Late Eclipses
Page 20

I settled against the wall, taking slow sips of my wine. The tempo of the music changed, sliding into a slower, statelier pattern. I felt a hand on my shoulder, accompanied by the faint scent of dogwood flowers. I turned, my instinctive smile tempering to something more solemn than the norm. “Your Grace.”
Sylvester nodded, his own smile as tempered as mine. “You made it.”
“I did. May wouldn’t let me skip out.”
“Remind me to give that girl a Barony. May I have this dance?”
If there’s anyone who can get me onto the dance floor, it’s him. I put my glass on the table. “We need to talk,” I said. “It’s about Lily.”
“That’s why we’re dancing,” he said, and took my hands, pulling me along. “Don’t look at your feet. Just trust me.”
I don’t take that sort of suggestion from most people. Sylvester’s special. I kept my chin up, letting him guide me into the dance. His steps were steady enough to make up for how unsure mine were. He was doing what a good liege is supposed to do: he was making me better than I would be on my own.
“Sylvester, I—”
“In a moment,” he said, and bore me along.
We circled twice before he spun me out, fingers circling my wrist, and pulled me back to the stability of his arms. I looked around. We had somehow managed to move to the center of the crowd, where the sheer volume of the bodies around us would keep even the most experienced eavesdropper from making sense of our conversation.
“Now,” said Sylvester, leaning toward me so that his words fell into the hollow space between our bodies. “Is Lily as bad as her handmaid seemed to fear?”
I nodded. “As bad, if not worse. She’s really, really sick.” I gave a quick run-down of her symptoms.
The muscles around his eyes tightened. “If the Queen—”
“She won’t. But I’m sure you understand why I can’t stay long.”
“I do. If there’s anything we can do, you need only ask. You know that.”
It was a shot in the dark, but it was one I needed to take. “Did Lily ever tell you where she hid her pearl?”
“No.” There was honest regret in his voice. “Your mother might have known, but I never did. Lily and I . . . respected each other for the shared elements of our past. That didn’t make us friends.”
“Damn,” I muttered. I looked past him, trying to figure out what else to ask, and caught a flash of gold from the other side of the crowd. I frowned. “Who’s that?”
Sylvester didn’t turn. “That would be Raysel.” His voice was flat and impassive.
“Raysel?” I looked closer. He was right; it was her. I guess a conveniently timed summer cold was just a little bit too much to ask.
Rayseline Torquill looked superficially like her father, but where he was understated and elegant, she was gaudy and overdone. The blue rosettes on her gold silk gown clashed with her hair. The bodice was cut too low and the skirt was cut too high, but no one was going to question the Duke’s daughter at her own family’s Beltane Ball. She looked like a tacky costume party rendition of a fairy-tale princess.
Her partner . . . wasn’t her husband. I stared. He was dressed entirely in blue, and the formal cut of his clothes echoed Quentin’s—but Quentin looked comfortable in his court clothes, and this boy looked like he was longing for jeans. His hair was a rich gold a few shades darker than Raysel’s gown. A pale track of pixie-sweat glimmered in the air behind them as he spun her around the dance floor, expression dour.
“Manuel.” I looked back to Sylvester. “How is he?”
“Doing better. Quentin tells me he was even seen smiling the other night.”
“Good.”
I was a petty criminal in the service of a man named Devin before I was a knight of Shadowed Hills. I went to Devin when Evening was murdered, and the help he gave me included two of the kids who’d replaced me in his entourage: Manuel and his sister Dare. Devin was always a bastard, but I thought he loved me, and I never dreamed he’d betray me. Even after I knew how wrong I’d been, I didn’t know the kids were involved. Not until Manuel pulled a gun.
Devin and Dare both died that night. I lived, and Manuel blamed me. That was okay; I blamed me, too. I should’ve seen the truth sooner, or reacted faster, or . . .
You can live your life in “should” and never change anything. What’s done is done. We buried our dead. I went home. Manuel went to Shadowed Hills to hate me in peace. We’d been avoiding each other since then, a practice Sylvester was wise enough not to object to. Some wounds only heal with time.
The dance was ending. Sylvester spun me one last time before leading me back to the wall, where he let go of my hands and bowed. I curtsied in return, putting every ounce of courtly courtesy I had into the gesture.
“I would stay,” he said, as he straightened. “But a host’s duties demand I go. Will you consult with Luna before you leave?”
“Absolutely. I’m hoping she might know . . . something.”
“No rest for the wicked, is there?” He smiled sadly before he turned, slipping into the crowd. The band was striking up a fresh waltz. The dancers swirled around him, and he was gone, leaving me to return to my original position alone.
Someone had shifted my wine to the side to make room for a tray of canapés. I gave it a dubious look, considering the wisdom of drinking something I’d left unattended, and settled for picking it up and putting it on the nearest tray of dishes to be returned to the kitchen. Better safe than really, really sorry. The stem of the glass was coated with powdered sugar from a stack of tea cakes. It came off on my fingers, leaving them gritty. I slipped my hand through one of the slits in my dress and wiped it surreptitiously against my underskirt as I returned my attention to the crowd, scanning for Luna.
May and Jazz flashed past, a streak of black and silver amidst the riot of color, and I smiled. My smile grew as I saw Connor O’Dell—the husband Raysel hadn’t been dancing with—moving toward me, skirting the edge of the crowd with exaggerated care. Selkies tend to be awkward on dry land, and Connor was no exception. He saw me watching, and flashed me a grin that made my knees go weak.
“Hey,” he said, once he was close enough to be heard without shouting. He didn’t bother concealing the worry in his seal-dark eyes. “Is there any news?”