“You mean at the ball?” Darius asked.
“At the whole thing. The ball, the Crystal Palace, why we’re quaffing champagne instead of fighting out the last few sieges of this miserable war?”
Darius took a step back and considered my question. “Well, ostensibly, the Emperor’s jubilee, but everyone knowsthis is a clandestine peace negotiation. What no one knows is why…”
“Someone detonated a Fall device,” I bluntly answered his unspoken question.
The laughter immediately left Darius’s face, and I could see an archduke’s authority in his stance. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” I replied.
Darius scrutinized my eyes, his expression melting from annoyance to horror. “Oh, stars, you’re serious.”
“So you didn’t know,” I confirmed.
“No, Stars no. How would I know? How doyouknow about this?” Darius asked.
“Know about what?” Princess Marie asked from beside me. She’d approached without my noticing, but I’d wanted to talk with her anyways. I took a small step back to let her join the conversation.
Darius closed the little circle. “Know the Emperor assembled this jubilee because somebody set off a Fall device!”
Princess Marie always held an air of delicate nobility about her, but I’d never thought she looked fragile or weak. When she heard the archduke’s hissed half-question, though, her face blanched, and she staggered slightly.
I’d seen the same thing happen to soldiers who stood up after losing a lot of blood. “Grab her,” I ordered Darius as I took the princess by the elbow. “Easy, easy. Focus on my voice.” I guided the princess around to press her back against a crystalline pillar.
“She should sit down,” the archduke said.
“No, no, I’m all right. I just need a moment,” Princess Marie said.
An unwelcome voice penetrated our little circle. “As would I, Princess, being courted by these two handsome men. An archduke and the Emperor’s Consort, no less.”
I turned. Bridgette d’Lyre stood behind me in a shimmering ruby dress, a glass of brandy lazily cupped in a black-gloved hand as she grinned from beneath a waterfall of hair. She was somehow elegantly draped over nothing at all as she stood, her enticingly bared leg balancing on the toe of her high heel.
“Whatever are you three doing, skulking in the corner like a bunch of thieves? One would think you were hatching some dastardly plot,” Bridgette said, trying a second joke after her first failed.
The three of us stared wordlessly at Lady d’Lyre, refusing to give her an opening to our conversation. Bridgette waited expectantly, but grew visibly unsettled as the seconds passed without a word. Finally, she composed herself and turned directly towards me.
“Captain Boylan, I’m so happy to see you. Please allow me to apologize for my behavior this afternoon.”
“You were ill. There is nothing to apologize for,” I brusquely replied. Must she turn up every time I tried to speak with Marie and Darius? Damn the Duke of Lynwyzc, I couldn’t ignore my personal allies forever. I wondered if d’Lyre was trying to isolate me from the former League members. In an attempt to dismiss Bridgette, I rotated my shoulder to more squarely face Darius and Marie.
Somehow, d’Lyre managed to wedge herself between me and Marie, gently placing her free hand on my shoulder. “Nevertheless, I hope you will forgive me. A lady should be able to handle a little altitude. I promise you, I am not so delicate in other situations.”
“So I’ve heard,” Archduke Darius said. Princess Marie gave a little giggle, which Lady d’Lyre ignored with a flip of her blue-black hair.
Bridgette pivoted, trying to move so she and I would beseparated as a couple from the other two. “I rather hoped to speak with you up by the lake. I was so relieved to see you again after your disappearance last night. I thought you must have returned to the Emperor, but you were nowhere to be found. I was so worried. Where did you go?”
“I had a sudden engagement I was unable to break,” I said, not wanting her to know about my twin kidnappings.
“Well, shall we pick up where we left off?” she said, slinking her arm around mine.
“My apologies, Lady d’Lyre, but since I was unable to fulfill my promises to my allies on the beach, I must prioritize them now,” I said, but I was at a loss as to how to extricate myself from her grasp.
“Surely you do not blame me for your misfortunes. I was as concerned as anybody else,” Bridgette protested.
“Regardless, I’m afraid you must wait your turn,” Darius said, grabbing my wineglass, tossing back the drink, then taking my hand and yanking me bodily onto the dance floor. Instinctively, my right hand wrapped around his waist as my feet methodically began to waltz.
“Thank you,” I said, bewildered by the motion. “That woman’s been on me like a tick.”
