Chapter 26

The gardens were black.

No.

Not black.

Shades of midnight, navy, and deep eggplant, swirled together with obsidian and onyx. So much more than black.

It was like staring at the back of your eyelids as you tried to fall asleep.

But no one could sleep through this.

Music pulsed in the thick, humid air, setting it to life with cellos and basses. Their atonal notes felt like rolling waves against my sternum. They filled my body, setting it on edge until all I knew, all I could feel, was my consciousness and the black.

The not-black.

I could sense that the gardens were full of people. There was the feeling of being in a crowd, surrounded by others, even if I couldn't see them all.

Flashes of the party sparkled out of the dark like memories wrested across time, revealing glittering glimpses of masked courtiers gliding between sculpted trees. Gold wings and black lace. Caviar and crimson tulle. Champagne coupes and velvet beauty spots. I'd never been in the midst of such decadence.

It was glamorous.

It was intoxicating.

My mind spun, reveling. I felt drunk even though I'd not taken a sip of champagne. And I was dancing, swaying in the perfumed night like a postulant at one of Calamité's bacchanalias. I moved with a rippling grace I did not know I possessed.

And I couldn't stop.

It was irresistible and enticing. I wanted to throw my head back and surrender everything I had to that music.

So I did.

I spun and I twirled. I writhed and squirmed, contorting myself with outlandish movements as I strove to keep up with the dancers surrounding me. We moved in beautiful frenzy, a crowd gone collectively mad, all following the beat that pulsed through our bodies like a drum.

Hands moved over me, guiding me through intricate steps to dances I did not know. I couldn't see my partners' faces, could only feel their fingers and the brush of velvet lapels. When I finally caught a glimpse of myself trapped in the reflection of a grand mirror somehow hung between the bowed branches of an enormous oak, I paused.

I didn't look like myself at all. In a long gown, I was as sleek as a jungle cat. The gold satin clung to my body with a sensuous hold. The neckline was so daring, so plunging, you could see the trio of freckles between my breasts. A wicked slit in the dress's hem racedup to my thigh, showing flashes of the smooth, bare flesh beneath.

I wore no corset, no underthings at all.

I felt naked and on display, exposed for all the world to see.

In the mirror, my reflection grinned at me. Her lips gleamed with a bloody scarlet stain, and her eyes, lined in dark kohl, sparkled with heavy-lidded desire.

I was surprised to find I liked how I looked.

I loved how I felt.

Loosened and loose, a beautiful, dangerous creature freed from its cage, ready to run, ready to pounce.

I whirled into the arms of the nearest courtier, reveling as his hands roved over my exposed skin, squeezing my hips and molding my frame to his.

He spun me around and I caught my first glimpse of his face.

It was Leopold.

When he brought his hands to my face, caressing my cheeks with a familiarity that should have stunned me, I noticed they were dusted with a fine golden powder. In the shadowy light of our midnight garden fete, it looked like magic, strange and beautiful, luminous and otherworldly.

He was painted in it. Lines of the champagne-colored dust streaked across his forehead. Five of them, as though he'd wiped his brow after touching…

I frowned, studying the Brilliance with a clinical detail my body did not want to pause for. It wanted to dance and move, not stop and think.

It was my body that let the prince twirl me once more. My spine pressed against his chest as he folded me into his embrace. I allowed his lips to rove down the column of my throat, kissing me with a hunger that set my blood sizzling. I watched us in the mirror as he sucked at my skin and ran his fingers under the satin of my dress, teasing my breasts, toying with them until I cried out for more.

My body let all of this happen, let our hands slide down Leopold's chest to fumble at the length of his sudden hardness and stroke it till he groaned against our ears, crushing us against his ardor.

"Oh, Hazel," he murmured appreciatively, and his voice was low and dark and wanting. "What have you done?"

My body did this, but my mind watched.

It watched as the prince pressed his lips to where the Brilliance welled from us, raking the edge of his teeth through the gold. Itwatched as he smeared burnished handprints across our bodice, watched as those shimmering hands snaked lower, lower, lower still, clutching at our bare thighs as he searched for the hem. It watched as he found it and his fingers slipped beneath.

My mind railed against this brazen invasion, watching in horror as my body melted against him, melted into its desires, melted into the Brilliance itself. I was drowning in gold, unable to stop the sins that poured out of me.

The thought struck me like a wave of icy water.

The sins?

I shook my head. I didn't believe that. I believed in reason and logic. I believed the Shivers was an illness to be cured, not a penance to be endured.

"I have not sinned," I tried to whisper, even as a moan of ecstasy closed my throat. Leopold's hands roamed over me without restraint, finding parts of me I never even knew existed.

The world moved in strange lethargy as I watched this in the mirror. So much Brilliance had spilled out, and I couldn't stop it. This was a moment I couldn't undo. Some part of me had irrevocably broken. There was no fix for this, no going back.

In the mirror's reflection, I spotted a figure approaching me and wanted to cry. It was the king, dressed in russet velvet, a black domino obscuring half his face. I didn't want him to see me like this. Didn't want him to see me in the arms of his son, my lips swollen and cheeks flushed, and covered in gold, so much gold.

"What's this?" he asked, eyes darting from Leopold to the Brilliance. His nostrils flared. "What have you done?"

His sudden anger bewildered me. "I—nothing!"

"Something," he insisted. He cast the prince aside, wrapping his arms around to pull me into our own dance.

When our hands met, his were red, not gold.

Red and slick and slippery.

I looked back into the mirror and my shimmering dress had turned crimson as great blooms of blood spread across it, staining the fabric, staining the ground, staining me.

"Your Majesty?" I asked before the world spun sideways.

My mind was muddled. I was bleeding. I was bleeding a lot. Why was there so much blood? Dizzyingly light-headed, I fell into a swoon.

We were dying, my body and I. I felt my essence slipping from me, slipping away in the blood, in all that blood, and I knew this was the end. The end of me, the end of my body, the end of everything.

But the candles…, my body reminded me.

The candles!

I had the candles.

I rested my head against the king's chest, waiting for whatever was to come. Would it hurt? Would I feel Merrick transferring my flame? My mind felt weighted by too many questions and spinning with not enough blood.

I closed my eyes and danced with Marnaigne as the last of my life poured out of me.

He spun me with sudden force, and when I opened my eyes it was Merrick who held me, looming larger than I'd ever thought possible. He looked manic with distress. Tears filled his eyes, falling in black streaks down his dark face. They fell onto my dress, staining the now-red satin black.

My heart thudded, pumping in vain to circulate the remainder of my blood. Why didn't I have enough blood? There was something wrong. My next candle had not been lit. This wasn't a fresh start. This was…

This was the end.

I began to shake, chilled yet feverish. My limbs jerked and jumped. I was powerless to stop them. Black sludge welled from my pores, thick and viscous. More and more came out, ripping me open as it tried to escape. It was darker than the night, darker than my godfather, darker than even his tears.

It was absolute and unending and it was about to consume me, no matter how many candles my body and I had left.

I shut my eyes, for there was nothing left to do but welcome my certain death. Merrick's voice echoed after me as I fell down the darkened tunnel, a snarl of helpless rage.

"What have you done?!"