“Luca.” Her voice was muffled against his coat. “You made it. I knew you would.”
“Where you go, I follow,” he promised, with a laugh. “Eventually, at least.”
She took his hand in both her gloved palms and led him away. “Tell me everything—about Gavin, about the final Ordeal—”
I watched them leave with my jaw practically unhinged. I’d suspectedsomething, but this?
Sunder stared after them with his jaw set. He lifted an expressive eyebrow when he saw me looking.
“Jealous?” he purred.
“Of Luca?” I laughed. “Not even a little. But don’t try to tell me you’re happy about this.”
A muscle leapt in his jaw, but all he said was: “My sister knows her own mind. And her heart. We should all be so lucky.”
Heat crept up my throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sunder looked away. “You should bathe, and dress. We dine at second Compline.”
And he too disappeared into the cold, pale château, leaving me alone.
Supper was a livelier affair than the first time I’d been at Belsyre.
I dressed in a gown with a pale lace bodice that fell away into a weightless expanse of midnight tulle. The four of us ate at that same impossibly long banqueting table, scattered with spotless crystal goblets and gleaming silverware and candles sparking with the scents of evergreen and captive frost. We ate escargot with shallot butter and brioche; tarragon-spiced rabbit with whipped potatoes and wilted spinach; lavender-scented croquembouche swirled with snowflake sugarwork. I thought it all a bit much—none of us were royalty.
Anymore.
Still, I was hungry, so I greedily shoveled food into my mouth while Oleander and Luca carried the conversation.
“How did you know that Red Mask was going to try to kill Mirage?” Oleander wasn’t eating—instead, she had her chin on her hand and was watching Luca with a weird glow in her eyes. I frowned. Was that what people in love looked like? I glanced at Sunder. His eyes glittered over the rim of his wineglass. I looked away.
“I didn’t,” Luca said around a mouthful of potatoes. He might have won Oleander’s affection, but he hadn’t picked up any table manners along the way. “The third Ordeal was frankly boring. The two heirs went off into the Oubliettes, and that was it. There was nothing to see. The spectators were getting restless—drinking too much and gambling on who was going to win. Someone started a fight up front—now I see it was probably meant as a distraction. That’s when I saw the Red Mask slip away into the Oubliettes after Mirage. I didn’t think, just followed.”
She touched his hand. “You were brave.”
He flushed. “It was nothing.”
Sunder rolled his eyes so hard I thought his skull might split. He pushed back his chair, sloshed more wine into his glass, and stood.
“I’m finished.” I waited for him to stalk off, but he held out a hand to me instead. “Lady Mirage, do you wish to accompany me on a tour of the château? I think, perhaps, you have not seen much of it before.”
I’d done little but wander its halls for three days straight the first time I’d been here. But he didn’t know that. Besides, my only other option was to stay here and watch Oleander and Luca try to make babies with their eyeballs. I stood, and took his arm.
“Please,” I whispered. “In case whatever they have is catching.”
He smiled tightly. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he led me across the foyer and down through an annex toward another wing of the château. His words and movements seemed automatic, as though he was playing out a script someone else had written. His gloved hands sketched against the outlines of the château, and his mouth moved around words I thought I recognized:balustrade,cornice, andarabesque.
Finally, he dropped my hand and turned to face me. His mouth coiled with pale amusement.
“You don’t really care, do you?”
“It’s just walls and marble and tile,” I said, a little helplessly. “Those may be the building materials of a house, but they aren’t the things homes are made of.”
He considered this. “If that’s true, then this place is built from the bricks of forgotten lives.”
I frowned. “Surely you don’t believe that.”
“Look at this place.” I followed his gaze to a vaulting crystal ceiling. “Some ancestor built this château a thousand tides ago, and then died. Generations of my family have lived here. Hundreds of children were born beneath this roof. Someone has died in every room. I inherited their property, their fortune, their lands, and yet I don’t know their names. I don’t know what they lived for—what they dreamed of, who they loved, why they died. It’s just a palais built from memories, with no one to live in it.”
