Page 4 of The False Vow

His mouth twisted. “They dressed you to match him.”

I flinched. At once, the memory of Noé—put aside after I’d left our box—rose up before me like a ghost. I recalled the garish hue of his suit, his cruel mouth, lips stained redder by the wine in his cup. I cannot guess at anything you might do, Tamerlane.

When I said nothing, Eliot’s frown deepened. “It doesn’t bother you?” he asked. His features had tightened—there was a test in his question. “Looking like you belong together?”

I tensed. “Why should it?” I replied. “Appearances mean nothing. Whatever we look like, my heart will never belong to him. He knows it as well as I do.”

Eliot moved away when I went to touch his wrist. My heart stumbled; I tried to keep my expression even as he echoed lowly, “Does he?”

His voice was hushed. In the coinlight, his eyes had a feline gleam to them, half of him still swallowed by the dark.

“But you do not know him, Lovett,” Eliot said.

Quiet fell over us. It was not the first time he’d made the point.

I shifted my weight to one hip, then the other. During the Vainglory, I would have countered him easily—it didn’t matter how well I knew Noé, only whether I thought he would uphold his end of the bargain we’d made—but since…I was frightened of pushing too hard and severing something between us.

It was true, I’d entered the Alaires’ competition only because Eliot had enlisted me to do so. And it was true, too, that throughout it, he’d hidden as much from me as I had from him—his secret partnership with Sybil, for one. Even so…I knew he felt I’d betrayed him when I’d accepted Noé’s proposal without consulting him.

No—that wasn’t quite right. I knew I had betrayed him.

He’d told me that he loved me, and I’d agreed to marry his best friend. It was further evidence of the terrible difference between us. He was loyal, and I…Well, sometimes, I worried I was more like Noé than him. Just a rat, driven by anger and need, looking for an ankle to bite.

Abruptly, Eliot released a breath, and my thoughts scattered. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, nodding into the murk ahead of us. “She’s here.”

My anxiety dissipated. Meeting his gaze, I gave him a nod in return, then stepped back as he stooped to pick up his coin from the ground. The Emilie Suite was larger than the box Noé and I were seated in, divided into two portions—a receiving area, where Eliot and I had been conversing, and then, down a set of steps, the viewing box itself. I caught glimpses of a worn wooden banister separating the areas as Eliot led me onward, torn carpeting in a vibrant rose shade, its floral pattern faded and stained.

We descended the stairs together, my hand on his arm. At their bottom, the space extended forward, its outer railing curved to allow a view of the stage. As I’d guessed upon entering the suite, thick velvet drapes had been pulled over the opening, obscuring the auditorium from sight. I could hear the muffled voices of the singers through the dimness, but could make out nothing except the darkness in front of me.

The darkness, and a woman seated within it, the back of her head illuminated by Eliot’s coin.

She turned when she sensed the light on her. In the coin’s wan glow, her white skin was luminous, her eyes—a pale green—shining as they latched on to mine. She appeared to be about Bastian’s age, faint lines just beginning to appear in her forehead and around her mouth; still, she wore her long red hair loose, cascading like a hood around her shoulders.

I saw her daughter’s face when she smiled. “So, here is the newest Mrs. Alaire-to-be,” Lucie Dabos said. Her voice, too, was more girlish than her age suggested, fluting over me as she spoke. “Come closer, dear.”

Eliot wordlessly nudged me onward. Conceding, I made for the seat next to the one Lucie was curled on, conscious of him lowering himself into the chair on her opposite side.

My pulse stuttered as I sat. Unlike her daughter and me, Lucie was not a silkwitch—but that didn’t mean, necessarily, that she was powerless. She’d held her position as a Councillor on Balmoore’s Virtuous Parliament nearly as long as Eliot’s father, the notorious Weaver Reginald Lear, had. Even before Eliot and I had met, I’d known of the two families’ rivalry. Reginald was a stalwart advocate for sorcerers’ rights—less oversight, more control over silkwitches and the magesilk we produced, all the issues which Bastian Alaire told him to support—while Lucie and her Laborer’s Party favored the exact opposite.

It was part of why we’d approached her for this conversation.

I stiffened as Lucie placed a knuckle beneath my chin. Her hands were gloveless, her skin chilly—softer, I thought, than Sybil’s had been. “Well then,” she said, examining me. “Pretty enough, but I have seen your features a hundred times, on a hundred different girls. I daresay my Sybil was more striking.” Her gaze swept past me, toward where Eliot was seated on her opposite side. “What did you say her Wit was, my dear?”

He cleared his throat. “She has a talent for doors, as I told you.”

Lucie’s stare clipped back to me. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “Rather pedestrian. My own daughter was clairvoyant, as you likely remember.”

I did remember. Humming, she dropped my chin without waiting for my reply.

“Lear tells me you are an orphan,” she went on. Her tone, I noticed, differed slightly from the one she’d used with Eliot. There was subtle condescension to her manner now, as a party guest speaks to the host’s child. “Do you think that is what drew Noé Alaire to you? He is rather sentimental, I recall—forever losing himself in his novels.” She clucked her tongue. “Perhaps we should have added some tragedy to Sybil’s background before sending her into the competition.”

I smiled at that. “You judge your daughter unfairly, madame. It is very likely that she should have won Mr. Alaire’s heart, had she not died before she was given an adequate chance.”

The Councillor’s eyes gleamed. “That’s right,” Lucie said, studying me. She did not seem greatly uneased by my mention of her daughter’s passing. I was given the impression of a dog which had caught a scent. “A terrible loss. As her mother, I have naturally taken it particularly hard.” She shifted forward in her seat. “Bastian Alaire insists that her death was an accident, but he fails to understand that for a grieving parent, there can be no such thing. An incident so painful simply demands a party to blame. Thus far, no such person has had the dignity to step forward, yet…” Briefly, she turned toward Eliot. “Mr. Lear tells me you may be able to change that.”

I hesitated. With our limited communication, Eliot hadn’t mentioned how he’d lured Lucie to this meeting tonight, only that he had. How was I to play this?

After a moment, I decided to proceed with the truth. “We don’t know who, or what, killed your daughter.”