Kestin smiled at her. From mere inches away, his smile was devastating; and Darri’s heart, which seemed to have forgot en that Kestin was dead, sped up. “Thank you. I was hoping for a dance.”
“With me? Or with Clarisse?” The smile vanished, and Darri bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You should warn your brother.” Kestin was clearly trying to sound dispassionate, but the words came out biting. He lifted her into a turn, then set her down on the floor. “Clarisse likes to play games.”
The thought of Varis needing to be warned should have been funny. Instead, it made Darri irritable. “So does he. And unfortunately, women find my brother irresistible.”
Kestin lifted an eyebrow. “Unfortunately for whom?”
“For the women.”
He laughed, clearly despite himself, and almost missed the next turn. Darri staggered very slightly when he put her down, and glanced around for her brother. She was just in time to see him leaving the hal . Which was probably just as wel .
“Clarisse can take care of herself,” Kestin said. “And it would be hard for her to take your brother seriously.
She’l be around for centuries after his corpse has crumbled into dust.”
Is that what you’re hoping? This time, she didn’t say it; she had no reason to be cruel to Kestin. But he must have seen her thoughts on her face, because his lips thinned as he fol owed the movements of the dance, pushing her away from him and then pul ing her to him again. His hands were firm around her waist.
He’s dead, Darri told her heart, which ignored her. Deciding to ignore it in turn, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” he said, so low she might not have heard him if he wasn’t pressed so close to her. “It makes it easier, to let her go . . . again. It’s just dif icult, when I thought I was done grieving for her years ago.”
His mouth was right against her ear . . . and yet she couldn’t feel his breath. Suddenly there was no escaping the fact that he was dead, and it was al she could do not to pul away with such force he would go spinning across the floor. She waited until the dance pul ed them apart before responding. “You didn’t know then that she was stil here.”
“No, I didn’t.” Kestin leaped, bowed, and grabbed her waist, al at the same time. Darri didn’t even try to fol ow that step. “But now that I know . . . it shouldn’t cancel out al the grieving. It shouldn’t be so hard, al over again. She’s a part of my past, except she’s stil here.” They stepped sideways, three times, and then turned. When he let go of her waist, his face was drawn and tired. “That’s what al the ghosts are, truly.
Memories made flesh, our dead forbidding us to forget them. Their presence is not easy for the living.”
Your presence, Darri thought, but luckily the dance turned them away from each other just then, so Kestin didn’t see her expression. When they faced each other again, he was smiling forceful y, and she knew the subject of Clarisse was over. She couldn’t say she regret ed it.
“I mean it, though. These have been the most enjoyable few minutes of the bal .” His smile widened, and it was just for her, driving al thoughts of Clarisse from her mind. “Cerix wil now be your lifelong enemy. Should I thank you for your support?”
“Probably not,” Darri said regretful y.
The smile turned into a chuckle; he thought she was being coy. The music swel ed, making the moment suitably dramatic. Darri turned out of his arms, stepped back, and, with a flourish more graceful than anything she had managed thus far, drew the dagger hidden within the folds of her sleeve.
Chapter Sixteen
The night was wel underway, and Cal ie was stil spending most of the party fighting tears. Jano’s glum pronouncements, Darri’s occasional half-angry glances, and Varis’s refusal to look at her al made it impossible to pretend this was just a party. She felt centuries old.
She tried not to think about Darri, now stumbling around the dance floor in Kestin’s arms. Darri, who didn’t understand and didn’t want to. Darri, stil trying to change what couldn’t be changed.
It didn’t work. She kept catching herself looking at Darri, and wrenching her eyes away, until the moment she saw her sister draw a blade in the middle of the dance floor.
The dancing came to an immediate halt. Cal ie dropped her goblet, and was dimly aware of wine soaking through her dance slippers. Darri stood there, slim and deadly in her lacy yel ow gown, her face set and her dagger pointed straight at Kestin’s throat.
The music stopped. The movement stopped. Everything stopped, including Cal ie’s heart. Oh, graveyards.
Darri . . .
Darri said, loud enough for the whole court to hear, “Summon the Guardian.”
Kestin stared down, puzzled, at the blade resting on his throat. At first glance, it looked like steel, but there were uneven patches where silver clearly shone through. When he looked up at Darri, he stil didn’t look frightened. He looked . . . hurt. “What makes you think he would come? I’m not alive, remember?”
“Clarisse said he would come if you cal ed.” Darri’s arm was rock steady, the dagger unwavering. “Let’s test that out. Cal him.”
Kestin’s eyes narrowed. “Or what? You’l kil me?”
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“I don’t believe you,” Kestin said flatly.
“Why? Because we dance together so wel ?” Darri’s face was al lines and angles, brown skin stretched taut over jaw and cheekbones. “You have no idea what I’l do, Prince Kestin. Especial y considering the fact that I wouldn’t be kil ing you. You’re already dead.”
She hissed that last sentence with such viciousness that Cal ie felt it like a slap. So, judging by the way his head jerked up, did Kestin.
“You would be kil ing me,” he said, his face tight, “no mat er how hard you tel yourself otherwise. You wouldn’t be dancing with me, or talking to me, if my being dead meant the same thing in this land as it does in yours.”
Darri moved the blade closer to his throat, not enough to touch, but enough that a deep breath would bring his skin into contact with the edge.
Kestin acted as if he hadn’t noticed. “I’m here now,” he said fiercely. “If you move that blade much farther, I no longer wil be. I’l be gone. Because you’l have kil ed me. I don’t believe you want to do that.”
Darri’s face twitched. “It doesn’t mat er. I’l do it anyhow.”
“For your sister? I am sure you would.” Kestin’s eyes narrowed into slits. “So al ow me to point out that it won’t help you. Once I am dead, I cannot cal the Guardian.”
Their eyes met. Kestin’s face was rigid and strained; Darri’s was frozen, for just a moment. Then she leaped away.
A dozen men drew their swords, but not one of them had guessed where she was going. Cerix drew a knife, too late; Darri snapped it out of his hand with one swift arm thrust, her sleeves flaring. It was a move Cal ie recognized. Varis had taught it to his sisters years ago, on a long rainy day.
Cerix lunged for the knife as it spun across the floor, a big mistake. Darri hit him on the side, sending him sprawling to the floor. With another deft motion, she grabbed the dagger by its hilt and pressed its edge to the side of Cerix’s neck.
“I’l kil him, then,” she said. “Unless you summon the Guardian now.”
Kestin stared at her, mouth slightly open. Cerix made a high-pitched gasping noise, his arms splayed against the floor. Her sister, Cal ie reflected, had certainly succeeded in confusing everyone.
Kestin glanced across the dance floor. Cal ie fol owed his gaze and saw Clarisse, standing with her back to the wal , perfectly stil . Kestin’s voice broke the silence. “Don’t.”
Darri lifted her eyebrows mockingly. “Real y? You don’t want your rival dead? It would be a fit ing punishment for kil ing her.”
“No,” Cerix gasped, craning his head to look up at the dead prince. “Let her do this, and you kil Clarisse more permanently than I did. You’re doing it for her—it wil be her vengeance.”
“That seems debatable,” Darri noted.
Kestin looked at his cousin with naked hatred, then transferred his glare to Darri. “What makes you think I don’t want her gone?”
“If you do,” Darri said flatly, “then do nothing. And in a moment, she wil be. Deep down, this is what she real y wants, isn’t it? To be avenged?”
real y wants, isn’t it? To be avenged?”
Kestin looked across the dance floor again. Clarisse’s face and form were so blurred that it was impossible to make out her expression. Cal ie felt a moment of mean satisfaction: obviously, Clarisse didn’t dare get close enough to intervene, for fear that she would give in to the urge to kil Cerix herself. She was helpless. She could do nothing but watch.
“She doesn’t want to be gone,” Kestin said final y, his eyes stil on Clarisse. “It doesn’t mat er what I want. Or what I think she should want. Let him go, and I’l do what you ask.”
“Cal him first,” Darri hissed, and al at once the Guardian was there, swift and silent despite his heavy armor. He pushed two gaping men to the side on his way to his prince—one started to shout in outrage, then stopped short when he realized who had pushed him. The other hit his head on a table and lay crumpled on the floor.
Darri straightened as the Guardian approached, though she kept her dagger trained on Cerix. “Thank you,”
she said, so politely that the people around Cal ie relaxed slightly, assuming the crisis was over.
Cal ie knew bet er. When Darri got polite, that was when things were at their worst.
Cerix splut ered and rol ed to the side. Darri glanced down, tracking him with her knife, then looked up at the Guardian. “I wil release him for the answer to a question.”
“I don’t want you to release him,” the Guardian said. “He’s a murderer. And his rabble-rousing endangers us al .”Kestin made a strangled sound. The Guardian said, without looking at him, “She’s not doing it for you. It’s not vengeance; it won’t end Clarisse’s existence.”
“You don’t know that,” Kestin said, spit ing out the words. “It’s not your life you’re playing games with. You have no right to take that risk for her.”
“It’s not a life I’m playing with at al .” The Guardian looked at Darri and inclined his head. “Kil him, and then I’l answer your question.”
Darri’s face set. The crowd around Cal ie drew back; for al that they were surrounded by death, for al that they stabbed and poisoned and murdered, a cold-blooded slaughter in the middle of a bal was too much for them.
But Cal ie, like her sister, was a plains barbarian. She watched without flinching as Darri turned and slashed with the dagger, as the blood spil ed out across the white marble floor and crept up the hem of Darri’s pale yel ow gown. And even before the echo of Cerix’s scream had died, before his corpse had completely stopped writhing, Cal ie turned away. She slipped between the tables and out the door, making her escape while everyone else watched Cerix die.
For a ghost, the way from the banquet hal to the upper hal s was easy: straight up through the ceiling. Several had been shooting up and down for fun, hoping to catch someone in an il icit assignation and then shout the news to the assembled crowd. Cal ie took the long way: through the crowd to the side doors of the hal , down the marble hal way where several assignations were in their beginning stages, and up the wide spiral staircase.
It gave her time to think, but she didn’t take advantage of that. When she reached the door to Varis’s room, she rapped on it fast and hard, before any last-minute hesitations could change her mind.