Tullia remained uncharacteristically quiet, her eyes darting to my neck once, while she set up her paints.
Jayde returned with Melaena. Jayde looked incensed, but Melaena was calm.
“Is there something you would like to tell me, Kiera?” she asked.
“It wasn’t Ai—any of the men I live with.”
Jayde’s eyebrows lifted, and Tullia trembled next to me, no doubt bursting with questions.
Melaena blinked in confusion. “The thought never crossed my mind. I just want to know if you’re safe. If there’s anything I can do.”
My skin heated with all the attention. “I’m fine. Just a mishap with a guard.” I hesitated. “Don’t tell him.”Aiden.
Melaena studied me for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll cover it with paint. No one will know.” Then she left.
Jayde crammed her brush into a pot and started stroking glittering gold paint down my arm. “I hope you gutted him for it.”
“The guard?”
“Or turned him in,” Tullia added.
Jayde scoffed. “If he’s a city guard, they won’t punish him. Best do it yourself.”
I glanced at her. Was she one of the women who had come from an awful situation, as Melaena said? It was an unspoken rule not to ask a person’s history atThe Silk Dancer. But everyone wondered all the same.
Tullia giggled nervously. “Oh, Jayde, don’t be so grim. Let’s just focus on the dance, shall we? I mean, look where we are!” She threw her arms wide, flinging a drop of paint on the pristine white wall. “Oops.”
Jayde rolled her eyes and wiped it off. “Focus, Tullia. We have five more girls after this without you painting the walls.”
The girls bickered and gossiped in turn as they slathered me. I joined in where I could, but my nerves were slowly tightening to the point of choking me.
What if someone recognized me? What if Asher caught me trying to steal from him? What if I forgot the dance routine and shamed the entire group?
“Try not to sweat, dear,” Tullia said, fanning my skin. “Your paint will run.”
I took a sip of water from the glass Melaena had brought me and tried to remain calm. When Tullia and Jayde lifted my hair to paint my back, they paused again. I imagined the two of themsharing a look behind my head, wondering what sort of life I’d led. But neither of them said a word and continued painting.
Soon, they proclaimed me finished and ordered me not to sit or smudge myself until rehearsal.
I carefully shimmied into my costume—a twisted silk breast band with a long, flowing silk skirt, through which my gold legs were clearly visible. A few bits of jewelry brightened my ears, neck, and wrists.
I meandered around the room, helping where I could, until one by one, the rest of the dancers and Melaena looked like they’d been dipped in liquid gold as well.
The snippy woman from before poked her head into the room to tell us we had an hour to rehearse. Everyone secured their masks and crowded out the door.
Last to leave, I donned my stiff gold mask, which covered me from nose to forehead and boasted flowers and flames spreading from the edges. Then I finally looked into one of the mirrors.
A laugh slipped from me. I looked like the very gold I was here to steal.
I was unrecognizable. A creature fit for the god Arduen himself. It was one of his stories we would reenact tonight.
I hurried to join the others, my eyes darting over every face I passed by. Were Aiden and Maz here yet? Would Aiden watch me dance?
My skin prickled under my thick paint. It didn’t matter who watched me tonight. As long as they believed every lie from my lips and every swish of my hips, they would never catch me.
“Kiera.”
I peered into the shadowy hallway as Melaena edged her way between painted dancers, twittering about in their silks and masks. We waited outside a pair of engraved doors for our cue. Conversation and laughter rippled from the other side, at distinct odds with our tense silence and my pounding heart. The ballroom must have filled quickly after our short rehearsal.
