‘Impatient, are we?’
He snatched his hand from her roaming fingers.
‘She’ll join us soon, no doubt.We know how much she wants to meet your new pet.’
‘I’ll ask someone else, then,’ Raleigh said.‘Always a pleasure.’He spun me away.
‘Who was—’
‘Prince Raleigh!’
Raleigh swore under his breath and pulled me into another sharp turn to avoid an approaching man in a powdered wig.‘Are you ready to dance?I really fancy a spot of dancing.’
‘To avoid your old friends?’
He contorted us into a waltz hold with no reply other than a withering look, which I frankly deserved.
We didn’t know the steps.The other dancers spun in precisely choreographed movements, which made us stand out more than we already did.The waltz had reached Orlfen around the same time Raleigh did, but Father had forbidden me from learning it, deeming it improper for a girl my age.Raleigh knew enough to lead me, but he had hardly spent the last fifteen years attending balls.We followed our own steps, music billowing around us and tuning out the danger lingering at its edge.The other dancers were no longer looking at each other.Without missing a step, their eyes were attuned to the only couple out of line.Or to the lonely dancer in the mirror.
‘Everyone’s looking at us.’
‘Ignore them.’He let go of my hand to tilt my face upwards.‘Look only at me.’
It was an act, I knew that, but his words still sent a thrum through me.When he reclaimed my hand, I was certain he could feel my pulse quicken, my skin growing hot.We twirled in time to the music, and suddenly I was closer to him.His hand landed higher up my back, pressing our chests together.His face tipped to mine.To anyone watching, he must have appeared entirely in control, the picture of pure confidence.Only I was close enough to note the uncertainty darting across his features.
‘We should kiss,’ he whispered.
I tightened my grip on his shoulder.Ever since we left home I’d suspected this moment would come and the feeling it evoked was far from dread.Half a lifetime ago the prospect would have been abhorrent.Now, I didn’t know.
‘I’ll try to make it convincing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and put his lips on mine.
His kiss was tender, but brief.This was a transaction.An act.None of this was real for Raleigh, and if it was real for me, it was only because I’d fallen for a performance.
And yet, in that moment I was truly and utterly lost to him.
His kiss wasn’t believable.That’s what I told myself when I pushed myself to my toes to kiss him again.What I continued to repeat like a mantra when I tangled my hands in his hair.When he snaked his hands up my back to pull me close, until we were so entangled in each other I no longer knew where I ended and he began.
Kissing Raleigh was nothing like kissing Yann.There was something inevitable about kissing Yann, and there is nothing thrilling about the inevitable.Kissing Raleigh was like plummeting from a cliff, and whatever awaited at the bottom was at once terrifying and captivating.If his touch was once electrifying, it now felt like being struck by lightning.I could feel every movement, every caress right through to my core.If this was how it felt to kiss him, the mere thought of going further was almost enough to make me come undone.
It took all of my willpower to break the kiss.Raleigh’s eyes were glazed, his lips begging to be kissed again.‘I think we convinced them,’ he murmured.
Them?I blinked myself back into reality, back into the nightmare.I’d been so lost in the moment I’d all but forgotten our audience.We’d been so dreadfully indecent.As every one of my emotions spiked at once, all I could do was laugh.And as soon as I started, Raleigh did too.Soon we were doubled over in a fit of infectiousgiggles.The situation was absurd.Here the two of us were, one wrong move away from being ripped apart by a court of vampires, and we were giggling like children.
The song faded, the dancers dispersed and in the mirrored wall I watched as a line of humans were guided into the room and lined up along the back.The oldest could have been Waltz’s sister, the youngest no older than five or six.Each stared at a spot on the floor just beyond their knees, expression vacant, eyes blank.Raleigh tried to spin me so we couldn’t see them, but there was no wall that didn’t reflect their empty stares.
Any desire to laugh was quickly extinguished.‘Is that …’
‘The banquet,’ Raleigh confirmed, his voice numb.He turned away.To avoid looking at me or to avoid looking at them, I didn’t know.‘Come on.’He put a hand on my waist, as the music swelled again.‘We should keep dancing.’
I didn’t move.I couldn’t take my eyes off the youngest.Someone had lovingly braided ribbons through her hair that morning.Her grass-stained dress had been patched and re-patched and her shoes were new, two sizes too big.Shoes meant to be grown into.I thought painfully of whoever had woven those ribbons into her hair searching the woods for a child who would never come home.‘I can’t leave them,’ I said.
‘This is how it is at court.’
I swayed, wondering if I was going to be sick.And then the woman Raleigh had called Seraphina was once again at his arm.She tried to unlatch his hand from me.‘We must dance,’ she said, ‘for old time’s sake.’
Raleigh redoubled his hold on my waist.‘I have no desire to do anything forold time’s sake.’
