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.
Then Safi’s frantic gaze landed on a wrinkled face and stout body that she vaguely remembered from her childhood: Domna fon Brusk. The woman’s hairy chin moved like a cow chewing cud, and she bobbed a curt, reassuring nod at Safi.
As the twenty-fourth chimes began to ring and the applause subsided, Domna fon Brusk navigated toward Safi. Her eyes never left Safi’s face, her pace never slowed. Four steps in time to each tolling bell.
Then the final chime rang out. It reverberated through the room.
Every flame in the ballroom, in the gardens, and on the harbor hissed out. The party descended into black.
* * *
Aeduan was still in the wall when the lights went out.
He had slunk along from spy hole to spy hole, never losing sight of the Truthwitch—or her blood-scent—since she’d followed the summons of Emperor Henrick.
The girl clearly hadn’t known what was coming. Never had Aeduan seen the blood drain from a person’s face so quickly—and for the briefest fraction of a moment, Aeduan had felt pity.
Yet as Aeduan watched the girl tumble toward Emperor Henrick, the hairs on his arms pricked up. Then the hairs on the back of his neck.
He had just enough time to think, Magic—and then feel his power specify, Firewitch—before every flame wuffed out.
In two lung-stretching inhales, Aeduan’s Bloodwitchery roared to the height of its power—and he made a blood-recognition for every shrieking person in the ballroom—and every guard in the walls, the ceilings. It was just a cursory recording of different scents so he could move without sight.
And so he could follow who else moved without sight.
For someone had just orchestrated this blackout, and Aeduan knew immediately that it was linked to the girl, Safiya—because her scent was leaving.
As was a second someone with the acrid scent of battlefields and burning bodies. And a third someone who smelled of mountain peaks … and vengeance.
Aeduan set off toward the nearest of two wall exits when the lamps flared back to life in a second rush of hair-raising magic. Relieved whimpers and sighs drifted through the walls—and pinpricks of yellow light shot through spy holes.
Aeduan darted for the nearest, and his gaze flew to where his Bloodwitchery told him the girl would be …
The space was empty. Completely empty. Where the girl had been standing … she still stood. Somehow, she had not moved from Henrick’s side. Aeduan honed in on her scent.
It was not the scent of the girl named Safiya. This was someone else entirely. Someone with an older blood—much older, in fact.
Aetherwitch, he thought. Then he specified it to Glamourwitch.
Aeduan scanned the limited field of people he could see, could smell. But there was no sign of someone working powerful magic. Yet Aeduan had no doubt a Glamourwitch was in that room, manipulating what people saw.