Theia tugged Dorian toward a side door. His gaze was still lethal, and it stayed on Gawain until the last moment.
An old vendetta between them, one I didn’t know the true shape of. Only that murder still ran through Dorian like a living thing. I’d never seen him likethat.He wore control like a second skin.
“He’s not beholden to you,” I said after her—and turned to Liora. “Nor to you.”
The summer queen regarded me with a glint of humor. “Veyreor no, this is my court, Queen Eurydice. My laws.” Her lilt never dropped away. “If you take issue with them, then perhaps tell me about the changes you’d implement when we meet on the Killing Fields.”
She turned away.
I stepped forward. “He was protecting me?—”
“By spilling blood on my dance floor.” She flicked a hand toward Theia. “Let it be handled. We’ll speak later, you and I.”
It wasn’t a refusal. But it wasn’t permission, either.
Gawain had gathered himself and now rose slowly. He strode toward Dorian and grasped his arm. “Ssen ssa.” His voice was thick with the blood no doubt clogging his nose. “Thyr.”
Dorian’s head jerked back—and then he spit on Gawain’s face.
Gawain gestured him off like a child, and Theia pushed Dorian through the side door.
I made to follow, but Theia’s light flared at her fingertips. A warning.
And there it was, the measure of my soft power here in Highmark. Under the right circumstances, even a handmaiden could threaten a queen.
Liora’s voice cut through the silence of the ballroom. “The excitement is over.” She lifted a hand toward the musicians’ balcony. “Play.”
A beat of hesitation—then the strings began again, tentative at first, swelling as the room began to breathe. Couples drifted back toward the dance floor. Servants appeared to right the overturned chairs, to sweep away the scattered masks. Within moments, the ballroom had mostly stitched itself back together, as though nothing had happened.
As though myveyrehadn’t just been dragged away in chains of light.
I strode for the door Dorian had disappeared through, but Faun grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t,” she said.
I jerked around. “I don’t serve you.”
Her eyebrows went up, and her hand lifted off my shoulder, palm out. “You asked me to tell you when you were misstepping. That would have been a misstep.”
“She’s right.” Nearby, Gawain slipped an oxblood kerchief from his breast pocket and wiped at his face. “Highmark’s handmaidens don’t take kindly to interference with their court’s laws.”
I crouched, picked up my dropped knife. “Fuck off,Cyrus.” I didn’t flick it shut.
“I only lied to you about my name.” He wiped at his nose, picked up his mask, and started toward the door Dorian had been taken through. “Nothing else.”
“Who the hell are you, then?”
“A clockmaker’s son.” He pulled the door open. “A changeling, like you.”
“Who are you to Dorian?”
He passed through the door and it closed behind him. Faun and I were left alone with the ridiculous revelry.
I twisted toward the head of the room. I needed to talk to Liora.
“Leave it be, Eury,” Faun said from behind me. “Wait until the morning.”
I didn’t turn back. “Don’t follow me.”
For once, she listened.