Page 54 of Peculiar Engagements

“He has other qualities,” Yves whispered back.

“I could always go in your stead,” Harriet told him, braiding in another yellow flower. “I might be a little stockier than you, but I have the right hair color.”

“Thank you,” Yves said, looking up at the rain through the high window, “but I’ve agreed to do this.”

“You could run after him,” Harriet said.

Percy groaned and threw down the silk robe he was examining. “What are you all being so cagey about? Who is he running after?”

“Charon,” Harriet said, just as Yves said, “No one.”

“Charon?” Percy’s expression went blank. “Why would you run after…”

“Think about it,” Harriet said, and Percy swiveled around in his chair to look at Yves.

“You mean to say that all this time, you haven’t just been prancing around Charon for the fun of it?” Percy asked. “But you always seemed so…but you were friends!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, in any case,” Yves said, taking a sip of his champagne. “Charon wouldn’t admit to anything. I gave him the opportunity, and he left.”

Percy got to his feet. “And you didn’tmakehim talk?”

“Maybe I let him go,” Yves muttered into his drink.

Percy started pacing the room like an agitated cat.

“You let him go. You, Yves. You don’t let anything go. It’s in your nature to be a stubborn little ass. That’s what I like best about you! That’s why we’re friends!”

“Youtry running after someone like a pathetic, sniveling wretch,” Yves said.

“Oh, so it’s yourpride.” Percy made a dismissive sound.

“He does have a point,” Harriet said innocently, twisting a flower in her fingers.

“I’m not here to be judged,” Yves said, feeling more than a little testy. “I’m here to get married.”

“Are you?” Percy asked. “What else have you been hiding from me? Is this Raul secretly a prince of somewhere?”

“No, but he’s nice.”

Harriet put one of the flowers in her own hair. “And nice is what you want?”

“I’m on the verge of kicking you both out so I can have a second to breathe, actually,” Yves started to say, but he stopped short when the door to the dressing room swung open.

Oleander stood on the doorway, damp with rain and hardly dressed for a wedding. Yves hadn’t expected them to come in the first place. They’d been uncharacteristically silent since that night at Lord Marteau’s, and Yves had assumed they would rather skip the wedding and work through whatever complicated feelings they had about being rescued by someone they thought of as a rival. But there Olly was, looking slightly wild behind the eyes as they glared at Yves.

“He just passed the House of Onyx,” they said.

“He?” Harriet asked.

Olly took a heaving breath. “I saw him from the window. It’s like a parade out there. There were circus performers or something, people dressed in these ridiculous pink and red outfits—but when they said who it was, people started leaving the pleasure houses to see what’ll happen. Everyone says he’s coming to ruin the wedding.”

“Who?” Yves asked, rising from his chair.

“Charon,” Olly said. “Charon’s coming here foryou.”

Dancers always did love a crowd. Charon spotted members of Cillian’s troupe talking excitedly to curious onlookers as they entered the city, and the Starian fondness for melodrama won out against the pouring rain as people gathered around the performers, staring at Charon. The first time he’d entered Duciel, Charon had been no one. Even in Arktos, he was just an interrogator’s apprentice—the patrols who’d searched for him likely didn’t bother looking too hard for someone most of Arktostried to ignore. He had entered Staria alone, and the world moved on, ambivalent.

No one could ever be truly ambivalent about Yves. The sun had already crossed its zenith and was close to sinking behind the storm clouds that darkened the wheat fields beyond Duciel. At the top of the hill, Yves was likely about to say his vows at any moment. The crowd around Charon seemed to sense it, and Charon heard anxious murmurs through the ceaseless drumming of the rain.

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