Page 18 of Dark Night Golden Dawn
Enzo looked momentarily distraught, but she shook her head as he took her hand. “I’m fine. Just tired and ready to turn in.”
He kissed her cheek and she his, whispering, “Careful with your heart. I think Riley Quinn’s a bit of a personality.”
Enzo hugged her tightly. “Get home safe, love.”
“It was so nice to meet you,” Riley said with another dazzling smile.
She nodded, looking back once as she left to check on Enzo. He and Riley were already slow dancing and she shook her head with a smile. Someone who believed in the magic of the season as much as Enzo did deserved a little romance. She made her way back down the path littered with cherry blossoms and found the elevator, slipping out of the party without taking a second to look for Finn and Petra. She didn’t want to know what they were up to.
The entire day had been a lot. Harlow needed time, space and possibly a big order of parmesan fries to process. So she went home, and put herself straight to bed. The first event of the season was over, and she deserved the rest.
ChapterNine
The next morning, Harlow treated herself to a pineapple-coconut smoothie from the coffee shop around the corner, and then began to get ready for the Statuary party. She was exhausted from the night before, but she played an audiobook version of her favorite volume of children’s folklore to distract herself from turning it all over in her head again.
She’d already spent the night dreaming about it, there was no need to go over it again. After she’d bathed she dressed, in between texts from her sisters and the maters, all checking in about the previous night. She shot off a few to Enzo as well, and when he finally answered he confirmed that he had not taken Riley home, but that he was hoping to see them again soon. A smile stretched across Harlow’s face. Introducing them had been a good idea.
She stood in front of the ancient mirror that hung behind her front door. The glass was spotty, but it gave her a clear enough view of herself to make sure she looked all right. The dress Enzo chose nipped and flared in all the right places to make Harlow feel like an old film star. She’d been skeptical about unbuttoning the dress to reveal the lace of the bustier, but it gave the ensemble an elegantly alluring flair that kept it from being matronly.
Harlow managed a glamour on her hair that tamed her waves into large, loose curls that curved away from her face in a fashionable way that looked a bit undone. She did her makeup by hand, the human way, because she liked to. It was something she’d learned from Kate in uni and she’d kept doing it, even though she could get the same effect in mere seconds from a glamour.
The ritual of painting her face calmed her, soothed her frayed nerves and focused her scattered mind, which kept trying to go over the events at the Grove just one more time. Harlow preferred a somewhat natural look for daytime, but it still took the kind of effort that satisfied her. She set the entire look with glamour, to make sure none of her hard work would disappear in the hours that would follow, but she was pleased with the effect as she washed her hands. Harlow snapped a quick selfie in the mirror and sent it to Enzo and her sisters for approval. When no one had any objections, she walked downstairs to the car that was waiting to take her to the Statuary.
As they drove through the city, Harlow pressed her head against the cool window of the cab, drinking Nuva Troi in. Outside, the glittering neighborhoods of uptown melted into the rainy afternoon like watercolor paintings. Here, the buildings were centuries old, with enormous walled gardens that hid the estates from the view of the road.
Below, modern steel and glass rose shining in the drizzle, glowing before the ocean beyond. Everywhere, dark forest contrasted with the lights of the sprawling metropolis. Harlow’s heart swelled with love for Nuva Troi. Despite its many flaws, she loved this city. Its dark beauty made her feel at home in a way no other place ever had.
The sky was grey and a perpetual drizzle threatened the rest of Nuva Troi, but the Statuary remained dry as a bone, due to the Illuminated’s efforts to make the afternoon event perfect. The human cabbie shook his head as she paid him, suspicious of the magic that changed the weather for one part of the city but not the rest, she assumed.
Harlow couldn’t say she blamed him. She too thought it was ostentatious to use magic for something as trivial as keeping party guests from getting rained on, but it was the way of the Illuminated to make certain the events of the season were perfectly executed. Harlow texted both Thea and Enzo to tell them she’d arrived and then wandered into the gardens.
The Statuary was a monument to “great” Illuminated warriors and politicians, as well as being the city’s second largest botanical garden. Everywhere, a riot of flowers bloomed, filling the air with the heady scent of lilacs, roses, and the blooms from the jacaranda trees that lined the path that led to the center of the garden. Beyond the trees, the afternoon was ablaze with gold, purple and deep indigo flowers, as well as glossy green leaves everywhere she turned.
Many of the flowers wouldn’t bloom naturally until later in the spring or early summer, but the Illuminated had used magic to ensure the entire Statuary was awash with color and scent. The effect was utterly enchanting, but also formidable. Forcing flowers to bloom ahead of season was an intimidating show of dominion to anyone who truly understood the way magic and nature interacted.
To speed up a growing season, literally thousands of factors had to be managed. It was complex magic that went against the aethereal order, the natural force of nature and magic working in concert. To do such a thing, in addition to keeping the rain away from the Statuary with a degree of ease that Harlow knew wouldn’t drain the Illuminated in charge of these aspects of the party in the slightest, was a message to the lower Orders.
It was a reminder that everything in this world belonged to the Illuminated. Everyone else existed at their whim. That included the lower Orders, who even with their combined power, inherited from their Illuminated ancestry, never stood a chance of resisting them. And so traditions like the season, started by the Illuminated to control the lower Orders, went on as though they wereenjoyable.
Harlow wasn’t well-versed in the deeper lore of the season, but she knew the tradition started after the War of the Orders to tempt the lower Orders into forming alliances with one another, rather than with humans, which would expand their numbers. Of course, because the Illuminated were generally good at whatever they put their minds to, especially when they worked as a group, it was successful. It helped that their resources were limitless, their magic unsurpassed.
Aside from the Order of Night, which procreated through infecting humans with their venom, the Order of Mysteries and Order of Masks had eventually been convinced to pair within their own groups over humans, and true societies had formed within the Orders, strengthening the traditions the Illuminated started as the Orders made them their own.
It had never been forbidden to form unions with humans, but after the season had grown in popularity, those pairings were fewer and farther between than before. The lower Orders became suspicious of human motives, and the humans were as fascinated with the lower Orders as they’d been with the Illuminated, creating stark societal stratification between the groups. The Illuminated got their way yet again, by exerting their wealth and influence over the lower Orders. It was how it had always been for two thousand years. The Illuminated shaped society as they saw fit and everyone else simply followed along.
It helped that they were excellent at throwing a party. Harlow resented the Illuminated’s unchecked power over the world, and the lower Orders in particular, but she had to admit they knew what they were doing in that regard. Soft, sultry music floated through the air and all paths led towards the center of the gardens, where vast quantities of food were laid out on tables and people were milling about socializing.
Harlow saw plenty of people she knew, and would rather not speak to, but she located Enzo and Thea quickly. Thea looked lovely as ever in a creamy white and tan plaid coat that caused her pale skin and dark hair to glow ever so slightly. She looked like Aphora, goddess of the sea and moon, had descended to attend the first party of the season, and everywhere, people were staring at her, whispering.
“Where are the maters and the sillies?” Harlow asked as Enzo handed her a mug of steaming lavender tea.
“Not arrived yet,” Thea said, looking slightly uncomfortable as the people around them whispered. “Is there something wrong with the way I look?”
Her expression was so genuinely pained, so nervous, that Enzo and Harlow burst into a fit of laughter. “No, darling,” Enzo said when he was able to breathe again. “They’re stunned by how beautiful you are. You’re outshining the Illuminated.”
Thea blushed, which only served to make her prettier, in Harlow’s opinion. Through the crowd, she saw a tall, dark figure notice the effect. He was the same as he’d been in secondary school in many ways but older, less lanky, and still so beautiful it hurt to look at him. She hadn’t seen him at all last night, at his own home, so it was a little surprising to see him now.
“Don’t look,” Harlow whispered. “But Alaric Velarius is coming this way.”
