A sharp, involuntary breath escapes me, and my palms tighten on the stone. I hate that my pulse answers him. I hate that everything in me wants to soften when his voice roughens with promise. I hate that when we move, our bodies find the same rhythm without even trying, as if the music itself was written for this impossible pairing.
“Then why did youchooseSeraphina? Why go through all the trouble to make my dress match you only to humiliate me? Why act like you care?”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. “You think I don’t care? You think I don’t spend every waking moment thinking about you?”
Anger sparks, cutting through the ache. I twist, meaning to shove him away, but the movement only brings me closer. My mask grazes his. His scent holds a heat that sinks deep.
“Where have you been?” The words lash out, harsher than I mean them. “A week of silence, and now this?” I gesture wildly toward the hall, toward the mirrors that pulse like they might swallow us whole. “What is this ball, Keiren? Why does it feel like the walls are about to crack open and devour us?”
For a heartbeat, I think he’ll refuse me—that he’ll stay hidden behind his mask and his silence. But his jaw tightens, his breath heavy against my cheek.
“Is that why you sent the flowers?” I ask.
He nods. “The curse that binds me demands my absence before this Trial,” he admits. “I could not come to you, though I wanted to.” His thumb grazes my jaw, a touch light as breath. “It is also why I made this dress but did not dancewithyoufirst.” His eyes soften with something like sorrow. “This ball isn’t revelry. It’s survival. The mirrors… Nothing here is what it seems.”
My pulse skitters, frantic and unsteady. “Survive?” I echo, my voice catching. “You’re talking like you’ve already chosen which of us won’t.”
“There’s something you must know before midnight—”
“Then tell me! No more riddles. Or flower messages I need to decode.”
His fingers tighten around mine on the railing. “Listen carefully, love. Just as before, I can only give you a riddle as your clue:Old as time and just as true—only in facing the truth will you find your way through. Ghost in the glass, crystallized by time—get out before the sun doth shine.”
The poem’s cryptic warning sears through me.
“Fire…” His voice drops to a caress that prickles across my skin.
The distance between us narrows to a breath, a heartbeat, a single thought. My lips part, those traitors. His mask shadows half his face, but I can feel the craving coiling within him—he means to strike, to take what he has denied himself all week.
Desire surges, swift and merciless. My pulse hammers in my throat—
The bells begin to toll, drowning out everything else.
The sound reverberates mercilessly through the keep. Candles bow, guttering toward the glass as if pulled by the tide. A shiver passes through the mirrors behind us—the barest ripple—and every hair along my arms rises.
Keiren goes still. He takes my hand.
“Come,” he says, suddenly distant, and leads me back inside.
Across the hall, Mae’s hands flare with light. Sigils shimmer at her wrists, then vanish, as if the keep itself has swallowed them. Arther’s head snaps toward the doors, his hand already on steel.Cassian lifts his goblet and watches, golden eyes alight, as if a story he’s read a hundred times has finally reached his favorite page. Lyra smiles faintly, and in the mirror at her back, I see her face more clearly than I should. Her lips shape words I cannot hear:So, it begins again.
The air tightens, and the crowd thins—no, dissolves. Silk turns to smoke. Laughter drops into silence. It all happens with the slow, inevitable grace of an hourglass emptying.
And then only we remain.
The brides.
The court.
The king.
His fingers slip from mine at last. For a moment, he only looks at me—in a way no one ever has. Then he steps back, vanishing into the darkened archway as if he were never there at all.
I’m left gripping the railing, breath uneven, heart clawing at my ribs. The moonlight catches my mask, silver and cold.
And in the distance, the faint echo of music swells again, promising nothing but imminent danger.
Chapter 27
