Page 100 of House of Marionne

“Oh, is that right?” She turns to the crowd. “The heir isn’t immortal, ladies and gentlemen. If you poke her, she bleeds!”

Her words lasso my insecurity and pull it down, down like an anchor, my gaze falling with it.

“Oh gosh, girl. I’m kidding!” She shakes my shoulders. “I’m just giving you a hard time. Rikken, another round to celebrate! Seriously, I’m kidding. I stopped by to congratulate you at your reception the other morning, but you looked busy.”

I take a sip of my kizi, and a hand touches my hip.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Jordan says to Shelby. “Dance with me?” He offers me his hand, and I take it. He pulls me away from the prying crowd, from a drunk Shelby, to the dance floor.

“Thank you.”

“Rethinking your choice of celebration yet?”

“Shut up,” I tease, and that gets me a smile.

Ballroom dancing isn’t the only kind of moving Jordan can do, apparently. We move in that way our bodies instinctively know how to. Pressed close. People stare, but I ignore them, playing the part, grafting myself into the Marionne-sized shoes I’m supposed to fill as perfectly as I can. Music pumps through the bar, and I feel it pulsing through my body. I move with it, ignoring the stares, trying to forget what Jordan just admitted to me about Dragun work. The shouts drown out after a while. The last weeks of my life play like a reel in my head, but I let myself go, imagining myself free of all of it.

“I can practically hear your thoughts spinning.”

“Just thinking about what we talked about outside. You didn’t do the best job of making it sound uninteresting.”

The music slows.

“Thirsty,” I say, leading him to the bar, and signal the bartender.

“Rikken, a kiziloxer and . . .”

“A water,” Jordan shouts overhead before slapping hands in greeting with someone he knows.

Rikken fills a glass. “Fresh meat, glad to see you in here at a normal time of night.”

I go cold all over.

“What’d he say?” Jordan nudges me.

“He said . . . uh . . . would you like a soda?”

“Water, I said.” Jordan nods, and Rikken gazes between us, stare narrowed at my blatant lie. He slides me a glass and I pull Jordan away from the bar.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I walk toward the back of the lounge area and fall into a couch around the karaoke stage where it’s less crowded, more quiet, my mind still whirring at Draguns using dark magic. Jordan joins me.

We’re sitting, comfortable in the silence, as a masked singer onstage belts into a microphone, when I spot Mynick heading our way.

Jordan groans.

“What?”

“Ambrosers. They’re all the same. Arrogant know-it-alls.”

The irony. Mynick joins us on the couches, glancing at his watch.

“That friend of yours is going to make herself sick over Cotillion. She said she’d be here an hour ago.”

“Good luck with that, Abby is swimming in preparations. She’s down to a couple weeks, I think.”

“Twelve days.” He sighs. “And I can’t escort her. Did she tell you?”

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