I shielded my eyes until they could adjust. When I looked back down, I saw an army.
Fear shot through me, and for a panicky moment I thought we had been ambushed by Skyclad gardes. But no—these soldats were impossible and beautiful and eerily still. And they were allwomen.
“Mirage!” Lullaby’s breathless voice was nearly inaudible. Her hand clutched my bicep. “What—whoare they?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
For a long time, we both gazed into the enormous, echoing chamber. There were hundreds—thousands—of them, marching in clean bright crystalline rows. They were translucent and strikingly realistic, as if each woman had been transformed from flesh and blood to flawless diamond. Each figure was unique, each face a map of histories—an atlas of emotion—beyond the scope of even the most talented sculptor. But that was all they were—statues.
“Lullaby.” I was loath to break the hymnlike hush. “When this château was first filled in—hundreds of tides ago—what if these Ordeals used to be more serious? More formalized? Not a game for bored or ambitious royals, but a ritual death match.”
She shivered. “We’ll never know, will we?”
“No, what I meant was—” I searched for the right words. “The trophy for the winner would have needed to be more than a title.Sun Heirwouldn’t have been enough to tempt them into this arena.There would have needed to be spoils.”
She looked askance at the glittering horde. “What use is a diamond army?”
I didn’t know.
But I wanted to.
Ishivered in the cool air outside Sunder’s door, scented with genévrier and snowfall, and dared myself to knock. The door swung open. I wrapped my arms around my chest, stepped inside, and looked into Sunder’s eyes.
His black-wolf shoulders were tight as a strung bow; the set of his mouth was like purgatory. He clearly hadn’t slept—he still wore his Loup-Garou uniform, although the black-and-white argyle sash had fallen askew and I saw mud—or was that still Pierre’s blood?—spattered on his usually polished boots. A savage bruise drowned his right eye in mottled purple and green, and I almost had to smother a laugh. Only a Suicide Twin could manage to make a swollen black eye look fashionable.
“More trouble in the city?” I asked, skirting awkwardness.
“They’re throwing Sun Heir parties—impromptu masques filled with pantomimes and gambling and too much drinking. But everyone’s also taking sides, which means fights are breaking out in every single quartier. I had to break up a brawl in Jardinier—two satin-clad courtesans had come to blows over who they thought was going to win the Ordeals. I’m not sure which was worse—the wine bottle one kept using as a bludgeon, or the makeshift blade the other had fashioned out of her high heel.”
“Isn’t it a little early to be celebrating? Or brawling?”
“I expect it will get worse before it gets better.”
“Your eye. Vida couldn’t fix that for you?”
“Wouldn’t,” he clarified. “Doesn’t matter—I deserved it.”
“For what?”
“For losing control.” His words were strangely distant, as though he’d rehearsed them—or thought of them so many times they’d lost their meaning. “For letting my emotions get the better of me. For hurting you.”
Oleander’s voice echoed in my ears:Be gentle with him.
I sat on the edge of his bed. “That was an accident.”
“I don’t get to have accidents.” Roughly, he undid the buttons on his asymmetrical jacket and ripped it open. A wave of sickly heat rolled off him, smelling less of genévrier and ice than burnt wood and singed metal. His ambric timbre glowed like a furnace beneath his undershirt. His eyes, when they met mine, were glazed with fear or fever. “I think—I think I shouldn’t touch you again without being sure I won’t hurt you.”
“When will that be?” My voice came out raw.
“I don’t know.” Both his eyes looked bruised in the low light, exhaustion and regret clinging to his stark features.
“It’s getting worse?”
Sunder said nothing, but the timbre’s angry throb was its own caustic assent.
“Sunder,” I said, reaching for him. “Come here.”
But when I kissed him, all I could taste were my doubts and his anguish and the helpless sensation of falling—falling like Meridian, away from the luster of moonlight back into the perilous dusk.
