We spun again, letting the music wash over us. The line of her throat was a temptation I chose not to think about. And then there was the tattoo. A wink from her father as if he, too, was watching this dance.
“Tell me something true,” she said softly.
“I have,” I said.
“Tell me something you haven’t yet.”
I looked at her mouth. “If I start with you, I won’t stop.”
Her breath hitched. She covered it by shifting closer, our bodies fitting in a way that was too easy. Her next words skimmed my jaw. “Maybe I’m not asking you to.”
The room faded to edges—the guards, the dais, the way Patamoi’s eyes tracked our every move. None of it mattered for two heartbeats when she tipped her chin and our mouths almost brushed. The space between her lips and mine was a coin’s width, maybe less.
I could feel the heat of her.
It should have been wrong, flaunting what I felt for her infront of a king who despised me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care what anyone thought but her.
The spell between us shattered as a distinctive tremor passed through the floor. Aurelia’s steps faltered. The orbs overhead swayed, one bumping another and sending a scatter of gold across the crowd. A few guests laughed, thinking it a party trick—until the second vibration hit harder. Plates rattled.
Somewhere, a servant screamed.
Dishes crashed.
The walls groaned as if something enormous had shoved at them.
Aurelia’s hand stiffened in mine. “Did you feel that?”
“Stay close.”
The third shockwave cracked through the hall, and every light snuffed out at once.
For half a breath, there was nothing but the dark and the sound of the sea pressing at the walls. Then a single shape drifted out of it.
A naiad. Or what had been one.
Her skin was marble white, veins blackened like cracks in ice. Eyes hollow, mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. When she moved, shejerked, as if dragged forward by a force that was not her own.
Gasps echoed around us.
Patamoi rose halfway from his throne, trident in hand. “Guards?—”
The creature shrieked, the sound vibrating through the space until my skull rang.
The naiad struck first.
The nearest guard went down in a swirl of black water; his armor turned brittle and split apart like eggshell. The infection spread through him before he hit the floor.
Keres’s voice snapped through the din: “Daegel!”
His shadow shield expanded like a dome, pushing civilians back. Thorne waded into the chaos, hauling people behind pillars. But the naiad ignored the fleeing guests, its eyes fixed on Aurelia.
Her hand tore free of mine, furyfire flaring from her palms in a burst of magic. The flames rolled off her, lighting the entire hall in flickering darkness.
“Don’t—” I started.
Too late.
The creature dove at her.
