The Nubrevnan rounded a shining, flushed face toward the imperial prince. He bowed low. “Prince Leopold.”
Leopold only gave him a nod. “Prince Merik—you have stolen Safiya from us.” There was no missing the blackness in his tone, nor the intentional way he dismissed the other prince to look pointedly at his uncle, the squat Cartorran emperor who stood nearby.
Safiya’s expression shifted from its dance-drunk intensity to simple, pink-faced embarrassment. “Polly,” she murmured, almost inaudible over the crowds. “I’m sorry—I lost you in all the people.”
“No need to apologize.” Leopold spoke in a far louder voice than her proximity required and spread his arms wide. “Another dance! Let’s make this a Pragan waltz.” Then he swept the Truthwitch a regal bow and clasped her arms.
Aeduan’s fingers tapped out an excited rhythm on his stiletto. This night had just become very interesting. The Truthwitch who had tried to rob Guildmaster Yotiluzzi was now dancing with not one, but two princes.
Oh, the Bloodwitch named Aeduan was no longer bored. No longer bored at all.
And now he had work to do.
*
Safi was sick of dancing. Literally, she felt ill from all the spinning, and her breath—she’d not had a single moment to catch it since … Merik.
Prince Merik.
The man who couldn’t dress himself properly had turned out to be royalty. The man who’d thrown himself against a Cleaved was a prince. It was almost impossible to conceive, yet it explained his high-chinned bearing, his lack of fear when Safi pushed him—and his willingness to push right back.
Something had happened between Safi and Merik during their dance. Something as powerful as the wind and the music that had gusted around them. A shift in the air that preceded a storm.
Hell-flames, Safi needed Iseult now. She needed her Threadsister to help her sort through this wildness in her chest.
As the room and the faces spun past her in another stomach-tilting waltz, as lies and truths crashed over Safi from all directions, she knew she needed to stop. To leave.
Yet, just as something had shifted within Safi after the dance—after Merik—something had shifted within the room. A tension coiling inward like a waiting serpent.
And the dancing—it never stopped. Six times, Safi was swept over the floor in Leopold’s arms. Then six more times the Emperor himself insisted on partnering with her. Her hands were clammy and gripped too tightly. Sweat seemed to gather in his pocked skin, and Safi wished Leopold would step back in.
Until the music abruptly stopped and the dancing halted with it.
Until Henrick called for silence in the room and beckoned for Safi to join him at a low dais.
Until a heavy, impossible sentence fell from Henrick’s mouth: “Behold Safiya fon Hasstrel. My betrothed and the future Empress of Cartorra.”
Safi’s knees gave way. She fell against Leopold, who—thank the gods—was nearby. Somehow he managed to sweep her upright and twirl her toward a room filled with stilted applause—as if everyone were as shocked by the announcement as she.
“Polly,” she rasped, gaze fixing on his face. “Polly, please … tell me … Polly—”
“It’s true,” he murmured, squeezing her hand.
She tried to draw back, her heart threatening to punch its way from her chest. She’d trusted Leopold. She’d trusted Uncle Eron too. Yet this … She was not acting as a domna, but as a bride.
Leopold wouldn’t release her, though. His sea green eyes had become steely. The gentle slope to his jaw had tensed with an unexpected determination.
Safi gasped. “You knew this was coming. Why didn’t you tell me?”
His only response was to tow her—forcefully, yet not unkindly—toward his uncle. The Emperor.
Safi’s future husband.
“To many happy years together!” Leopold shouted, thrusting Safi forward. She staggered into Henrick’s grasp. His sweating hands closed over hers.
Safi almost jerked back at his touch and his crooked-toothed smile. Almost shrieked that this was not the freedom she’d been promised. Marrying an emperor was as far from freedom as Safi could imagine, so what was that horseshit of a story her uncle had fed her?
As far as Safi could see, this was it. This was the end of everything.
She scanned every face in the crowd, her arm quaking in Henrick’s. She searched for Uncle Eron’s blue eyes. For Mathew’s red head. Anyone, for rut’s sake. She just needed someone to hold her gaze and reflect back that it was all right to be furious. To be bone-deep scared.
But no one in the crowd was familiar. She even looked for Prince Merik, in his silver gray coat, but he and the rest of the Nubrevnans had vanished from the ball as well.
Safi was alone with her shaking knees. With the sickness in her throat. With Henrick’s clammy palms crushing her fingers.