Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

No transformation cuts more deeply than that of a friend to an enemy.

—Auverrani proverb

Ideeply hate this dress.”

Gabriel shot her a sideways glance. His new clothes amounted to a rich-green doublet embroidered over with gold vines and breeches to match, topped with a billowing white shirt whose sleeves could probably hide an entire roast turkey. The refined clothes made the scarred leather of his eye patch stand out, vicious and out of place. “You look nice,” he hedged, though the way his eye darted quickly away somewhat belied the statement.

“I look like a plum pudding.” The long skirt caught beneath one of her heels; Lore swore, kicking it away. “A plum pudding that is apparently meant to be stationary.” Her bodice slipped downward, and Lore yanked it up. “A plum pudding meant to be stationary and possibly eaten.”

“Compared with some of the things the courtiers wear, this is demure.”

Lore itched beneath the domino mask that had come with her costume, a lavender bit of silk speckled with darker purple. “This party should be quite the education for you, then.”

Gabriel scoffed. His costume hadn’t come with a mask, like whoever had sent the clothes wanted his face uncovered. They could only assume it was the Sun Prince’s doing. Not only did Bastian know Gabriel was here, Bastian wanted Gabriel to be seen. Seen and recognized by the court who thought him a traitor, the heir to his father’s sins.

The skirt of Lore’s dress caught under her foot again. “Bleeding God and his bloody wounds.”

“Yes, good, get it all out of your system now.” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Dukes’ cousins generally keep a civil tongue. Match the script to the costume.”

“I’ll be sure to start peacock squawking, then.” The narrow, twisting stairs the bloodcoats had led them up would be entirely impossible in Lore’s heeled violet shoes, and so they took the long way, walking down each hall to the wide steps at their ends, twisting back in on themselves to funnel down the turret. “That is what I’m supposed to be, right? A peacock? Not actually a plum pudding?”

“Are we supposed to be something?”

“It’s a masquerade, Mort, the costumes are the whole point.” But she couldn’t quite puzzle out what their costumes were. The tulle of her skirt was layered shades of purple, wine-dark on the bottom and a nearly white lavender on the top. Embroidered threads of green lined the deep-violet bodice, ending in wide leaves around the plunging neck. Some kind of flower? Gabriel’s costume didn’t give any clues—regular court clothes, only odd for being all in shades of green.

“You should probably refrain from calling me Mort once we arrive,” Gabriel said. “Doesn’t exactly sound familial.”

“Just Gabriel, then?”

He paused. “Gabe.”

“Gabe,” she repeated, feeling out the word on her tongue.

He gave a solemn nod, a tiny tick of a smile in the corner of his dour mouth. Lore returned it, then reapplied herself to the arduous task of walking in her ridiculous dress.

Earlier, it had seemed like their rooms were miles from the center of the Citadel, but as the candelabras became more ornate and the iron-barred floor more polished with each descended stairway, Lore felt like they were getting there too fast. Her heart beat a nervous tattoo and sweat misted her skin, making the already-itchy tulle nigh unbearable.

“What’s your full name?” Gabriel—Gabe—asked after a moment. They’d turned a corner and found themselves in a wide atrium that she vaguely remembered from earlier. Rosebushes grew profuse in ceramic pots, traced in golden gilt, hiding delicate wrought-iron tables and tiny statues of frolicking nymphs. “Is Lore short for something?”

“No.” She shrugged. “It’s the only name I have.”

“We’ll have to make something up, then. Something that sounds like the cousin of a duke.” He looked down at her, brow thoughtfully knit. The gentle light of the fading sunset through the atrium’s huge windows strobed over his face, then pitched it to shadow as they turned into another hallway. “Eldelore.”

Her nose wrinkled.

The brow over his eye patch rose. “You have approximately two minutes to come up with a better one.”

“Two minutes?”

They turned another corner, and the doors of the throne room loomed up ahead. Gabe gave her a chagrined look from the corner of his eye. “I did say approximately.”

The entrance to the throne room somehow looked even more intimidating than it had this morning, the sunset light burnishing the Bleeding God’s Hearts on the door with pink and crimson and orange. Five bloodcoat guards stared straight ahead, swords sheathed at their sides, not a bayonet in sight. Lore assumed the weapon wasn’t elegant enough for inside the Citadel. Such slaughter was saved for outside the walls.

These guards weren’t the ones who’d been there earlier, though. “New bloodcoats?” Lore whispered out of the corner of her mouth, only loud enough for Gabe to hear.

“I’d imagine the ones who saw you this morning won’t be making an appearance again,” Gabriel murmured. “August is thorough. The guards who caught you in the Ward are probably gone, too. Keeps the circle of people who know who you really are as small as it can be.”

“So the guards were reassigned?”

“If you want to call sent to the Burnt Isles reassigned.”

So the Citadel was just as violent as the streets of Dellaire, even if the blades were polished and the blood was mopped up more quickly.

“Name?” the bloodcoat at the door asked as they approached. Clearly, it was a formality. His eyes were wide as he looked at Gabe, like someone might look at a ghost.

“Leif Gabriel Remaut, Duke of Balgia,” Gabriel announced, voice strong and sure as if he’d done this a thousand times. “And my cousin, Eldelore Remaut.”

Lore dug her nails into Gabriel’s arm. His lips twisted against a smirk.

The bloodcoat nodded, then opened the door.

And revealed the kind of sumptuous chaos that could’ve been the dead gods’ Shining Realm or any one of the myriad hells.

Opulently dressed courtiers whirled to mad music from a small orchestra. Hair was done up in spirals and towers, powdered impossible colors—deep greens and gem-bright blues and light blush-pinks. Some of the dancers appeared to be dressed like animals, with half masks covering their eyes and false ears on their heads, made of expensive fabric. A thin slip of a person wore shimmering butterfly wings on their back, the same bright yellow as their hair. Another had what looked like actual swan feathers attached to the back of her diaphanous gown, and her dance partner wore nothing but feathers around her waist and breasts.

If Lore’s eyebrows climbed any farther, they’d disappear into her hairline. “You weren’t exaggerating about my dress being tame.”

“Positively chaste.” Gabriel looked like he’d rather be walking into a jail cell than this party. His jaw was a tight line, and the muscles under Lore’s slack hand were tense as a fence post.

A familiar scent itched at Lore’s nose. Belladonna.

She whipped around, searching the crowd anxiously. There, in the corner—a group of courtiers took turns drinking from a tiny ceramic cup, not even trying to hide it. Their faces were flushed, their legs unsteady, their eyes glassy with a euphoric poison high. Flashes of gray showed at wrists and throats, stone working its silent way through veins as just enough Mortem was pulled forth to slow the ravage of time. Painful years added to pampered lives.

“They’ll kill themselves if they drink too much,” she muttered. “The key is moderation, and nothing about this party tells me these people know anything about that.”

“Citadel physicians are highly skilled at treating overdoses.” Gabriel’s blue eye flashed as he turned away from the knot of poisoned nobles. “It happens all the time. There are laws in place that force a nobleman to step down in favor of his heir if he lives too long.”

“I haven’t seen anyone that looks like a revenant.”

“Citadel physicians are skilled at treating that, too. Take a good look at some of the older nobles next time you get a chance. Cosmetics and padding go a long way to hide stone veins and emaciation.”

Lore’s jaw tightened as she watched the extravagantly dressed courtiers pass the poison, giggling. She didn’t realize she’d taken a step toward the group until Gabe’s hand landed on her shoulder.

He shook his head. “Just leave it, Lore.”

And what could she do, even if she did go over there? It wouldn’t make a difference.

So Lore sighed, and shook her hands out of their fists, and turned to observe the Court of the Citadel in all its debauchery.

Knots of revelers stood drinking between dances, gathered in bursts of bright clothes, as ornate as the golden frescoes they stood before. Those who weren’t kissing or drinking were gossiping—heads bowed as close together as elaborate hairstyles would allow, whispering and then breaking into whoops of laughter. Cosmetic-lined eyes scanned the room, as if making sure their mirth was marked, and hopefully envied.

A man wearing a sea-green mask with golden scales turned his eyes lazily to Gabe, then away. A moment, and his gaze snapped back, disinterest becoming openmouthed surprise. He leaned to the ear of the person next to him, their hair coiled into something resembling a beehive, whispering furiously.

“And thus our new faces are noticed,” Lore said. They still stood by the door, neither of them keen on venturing into the sparkling milieu.

“Mine isn’t new, which seems to be the problem.” Gabriel sighed. “I’d hoped that ten years and one less eye would make recognizing me more difficult.”

“You’re hard not to notice,” Lore murmured, then clamped her lips shut.

“And you say I need to work on my compliments.” Gabe shook out his shoulders. “Well. Into the breach.”

He tugged them into the party.

Dancers spun past them, their costumes wearable displays of wealth. Jewels encrusted bodices; clouds of gold-threaded tulle swept the ground. The dancers paid no mind to the iron bars crossing the floor, the reminders of holy responsibility covered in sweat and spilled champagne.

Lore’s heart thrummed, and not just from nerves. This reminded her of the wilder venues down by the docks, though it felt more dangerous than those ever had. Money and power gave it weight, made it heady.

Made it exciting, and part of her hated herself for that. The part that kept thinking of those people drinking brewed belladonna in the corner.

In the scents of whirling dancers and strong perfume, there was also the scent of food. Lore’s stomach twisted in her too-tight bodice. “Any idea where the buffet is?” she asked Gabriel, pitching her voice to carry over music and laughter.

“On the right side, I think,” he said, eyes shifting like prey in a predator’s den. Other courtiers had noticed them now, gazes flickering their direction and then away with practiced nonchalance.

The ebb and flow of the party revealed a table set up before the golden depiction of a fox hunt, baying dogs and howling hunters chasing the ruby-encrusted animal across the wall. Two fountains in the center of the table flowed with wine, red and white, with crystal goblets set in precarious gleaming pyramids next to them. Bowls of bright fruit sat beside artfully stacked pastries, jewels on an expensive necklace.

Her stomach rumbled. Lore stepped forward, ready to weave her way through to the table, but the parting crowd revealed the throne at the front of the room, and for the first time, she noticed someone was on it. One leg was tossed over the arm, booted foot swinging in the air, and an elbow was propped on the opposite side, head leaned against a clenched, ring-studded fist.

Even in the decadent chaos of his own party, Bastian Arceneaux somehow managed to look bored.

That sense of familiarity came again, looking at him. Almost like déjà vu. Like Bastian fit perfectly into a place in her head that she hadn’t even known was empty.

“Gabriel?” The woman’s voice coming from behind them was light and musical. And from the way the Presque Mort froze beside Lore, it seemed he recognized it.

“Gabriel Remaut?” A questioning lilt, a hint of nervousness. “I’m sorry, maybe I’m mistaken—”

Lore tugged on Gabriel’s arm and turned him around to face the person speaking.

A diminutive woman stood on the edge of the dance floor, with an anxious expression and hair the color of white marble in a cloud of airy curls. Pearlescent dust gleamed across warm copper-brown cheekbones scattered with freckles, sparkling like the wings attached to her white tulle gown, and her eyes matched the delicate dark-green embroidery across the sheer neckline. She looked like a flower fairy, straight from a children’s book, and the smile she broke into was nearly as bright as the rest of her.

His arm somehow tenser than before beneath Lore’s palm, Gabriel inclined his head. “Alienor.”

“It’s really you!” The sparkling woman laughed aloud, clapping her hands together. “Bastian told me you were coming back from the north for a while, to introduce your cousin to society, but I thought he had to be joking!”

“Bastian is less than trustworthy at the best of times, true.”

“Fourteen years of holy service and you still harbor the sin of jealousy.” Alienor mockingly shook her head, making glitter fall from her false wings.

“I was never jealous of him, Alie.”

“Of course you were; every time he’d tell me I looked pretty you’d tell him to watch his mouth around your betrothed. He only did it to get a rise out of you, you know.” Alienor said it lightly, like something funny, but there was a shadow around her eyes that dimmed the illusion.

Betrothed. It explained the tension in Gabriel’s stance. Only ten years old when his father’s betrayal and Anton’s vision pushed him to the Presque Mort, but people were betrothed early in the Court of the Citadel, their lives laid out practically from birth.

Gabe reached up and touched his eye patch self-consciously; Alienor’s gaze followed his hand, her mouth falling a fraction.

“It’s good to see you, Gabe,” she murmured, all teasing gone.

Gabriel lowered his hand. “And you.”

Lore shifted her weight, feeling very much like an intruder.

For the first time, the smaller woman seemed to notice her. Her smile brightened. “And this is your cousin, right? I didn’t know you had one.”

“Third cousin.” Lore offered her hand, reciting the backstory she and Gabriel had come up with in their apartments while he buttoned the back of her dress and tried not to faint at the sight of feminine shoulder blades. “Distant and obscure, social climbing by way of my esteemed relative.”

“Alie, meet Eldelore.” Gabe’s mouth twitched as he said the full name, almost a smirk.

“Just Lore, if you please.” The wide skirt of her dress gave her cover as Lore slipped her foot over Gabe’s and pressed the heel of her shoe into his toe, just enough to make him jerk.

Alienor smiled, taking Lore’s hand and giving her a tiny bow. “Lovely to meet you, Just Lore. And you must call me Alie, all my friends do.”

Alienor’s face was open and kind, with no trace of artifice. Lore found herself desperately hoping it was real, though everything about the Citadel called for caution. “Alie,” she repeated.

The three of them lapsed into uncomfortable silence. The music stopped, then swelled, going from a lively jig to something even more upbeat.

Gabriel frowned. “This music,” he said, twisting his head. “It’s Kirythean.”

“Is it?” Alie looked puzzled, but not disturbed. “Well. That’s interesting.”

“If by interesting you mean traitorous.”

“That seems a bit dramatic.” A new voice, from behind Lore—smooth, courtly, with an upturned edge like it was on the verge of a joke. “I prefer daring to traitorous,” the voice continued.

Gabriel’s one visible blue eye was stormy, teeth clenched tight in his jaw. But Alie grinned, waving a glitter-dusted hand. “Speak his name and he appears.”

Lore turned.

The Sun Prince of Auverraine stood behind her, one brow arched over his domino mask. He’d been handsome from far away, clothed in gleaming white at his Consecration and seen from behind roses in the garden. But up close, wearing all black to match his hair and eyes, he was near to devastating.

And the grin he gave her said he knew it.

“The return of the Remaut family to the Court of the Citadel is a momentous occasion indeed,” Bastian Arceneaux said, clapping Gabe on the back; Gabe stiffened and didn’t move, a tree refusing to bend to a gale. “My father is very excited to have you here, and suggested most strongly that I make you welcome, though I doubt a masquerade was what he had in mind. Technically, we’re all supposed to be at evening prayers, but since I was just Consecrated, I think the Bleeding God will give me the evening off from piety.”

“As if you’ve ever been pious,” Alie scoffed.

“You wound me.” Bastian pressed a hand to his chest, then looked back at Gabe. “I must say, I’m thrilled that I beat out Apollius for your attentions this evening. Sorry about the mask, old friend. I wasn’t sure how it would interfere with…” He waved a hand at his eyes. “All that.”

Lore had known it was Bastian behind the lack of a mask for Gabe, but hearing it still churned her middle. A flippant cruelty, making Gabe the center of attention for people he had no desire to be around. She tried to keep her eyes from narrowing.

Bastian’s lips curved in a mischievous smile that didn’t tell her if she was successful or not. His voice dropped low as he bent and took Lore’s hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance from up close this time. Believe me, had I not been otherwise occupied, I would have stopped to speak with you at the Consecration. It’s rare to get new blood in here.”

She was thankful for his leather gloves; they’d hide the clamminess of her palm. “I’m pleased to provide,” she said, giving him the best coquettish smile she could muster.

Apparently, it wasn’t a good one; she saw Gabe’s mouth twist before he looked away toward the wine table, like he was fighting back a laugh. Lore darted him a quick glare from the corner of her eye. She was supposed to get close to the prince, right? In her experience, this was how the game was played.

But there was something calculating in Bastian’s eyes, a spark of steel that his smile couldn’t hide. Something that said he was just as good at playing games as she was.

Alie crossed her arms, shedding more glitter from her dress. “You told everyone it was supposed to be a costume party, Bastian, but all you wore is black.”

“I’m a night.” The Sun Prince straightened, releasing Lore’s hand and gesturing to the shining sword by his side. For being part of a costume, the blade still looked sharp. “Get it?”

“Bleeding God.” Alie rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “Everyone will think they’re overdressed, as opposed to you just being lazy.”

“Oh, no, they all know I’m lazy.” Bastian’s eyes hadn’t left Lore’s. She held his by instinct, as if she’d unwittingly entered a battle of wills by meeting his gaze. A battle she now refused to lose.

A courtier approached, dressed in layers of pastel rainbow tulle, eyes lined in shimmering dust. She swayed on her feet, a glass clutched in her hand. More poison, the assault of it making Lore’s nose wrinkle and her fingertips go numb. Instinctively, she backed up, nearly stepping on Gabe’s foot again. The awareness of Mortem was just a tingle, a prickle of unease and slight nausea. That mental trick Gabe had taught her must really be something.

The courtier grinned and held out the cup. “Want some, Bastian?” Her eyes cut over to Lore and Gabe, her grin going subtly cruel. “Or how about you two? Think of it like an initiation.”

“Come now, Cecelia.” Bastian’s voice was light, but his eyes were a dark glitter behind his mask. “This is bad manners.”

Tulle fluttered as Cecelia swayed on her feet. “Suit yourself,” she said, taking another tiny sip from her cup before wandering off.

Bastian laughed, low beneath the whine of violins. “Forgive them,” he said, eyes still cold. “Idle hands turn to sin as naturally as flowers to the sun. The Book of Mortal Law, Tract Forty-Five.”

Gabe said nothing, but his jaw tightened.

The Sun Prince drained his wine and handed the glass to a passing courtier, who seemed simultaneously confused and delighted. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your charming cousin, Gabe?”

“Do I need to?” Gabriel’s voice sounded like his teeth wanted to close around it. “You seem to know all about us already.”

One hand hung in a fist by his side. Lore lightly brushed her fingers against it. She didn’t think knuckles-to-cheekbone was the kind of closeness August and Anton wanted her and Gabriel to cultivate with the Sun Prince.

Gabe’s hand splayed, the exaggerated opposite of the fist it’d been before.

“It is considered polite.” Bastian finally dropped Lore’s gaze, turning to Gabe instead. “But you have been out of court for a while, toiling with my uncle up in Northreach. So in the absence of politeness, I suppose I will have to introduce myself.”

The band whipped up, violins and cellos sighing out a plaintive note before launching into a faster tempo. The dancers clapped gleefully, yelling their encouragement.

“Over a dance,” Bastian continued, and laced his fingers with Lore’s, tugging her out into the bright whirl.