I didn’t care what stood unsettled between Max and me. I didn’t care that she’d cut me from her team, that she flinched from my shadow. Xander would not lay a fucking finger on her. He would not fold her into that collection of his, one more rare, breathing thing behind warded glass.
Not over my dead body. Not even then.
And then the fear hit.
What if she didn’t come back? What if the Haven swallowed her—if a trap closed, if the plan came apart in some way none of us had foreseen, if tonight was the last time I ever?—
I couldn’t breathe.
I knew this feeling. I’d met it once before, a very long time ago, on my knees in a different hall, watching a blade come down on my mother’s neck and then my father’s, knowing mine was the next throat in the line. I had not felt it since. I had built my entire life so that I would never have to feel it again. And a slip ofa cadet who couldn’t stand the sight of me had just dragged it up out of the grave with nothing but the threat of her own absence.
Caspian let out a low growl beside me, and my dragon answered it in my chest.
“I need to go take care of something,” the wolf said, his green eyes lit with fire.
“You do that, wolf.”
My voice came out cold and flat. I pushed off the pillar I’d been leaning against and moved after him, ready at his back.
Chapter 35
Max
When I opened the three boxes the messenger had left, I was lost for words.
I lifted each gown out and turned it in the light, and I loved all three.
“Which one are you going to pick?” Bryn asked. She’d been assigned as my escort for the night. No gown for her. She’d wear her first-year uniform, and she didn’t blink at it.
I had no idea which heir had sent which. They’d all arrived at once, no cards, every one of them quietly seeing to me. I only knew Drakken had sent nothing. Which was fine. Entirely fine. And if some small, stupidly girlish corner of me felt a pinch over it, I shut that corner and didn’t look at it too closely.
I hoped whichever I chose, the others wouldn’t take offense. But when I slid into the one that drew my hand—the deceptively plain one—and fastened the necklace that came with it at my throat, I didn’t feel like a fraud dressed up in borrowed finery.
I felt like I belonged in it. Which made no sense at all, coming from where I came from.
Where you came from is higher than anywhere these people have ever stood,the demon said.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have called the tone proud. As though I’d come a long, long way.
Hadn’t I?
Bryn tried her hand at my hair and makeup and gave it up halfway through. My hair fell to my shoulders on its own, the white streak running bright through the dark, and there wasn’t much paint could add to a face like mine—it drew the eye whether I wanted it to or not.
“What about war paint?” I asked, half serious—four blue stripes down each cheek, the way I’d worn them in the mine.
Bryn gave me a flat look. “Absolutely not. It’s a diplomatic ball, Max. Turn up painted for war and the heirs would have my head, and they’d be right to. Wrong message entirely.”
Fair enough.
Frost came to collect us and drive us to the Officers Club.
“I’ve always wanted to see the inside of the club,” Bryn said, practically vibrating.
“Now you will,” Frost said. “Remember the part you’re playing, cadet. You walk Max in. The moment she moves toward the center of the floor, you peel off and disappear along the wall.”
“Yes, Major,” Bryn said.
With Major Frost at our side, we slid through the security check at the door without a second glance. Light jazz drifted down the broad stairwell to meet us before we’d even begun to climb.