BALL GOWNS AND BLOOD MAGES
Being shunted into the role of hero at a banquet thrown by a noble family of the realm came whatever the exact opposite of naturally was to Damien. He stood nowhere that didn’t seem like a corner, peered into no face that made him feel reassured, and Damien could say nothing that didn’t sound like the sarcastic quipping of a villain. Even Amma’s mother, a woman who he expected should have made him feel at ease only made him too aware of his own failings—failings he didn’t think he actually had until just then.
Of course, that all should have been good! To still know one was evil when wrapped so forcefully in a linen of goodness was likely good—that is, good meaning useful, not good meaning virtuous—because then one knew deep down one was bad—that is, bad meaning evil, not bad meaning useless. Yet he felt a wholly different kind of bad, a conflicted clawing deep in his chest that left him at a loss both emotionally and linguistically.
There had been no opportunity to speak to Amma, not even to see her, the night before. When he had returned from Cedric’s chamber, he was so furious with the marquis that the noxscura flooded out of him, searching for something to destroy. It went for the windows, glass an easy and satisfying thing to shatter, the smoke slamming into the colored panes and the room filling with a sharp splintering. But then he threw out his hands and stopped it, calling back the arcana just as bits of glass broke away in the center of the artful windows, saving them from being destroyed and himself from being discovered. He pulled the magic back bit by bit, setting the panes right again until they were firmly back in place, and then he collapsed on the couch, completely spent.
The following day had passed slowly with Damien doing little more than pacing, not even enough focus to read the journal he’d gotten from Anomalous or attempt to open the Lux Codex. He did bring the shard of occlusion crystal out from its shielding pouch and considered calling up the arcana to reach out to Zagadoth but couldn’t seem to press hard enough to spill his blood over it.
What would he even say?Yeah, Dad, I’m late to Eirengaard because I’m the guest of honor in one of the realm’s baronies for saving a woman who pretended to be a thief but was actually the baron’s daughter…Yes, yes, that wassaving, notslaying…Well, no, I didn’treallysave her, but I’m only hanging around because I feel like I might actually need to soon…Iknowthat’s not what Bloodthornes do, but it is what I’m doing, and, look—I have to go and be fitted for a tunic that isn’t even black, isn’t that punishment enough?
No, that would fly about as well as Kaz had done when being strangled in the quag.
Instead, Damien listened at the door for every sound and constantly sent out feelers for spells coming to peek in on him, but only Tia had come late in the day for the shortest of visits to remind him to behave that evening. And then, finally, it was time for the Avington’s festivities.
He would have never chosen this dress coat, blue like the sky at dusk and speckled with silver to presumably look like stars, though he did have to admit he made it look much more threatening on than expected. He attempted polite talk with some merchant or dignitary or whomever—he hadn’t remembered or perhaps even gotten their name and title.
Though he did bump into Robert, the man from Elderpass, who actually apologized tohim, his memory of their altercation completely different but useful. Only one other man, Thomas Treshi, really stuck in Damien’s mind. Amma’s former lover was unendingly handsome with deeply rich skin and an accent to match the southwestern isles, but he seemed smitten enough with his own wife that Damien could let go of any ill will toward the man. Unfortunately, that just allowed him to focus back on his own anxieties as the baron stood beside him, chatting well and taking the pressure off so that Damien’s eyes could dart out over the crowd in search of Amma.
He had yet to glimpse her in the throng of a few hundred wealthy, self-important fucks, a sea of glimmering precious metals and well-cut stones catching the arcane light of chandeliers in the high, domed ceiling of the ballroom. Faebarrow’s celebratory room was drenched in more creamy marble, warm under the orange stones set into gold plates on pedestals to light the massive space. The sounds carried in the bowl-like room, joyous laughter and the din of strings and horns from a musical group on a dais in its center. An internal balcony ran along its upper edge with a few means of access, stairs spiraling in each of the corners and a wider, grand staircase at the room’s head. Then there was Tia, headed down those stairs from the upper hall, and Damien kept his gaze locked there.
A moment, and then another, and finally there was Amma. It had been only a day since he’d seen her, but then it had been weeks since he hadn’t had her arcanely chained to his side, and there was a lifting in his chest at her presence, as if he could finally take a full breath again.
She was on Cedric’s arm, swathed in a fluffy, blue dress that was a little ridiculous, so many layers about her feet that she looked to be floating, but it did put a nice barrier between the two of them. Her hair was gathered at the back of her head in a spray of coils, but he noted no dagger hidden within. Sheer fabric was draped over her shoulders and billowed down her arms, covering everything but her collar and the slender line of her neck, head held high, face meant to be pulled into unreadable neutrality, but without her smile, he could tell there was disquiet beneath it all.
Damien watched from beside her parents as Amma stared dutifully out on the ballroom of the Faebarrow keep, eyes sweeping over the gathered who turned to applaud the two before they began their descent. Amma’s eyes kept searching and then they found Damien, and that lifting in his chest twisted into a twinge. She stumbled on the next step, and Cedric buoyed her, but she never looked away, and the twinge in Damien’s chest fluttered.
Baron Avington’s booming voice filled the room. “Welcome all, and welcome home, my dear daughter, returned by the night’s hero, Sir Day Ravenheart.”
There was a thunderous applause, and Damien’s innards went cold as the gathered parted for Cedric to lead her across the hall and to where they stood.
“The tireless, brave deeds of this man have made our home and our hearts whole again, and for this we could never thank him or the gods enough. And in this prospering time for the realm, the safe return of our Ammalie is a sign from the gods that all is as it should be. So, let the celebrations run long into the night!”
Music struck up from the dais, louder than before. Cedric bowed to the baron and baroness, Amma still on his arm, curtsying, but she didn’t dip her head, eyes still on Damien, lips parted on the verge of saying something that just wouldn’t come out. She was so close, an arm’s length away, and he wanted little more than to close that gap, the arcane word itching at his throat to order her away from the marquis. But then Cedric shifted her about to her own surprise, tugging her out onto the dance floor and into the crowd.
She was spun in Cedric’s arms, face flushing as she sucked in a breath, eyes wide. A quick pace took her away from him, blocked by the others on the floor, perhaps a good thing in that moment, seeing Cedric pull her about like a puppet inspiring more noxscura to scratch beneath his skin. The baron pulled Damien into another conversation then, and he endured more praise he neither wanted nor deserved, all the worse knowing Amma was so distraught and he was doing nothing about it.
This went on throughout the evening until the baron and baroness were distracted by two separate groups and had mingled away from him. Finally alone, Damien climbed one of the winding staircases to the balcony that ran the entirety of the ballroom. Both behind him and on the ringing balcony’s far side, there were wide arches that led outdoors, the cool air of an early autumn evening wafting in.
It was quieter there, the music and voices rising up out of the bowl in a gentler din, and Damien leaned on the balcony’s metal railing to gaze at the scene below, so many of them dancing, drinking, and then there was Amma being spun about, and he wondered if he had gotten it all wrong. Perhaps shewashappy. This was her home, after all, and she’d spoken of it so passionately. The story of childhood festivals, of her friends, the comfort all around, the enchanted trees—was he only seeing what he’d hoped to see in her and not what was really there?
A knock at his boot made him look farther down. On the ground beside him was a little, grey rat waving tiny rat paws, crooked rat whiskers twitching over its underbite.
“Kaz!” he said, never before so pleased to see an imp as he bent to scoop him up. “You survived.”
“Barely,” he squeaked back, melting flat onto Damien’s palm. “Boots should be outlawed. When do we leave this wretched place?”
Damien grunted back. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I need the talisman…”
“I will help you take it!” Kaz popped back up onto his haunches. “We will decimate this place. Think of the chaos!”
“Let me guess.” Damien wrapped his hand around the rat. “You want me to gut her right here in the middle of the ballroom.”
“No!” squeaked Kaz, clawed paws gripping onto his fingers as he squeezed. “I was only going to suggest stealing her away in the night! Really!”
Damien glanced back over the balcony railing, spying Amma again. “Actually kidnap her out of her bed? The irony.”
“Yes, Master, take her and flee.”
