She took a deep breath that made her dress ripple.
“I hope after last night we’ll have no more trouble over dinner?” Mrs. Smith asked.
Eloise sparkled at her. “I certainly hope so. Dinner is a time for conversation and good food. Everything else, we leave at the door.” She glanced around the table, meeting each person’s gaze in turn. “I promise you that no matter what else happens, this table is a sacred space.”
“No poison in the wine?” Nikolaidis joked.
“We’reshifters.You’d sense it before you had a chance of dying!” Eloise laughed. “No. No poisons. No disembowelments over dessert.”
“Beheadings at breakfast,” Nikolaidis suggested absently.
“I didn’t say anything about breakfast. Dinner. That’s when we all come together and discuss the news of the day.” She beamed at them all. Julian felt sick.
*You have to go,*Francine told him, her voice shot through with urgency.
*What?*
*You heard her. Nobody’s going to attack anyone at the dinner table, especially after last night, so I can’t sit here with you standing behind me like a threat. I have to blend. I have to look like one of them, like someone Eloise can trust.*The urgency in her voice was twisting to something close to panic. He didn’t want to leave her, he wanted to pick her up and fly out ofhere. *Our mission depends on Eloise believing that I’m on her side. That I’m here to enslave your family, the same as everyone else here. If we want to keep her trust long enough for you to heal so we can get out of here, you need to go. Now.*
She still thought they were here to save his family.
His stomach twisted. There was nothing in Antarctica for him to save. Only something to keep imprisoned.
Francine twitched, her shoulder blades sharpening beneath the sheer fabric of her gown. She was too in control of herself to turn and glare at him over her shoulder, but her voice slipped like a knife into his mind.
*Stop staring at me and GO.*
He left.
Julian didn’t return to the suite. Instead, he prowled around the ship. Something he should have done the moment they arrived, he now realized.
He hadn’t been entirely confined to the fortress, growing up. He’d crept out to spy on scientists, and then Adria had bonded herself to one of them, and his brother-in-law had introduced him to the excitement of driving sleds over the ice and taking boats out on the water.
This ship was nothing like those smaller vessels. It was a floating hotel. A city dedicated to luxury and pleasure. He found lounges, bars, game rooms, even a dance floor. A salon. A spa. Gymnasiums suitable for human and animal athletes.
He wrapped himself in shadows, using his magic to keep himself hidden in the shallowest part of the shadow world. And in every corridor, around every corner, he found security guards doing the same thing. Each of them equipped with a dragon scale that granted them the ability to slip out of sight.
Dozens of strangers, using pieces ofhimto enter the shadow world.
He grimaced as bitterness flooded the back of his mouth.
The reminder that Harper had harvested his scales and doled them out among his friends wasn’t the only thing grating at his senses.
Every time he thought he had begun to understand Francine Delacourt, she changed his mind.
He thought he had begun to see through Francine’s armor. He had seen her desperate, hunted, driven by guilt. He’d seen her burn with rage and thought those glimpses of vulnerability behind her ice-queen façade were the real her.
Seeing her among these people—Harper’s people—had made another possibility writhe to the surface of his mind.
Thiswas the real Francine. The Francine who slipped more easily into conversation with people she thought wanted to murder his family than she did into conversation with him. Who wrapped wealth around herself like a luxurious coat and walked through the world as though she expected everyone in it to stop and throw themselves at her feet—if she noticed them at all.
Deep in his heart he feared that these shifters who wanted to destroy everything his family had worked to protect for so long were Francine’s real people, and he had let himself fall into another trap. Just like with Harper.
But at the same time, she was so afraid.
That could mean she wasn’t one of them. Or it could mean she would let her fear betray her. And him.
He’d seen that happen before.
