She kissed him, slow and warm, until he calmed, until her own unease had diminished, and then quietly led him upstairs to their room, where she helped him undress and said with her touch what her words could not.

51

   Rielle

“Oh, the maids did dance, and the maids did sing,

And with every word their voices did bring

A season of storms and a shiny black wing,

A knife of steel and a solid gold ring,

A throat painted red and a knotted-up string,

And the merry maids sang and stomped and howled,

And the moors went black, and their rivers turned fowl.”

—“The Merry Maids of the Marrowtop Moors,” Traditional Celdarian folk song

Baingarde had never looked lovelier.

It was a chill autumn evening, the stars clear and cold in the sky, but all doors in the castle had been thrown open to the night nevertheless. Every room was alight with candles, every table piled high with steaming platters, and the sheer press of bodies drifting from ballroom to ballroom was enough to keep the air sweltering.

Each of the castle’s twenty courtyards had been strung with banners of gold and white, emerald and plum. Tiny brass lanterns hung from the trees throughout the gardens, their flames shivering in the crisp breeze. Bouquets of royal lilies had been delivered from Luxitaine, piles and piles of them placed thoughtfully throughout the castle. Spilling out of burnished copper vases, woven through fresh green vines that had only hours before been plucked from the royal greenhouses and wrapped around the gleaming banisters, they filled the air with a cloying sweet scent that made Rielle’s head spin, leaving her faintly dizzy.

And yet still, she danced.

The largest ballroom in Baingarde, surpassed in size only by the Hall of the Saints, whirled with color—brocaded gowns, gleaming in the candlelight; smart suits and pressed coats, their tails flying. At the far end of the room, on a stage bordered with velvet green curtains, an orchestra played merrily through waltzes and folk songs from every region in Celdaria.

One such song—“The Merry Maids of the Marrowtop Moors”—concluded with a dramatic flourish, the violinists sweeping their bows up into the air. Everyone dancing turned and applauded. The orchestra master bowed, her pale cheeks flushed from the heat.

Rielle blew out a breath, laughing from sheer exhilaration, and then beamed up at Audric. Dancing suited him marvelously, and they’d been dancing for nearly two hours straight. She felt drunk on the sight of him, his curls damp, his eyes sparkling.

He caught her staring and grinned. “See something you like?”

She flung her arms around his neck, stretched up onto her toes to kiss him. “I see everything I like,” she whispered against his mouth, and then they broke away from each other, laughing, because the dancers nearest them had begun to whoop and holler, cheering them on.

At the edges of her mind crowded too many worries to count—the thousands of people still gathered outside, kept from the castle by lines of royal and Sauvillier soldiers, undoubtedly growing increasingly discontented as Baingarde sparkled on through the night.

The lies of Corien and Ludivine, the ever-present echo of them fighting for her allegiance in some distant corner of her mind.

The phantom girl Corien had created to torment her—her own face, and Audric’s, so perfectly combined.

Far away in the Sunderlands, a falling Gate.

And Merovec, parading around the castle, a smile on his face and his mind worryingly closed. Ludivine hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that particular strangeness all night. Rielle felt her preoccupation like the persistent buzz of a fly.

But none of that could diminish her happiness. Not on this night. Not in this room.

The orchestra began the opening strains of a new dance, one from the Celdarian heartlands that sent up a cheer throughout the room.

Rielle grabbed Audric’s hand. “One more?”

He looked longingly past her at one of the food tables, which the cooks had just filled with platters of fresh pastries. “How many dances will that be?”

“Only seven.” She pouted up at him. “Please, darling. I love this one. Then we’ll grab a whole cake for ourselves and go hide in one of the sitting rooms upstairs.” She moved closer to him, her smile turning wicked. “We’ll have our fill of the cake first, and then of each other. We’ll look down upon them all as we ravish each other, and they’ll just keep dancing, far below us, and none of them will know a thing.”

He stifled a groan and rested his forehead against hers. “If you really do want me to stay here and dance, you’re going to have to stop talking like that.”

She grabbed his hand, grinning, and he spun her out into the floor, everyone nearby making room for them—but before the dance could truly begin, a few flutes and a single violin skipping through the passages of the opening reel, a dazzling bolt of pain exploded through Rielle’s skull.

She stumbled, hands flying to her head.

Rielle? came Ludivine’s voice, a shrill, frightened question, as if she were a child suddenly trapped in a dark room. Oh, God. No, no—

Then, without warning, Ludivine disappeared.

It wasn’t simply that she was no longer speaking; it was that her presence had been completely wiped clean from Rielle’s mind. It was the most disorienting sensation she had ever experienced, as if a crucial piece of her body had been brutally cut away.

She whirled, searching frantically through the crowd. Lu? What happened? Where are you?

“What is it?” Audric caught her arm. Beyond him, guests were beginning to stare.

“Something’s wrong. She’s gone.”

Audric tensed beside her. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“I mean I can no longer hear her, or even sense that she’s still alive.”

Then Rielle’s mouth flew open, a soundless exclamation of pain. The pounding of her head was spectacular. She sensed a tumult, somewhere beyond her. Something to do with Ludivine, something angelic. But it was like being shut out of a room, ear pressed against the door, knowing something was transpiring beyond the solid wood but not allowed to enter. Unable to enter. A locked door without a latch. Colossal and immovable.

She held her breath for a moment, struggling to clear her mind of anything but a single question: Corien, are you here?

Then there was an outcry from the doors on the far side of the room that led outside to the wide northern terrace and the gardens beyond. Gasps and shouts, cries of alarm, spreading fast. The gathered dancers split and scattered, and through their ranks burst Ludivine—eyes wide, face rigid and white.