“Auclair?” Nik snorted. “It’s fake.”
“Then she’ll be in good company with us.” Blai glanced up at Lafontaine, who was finding his way back to his seat with the rest of the Counseil. “Care to dig into those daddy issues yet?”
Nik scowled.
“Lighten up.” Blai bopped his nose with the fan. “You’re at one of the most enviable events of the decade. This Auclair could be good for you.”
“This isn’t a holiday. I’m working.”
“Why not mix business with pleasure?”
Before he could even remind Blai that this wasnothis idea of pleasure, the double doors opened and the crowd fell quiet. A waiter with tight curls on the crown of his head entered without a cart.
“Introducing Favored Seventeen!”
Blai leaned in, voice soft and warm in Nik’s ear. “Trust me, you’llknow once you see her. Fight like hell to get her, and daddy will be kissing your cheeks and tucking you in with a bedtime story.”
They pulled away just as the chef sauntered in.
Nik got his first glimpse of Elouise Auclair.
7ELARA
Color.
It exploded from every corner. Elara had never seen such vibrant shades, had hardly known they could come in as many brilliant hues.
Nowhere, not even among the servants, was there a trace of bleached fabric.
Everything was brighter, bigger, louder. Effervescent green dresses with billowing, gauzy fabrics. Blues like the ocean in long silk trains. Lemony blouses with billowing sleeves of glitter. All of it shimmered with life and magie.
The closer she looked, the dizzier she got. A woman’s dress was art. It covered her in writhing vines because theywerevines. A man in a silver jacket, opened to reveal his sculpted chest, leaned in and plucked a ripe berry from the end of one of the vines and ate it. When his eyes caught Elara’s, he made sure to lick his fingers.
This was another world.
The kitchen door shut, trapping Elara inside it.
Begging in the streets would be better than standing in the center of a room filled with such wasteful decadence. Especially when people dressed in actual food glared at her as if she were a disease. Elara had needed those strawberries barely a week ago—would’ve given her last soms to have them—and they were a fashion statement?
Holding tight to that anger, she refocused on the mission. Distract the Counseil, lose with grace, then get the hell out.
She pushed the cart forward, making the long trek toward the dais.
Elara had never seen the Souverains before. Not in person. They never visited the Restes before the uprising, and they sure as hell steered clear after. Only their likenesses had been captured on propaganda plastered to brick walls.
The real subjects were haunting.
While each Souverain was different in skin color and size, they were all… perfect. Not a blemish or scar, not a blush or a dark shadow beneath their eyes. It was if some delicate hand had sculpted each of them from the purest stone and polished their features to ethereal smoothness. Some, like Souverain Gabriel of Arts Manufacturiers, looked ageless despite their white hair, but the eyes gave them away. Each of them looked down at her with indifference, gargoyles upon a parapet. Of time and beyond it. One of the people and nothing like them.
A final seat at the end remained open: a somber prize.
Elara approached.
“Please state your name clearly for the Counseil,” Souverain Lafontaine called.
Elara’s mouth dried. She couldn’t fail. In order to help her mother’s recipes live on, she needed to let her name go.
“I… I am Elouise Auclair.”
