Sorry for everything is what I want to say. But I don’t.
Instead I stare off across the room and sift through the bright clothes and smiling faces. A man in black is laughing, but when he turns, it’s not the king’s cousin. He’s amused at someone who’s entertaining quite a crowd, and when he moves a little more, I see the source is none other than Eogan. Here. At Adora’s party. Dressed in a gray suit made to resemble the beauty of an arctic wolf. Fluid and fanciful. Dangerous. He’s stunning. My chest clenches awkwardly. His eyes move and latch onto mine and a sparkle emerges, but he keeps talking to the huddle surrounding him, although everything about his posture tells me he’s bored.
Suddenly he smiles in his dazzling way, and something says the smile is for me. To remind me to relax.
“You two look like you’re having more fun than should be allowed in a place like this,” a slurring voice says, and instant chills slip like spiderwebs around my legs.
I glance up into the red, perfume-drenched face of the pontiff from Poorland Arch. The one who made the maidservant disappear. I feel my face drain of warmth to match the icy shade of my dress.
I look back at Eogan, but he’s gone.
The drunk man chuckles and places a hand on my shoulder, his sweaty fingers rubbing the skin between my collarbone and chest. “You look like you could do with some wine, young lady. Oh, don’t pull away. The party’s just getting started. Young man, fetch us some drink!”
The dagger pokes my thigh beneath my dress. I reach for it and nervously look at Colin, who catches my movement and shakes his head. It’s only then I recall Breck’s comment about Colin and the pontiff’s recent run-in. Colin hesitates, then stands and switches into an instant smile and shifts the man’s hand onto his own shoulder. “Actually, I was just off for more food. How ’bout you and I both find somethin’ the lady ’ere might enjoy?”
I love that boy. Clearly, I should be nicer to him. He winks as if to say I owe him one.
The man glances back and forth between the two of us—at first resistant, but I throw him my hugest, most flagrant grin and he acquiesces. “Don’t go anywhere,” he whispers behind Colin’s back. And it’s all I can do not to spit on him.
As they walk away, I take off in the opposite direction to hunt down Eogan. What’s he doing here?
Besides watching us squirm.
I pass three generals discussing the war and Bron’s airships and pause to listen. From what their spies have deciphered, the ships can only carry one or two explosives each, and each boat can only carry one extra bomb along with the necessary fuel and man power. After that, the airships have to return to Bron, while the boats can stay to launch limited attacks of their own or unload soldiers. “It’s only a matter of weeks,” one says before their talk switches to the subject of iron deliveries from Tulla and more crossbows for arming our ranks.
“If it isn’t the girl with special powersss,” a snakelike voice says in my ear. A cold hand grips my elbow, and King Sedric’s cousin is in my face, leaning his mouth against my hair while his fingers tighten into my skin. I go to pull away. His hand bruises me.
“Such beautiful abilitiesss,” he whispers, and a mental image forms of him standing with the orange-haired man in Adora’s hall, not five steps from the staircase I’d been hiding in on my first day in this wretched house. He was talking of treason and of Faelen falling, and now my mind is spinning at the implications of who he is. And what he’s done.
My skin crawls. Rigid fingers grip harder into my elbow, so cold they’re spreading frostbite through my dress.
Run.
I look frantically around the room of people. Where’s Eogan? Where’s Adora? But all I see is a mass of bodies, eating and swaying to sickening, harpy voices.
His other hand slides around my waist, and his breath catches against my neck. He begins to sway to the music with me. “Hmm. I wonder what other powers you might have.”
I bristle and jerk back, shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I believe you’ve mistaken me for someone else, Lord Protectorate.”
His hand is ice, unrelenting, even as his lips pucker around that one silver tooth in amusement. He drifts dark eyes over me. “Hmm. Don’t think so.”
“Release me.” My voice, my breath are searching for firm ground. “I live under the protection of Adora, and you’d be wise to remember it.”
“Yes, well, considering that one aspect of my job is keeping Faelen purged of Elementals, her protection may be useless. I’m certain His Majesty will be most interested to hear that his brilliant strategist Adora is harboring a girl with the powers of a storm. How doesss it work for you? Do they still call you an Elemental even if you’re female?”