Heart in her throat, Ru murmured her thanks to the drunken courtier and drifted back into the crowd, gaze darting in search of her friends. She needed to tell them what she’d learned, vague as it was. But the room was so vast, and her friends could be anywhere. Ru was standing on her tiptoes, scanning the sea of masked faces and coiffed hairdos, when a white-clad figure appeared at her side.
“Your friends seem to be enjoying themselves,” said Lord D’Luc, glancing at Ru sidelong. “They greeted me a moment ago. They were disturbingly congenial, all things considered.”
Ru bristled. “Of course they were. They’re a lady and a gentleman, not feral creatures.”
“And here I thoughtferal creaturewas synonymous withacademic.”
“What do you want, Hugon?” Ru said, turning to face him. His face was bare and unbearably beautiful in the low light, an unbidden thought that curdled in Ru’s belly like sour wine. “I thought you told me to have fun tonight. Your presence is making it difficult.”
He smiled. “Delara, you’re the picture of affability tonight.” He took her hand and dropped a delicate kiss to her knuckles,just as he’d done the first time they met. “My Lady Bellenet requires your presence,” he continued, gesturing to the far side of the room. Ru saw now that a dais had been placed there, a pair of thrones upon it. One throne was empty — presumably Taryel’s. In the other, sat Lady Bellenet. She was flanked on both sides by at least a dozen Children, robed in white and watching the ball with slack expressions.
“At last,” Ru said, “she deigns to speak to me.”
“Be respectful,” Hugon said, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, “or it’sbothour heads.”
Before Ru could react, he dropped his hand. She stood dumbfounded for a moment. He had been someone else, just for an instant. Was that the real Hugon who’d gazed at her, whose eyes had glinted in fear at the threat of Lady Bellenet? Then, he offered Ru his arm, and she took it, hands shaking.
From somewhere unseen in the ballroom, Ru felt Taryel’s gaze on her. It was as certain as the roiling in her chest, the artifact’s unease. Looking above the crowd toward the dais, Ru saw that Taryel had ascended to the throne and was watching her with a stormy expression.
“Come,” said Lord D’Luc. “She’s waiting.”
Lady Bellenet greeted Ru with a warm smile. She wore a simple white gown, almost like the robes worn by the Children, with long split sleeves and an inner lining of gold damask. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a youthful braid, wound about her ears, and, like Hugon, she wore no mask. She looked almost like a religious illustration, a figure in a stained glass window. And when she pressed Ru’s hand, smiling sweetly, the effect was almost motherly.
Lord D’Luc and Taryel looked on in silence as Lady Bellenet held Ru’s hands, pulling her into her orbit. “Ruellian,” she said in her deep, soothing voice. “You must forgive me. I’ve been quite busy as of late, though I have not forgotten you.”
Ru didn’t know how to respond. Suddenly her voice, her plans to play along, everything failed her. She felt trapped, alone, a beetle pinned to a board.
Lady Bellenet smiled conspiratorially, as if they shared some wonderful secret. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’ve offended you somehow. Let’s remedy that, shall we?”
Again, Ru didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t offended, she was overwhelmed. Afraid. Her palms were sweating, her breaths shallow. Would Lady Bellenet make an empty husk of Ru as well? Would she turn them all, one by one, into mindless Children?
Lady Bellenet looked into Ru’s eyes and seemed to understand something, or to know something, that Ru hadn’t meant to give up. The woman smiled, her cheeks perfectly pink and round. “Tea in my chambers,” she said, “tomorrow. We shall discuss everything.”
Ru blinked. “Everything?” she managed at last.
“We must come to trust one another,” Lady Bellenet said, her eyes wide and fixed on Ru’s, as if speaking some great and obvious truth, “if you are to recommence your demonstrations with the artifact.”
CHAPTER 20
Ru rushed a curtsey and fled the dais, clutching her glass of honey-colored wine. Lady Bellenet’s gaze seemed to burn her as she made her way through the chaos of dancing bodies, music, and heat. Her heart was pounding, the artifact — Taryel — doing its best to calm her. But Lady Bellenet’s cold words looped in Ru’s brain. A reminder of what she was here to do.
Isn’t this what you wanted? she imagined Hugon’s voice, berating her.You asked after the artifact, the solstice, Lady Bellenet, the Cleansing. Well, here you go. Time to prepare.
Pausing at the edge of the dancefloor, Ru downed the last of her wine. It warmed her from the inside, and at last, the artifact’s work began to do her good. She could almost feel Taryel looking for her, coming after her in the crowd. She hadn’t meant to react like that, to let her fear overtake her so easily. Shedidwant to study the artifact, to get close to it, to see what else she could pry from Hugon’s lips as she played a willing Destroyer.
She had to find her friends.
“Ru,” came Taryel’s low voice from behind her.
“I don’t want to demonstrate again,” she said, spinning to face him. No one could have heard her but Taryel, the man so attuned to her that he seemed to understand what she wasfeeling from moment to moment. And even though she hardly considered him a friend, let alone a lover, Ru couldn’t help but lean into the connection they shared, irrational as the urge was. It was one of the only things she had just then.
He took her empty glass, setting it away somewhere, and bent to speak in her ear. “You don’t have to. String him along, just as you have been.”
Her hands were shaking. She wanted the artifact ripped from existence. She wanted— But even as she thought of finally ridding herself of that connection, the one binding her to Taryel, she felt sick at the idea. As if her body, not her mind, were rejecting it.
I don’t knowwhatI want anymore, she thought bitterly.
“I learned something earlier,” she said, dragging herself out from her inner turmoil and into the present moment. She needed to focus on stopping all of this, fixing it, instead of wallowing in her own confused misery. “From one of the courtiers.”
