared for a moment every thirty seconds.

Gramophones played the blues, and masked acrobats in elaborate costumes walked on tightropes, dangled from rings, and floated on trapezes. Mirror-Blessed contortionists spun their heads in full circles; actors performed social satire to a crowd of adoring fans. On the docks sat a makeshift menagerie, filled with every creature imaginable—real and mirror-created.

The night lit up with enchantment—a night of dreams and make-believe.

The external celebration stood in stark contrast to the devastation in Quinn. The investigation was nowhere nearer to being solved than it was when Jane died. Quinn was a complete and utter failure, and now her friends' lives were on the line.

As she walked through the fantasy, tears trickled down her face, a light mist that turned into a river of feelings bursting out of her fractured heart.

Without realizing it, she'd walked all the way to the outskirts of the Nature District.

It was not a good place to be. The outskirts were filled with run-down buildings cobbled together from scrap wood, cardboard, and abandoned objects, creating an encampment that crawled with drugs and crime.

Passing under a bridge, Quinn glimpsed a shadow moving slowly and hauling something cumbersome. She should've continued on, but curiosity climbed up her throat. It was possible that Quinn's biggest flaw was curiosity. Because if she heard a whispered secret floating through the air, she needed to know all of it. She couldn't just drop it and let it go. Half of the trouble she'd gotten herself into over the past couple of days had come from eavesdropping. This knowledge should have stopped her and turned her around, but of course, it didn't.

It only made her want to find out more.

Following close behind, Quinn watched as a man dragged a human-sized lump to a massive bonfire before struggling to lift it up and onto the pyre. Quinn moved closer to gawk—or help, but then she noticed an arm hanging limply.

A body. A lifeless body . And then the stench hit her. Visceral and suffocating.

The smell of burning flesh and pine trees.

She gagged. Quinn was used to the smell of dead bodies, but burning flesh was rancid and all-consuming, and it wasn't something she was prepared for outside of a lab.

"What are you doing?" Quinn wrapped her arms around her stomach as if to protect herself. Oh, you foolish girl. Get out of here while you still have the chance.

"Burning him," the man grunted.

Horror stroked up Quinn's spine. "Burning him?" Her voice shook, and the horror intensified when her vision solidified, and through the embers, she saw that the bonfire was a pile of burning bodies, at least twenty deep. Twenty dead. "How did he die?"

The man shrugged. "Drink, drugs . . . who knows. I just burn the bodies so that they can move on to the afterlife."

"Have more people been dying lately?" Quinn asked.

"Nineteen this week. More than usual, but it's cold."

Without asking, Quinn examined the corpse's neck. There were too many bodies on the pile for them to be dying of natural causes or accidents. Someone or something was behind these deaths—first the mirror murders and now the homeless. Could it be connected? Possibly, if new vampires roamed the streets, they would need a food source .

"What are you doing, girl?" The man pulled the body out of her reach.

"I am . . . I'm a coroner. I just wanted to make sure he didn't have wounds on his neck." The body didn't. His neck had no visible markings, yet suspicion still tingled in her chest.

"People die on the streets every day from the cold, starvation, overdose, and disease. Fancy people like yourself have never cared."

"I'm not—" His words hit like a knife to her gut.

Quinn wasn't fancy.

She was an orphan who only lived off the goodwill of her uncle.

But she wasn't homeless. She had privilege in that sense, and she had a comfortable life for a sienna-less orphan. She always had a roof over her head and always had help. Even with everything going wrong in her life, she had Constance, Giselle, and Jevon.

And maybe even Emrys.

She had a safety net. Options.

This man did not.

Biting her cheek, she examined the body. "Let me help you burn him."

Together, they hauled the body into the funeral pit and placed him on the pile. As she moved to leave, the dead man's hand fell.

A bandage ran the length of his arm.

Recklessly, she reached her hand into the flames and pulled the bandage off. Her fingers sizzled as the fabric twirled off the man's wrist, revealing two puncture wounds.

Two vampire puncture wounds.

A sour taste erupted in her mouth. Her chest constricted, and breaths came in rasps. She started walking again, trying to process. She turned back toward the Marina, her footfalls aimless as her brain took over.

Vampires were killing people.

There was no denying it now. But how? The Blood Mirrors bound them, keeping them from murdering. Except . . . they didn't. Two mirrors were found and destroyed. The vampires bound to the first two were free—or worse, compelled.

Perhaps that was the motive.

Was a vampire trying to free their kind by destroying the objects that imprisoned them? It made perfect sense. But which vampires? She already fingerprinted the ones from the council meeting, unless . . . was it possible a newly created vampire was the kill—

A scream pierced the shadows of an alley. Quinn slid to a stop, and dust spread under her shoes. A woman squirmed against two people, desperately trying to escape them. One of the attackers was a man, and the other wore a cloak that covered their appearance.

The man's fangs glinted in a sliver of moonlight.

Vampires.