Page 18 of The Lord of Whispers

For the beginning of the night, I hung near Jay’s elbow, being introduced as House Vitruvian’s promising new liaison. I exchanged firm handshakes and polite banter, dispensing casual touches of lords’ arms and tactful compliments of ladies’ gowns, and answering inquisitive glances from across the room like arrows in my quiver, placed there by the high lord’s tutelage.

Walking around with the high lord, I began to truly appreciate the extent of his influence at the High Court. It was almost as if I were walking around with the King himself. Heads turned everywhere Jay went and conversations halted to provide him with their undivided attention wherever he appeared. It didn’t seem as if the Contra was disliked around the Court, but there was a definite air of caution around him, as if they were afraid to say too much, or really anything at all, when he was near.

I didn’t think I could ever see Jay the way the people at the High Court saw him. He was strong and stoic, and the air around him almost seemed to sizzle with a tension that only he felt truly comfortable in. But since the moment I’d met him, he had been kind to me. Firm but kind. I was naturally reserved myself, so Jay’s lack of smiles and chatter was comforting to me instead of unsettling like it seemed to be for so many others. He was my stern high lord and mentor, but he was also the man who poured my coffee in the mornings.

Eventually, I broke off from Jay, making my own rounds around the Ball. I ran into Jeremy Thierry, and he introduced me to a young lord from out of town, Lord Belford. After successfully making a few connections and picking up on a few useful kernels of information I would share with the high lord later, I conducted a scan of the great hall until I met Luke’s glance. He flashed me a grin, showing his pearl-white teeth as he ran a hand through his light-brown hair. He waved me over. Appreciating just how immaculately dressed Luke always was, I favored him with a familiar smile and began to make my way toward him.

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about really,” a man standing in a group with a few other lords said loudly enough for everyone in the area to overhear as I began to walk by. “She may be new, but she’s clearly tainted,” he said nastily.

He was talking about me and didn’t even have the decency to say it to my face. One of his toadstool friends snickered. Another one, a comely lord with light hair and a few freckles dotted across his face, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

The high fae lord who had spoken had white-blond hair and the lightest blue eyes, and his face seemed stuck in a perpetual sneer, like everything and everyone around him exuded a stench that displeased him. He was waiting to see if I’d take the bait.

I bit.

I approached the group of high fae lords, meeting the pale eyes of the young lord who had wanted my attention. He shifted his stance as I approached, and I spotted Lady Elenor Kane standing behind him.

“Oh, hi, Elenor,” I said.

Elenor whispered “hi” to me as she stared at her feet, then shifted her position in the crowd until she was once again hidden behind the men around her.

“And you must be Cole Tragon,” I said. “Your reputation precedes you.”

Cole looked around at the other lords near him with a pleased look on his face.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” I said, deadpan.

Perhaps I should have tried to ply Cole with a smile before I moved to other tactics. But seeing Elenor there with him ignited a flame of white-hot anger within me. Elenor and I had not become fast friends, as I had originally hoped; but she was still a sweet enough girl, and if half of what I had heard about Cole was to be believed, she deserved better.

Luke approached at my elbow but remained silent.

Trying to capture the momentum of the conversation, Cole sneered, “You have to have your boyfriend come and save you?”

“Ah, you’re just jealous, Cole,” Luke retorted coolly, resting his hand on my arm. “And from the color rising in your cheeks, it looks like you’re the one in need of saving, not her.”

Luke’s comment got a few chuckles from Cole’s companions and a few others who had now gathered. Robbed of scoring any points with Luke, Cole turned his attention back to me.

“Jealous?” Cole asked incredulously. “You couldn’t pay me to fuck this mutt,” he sniped cruelly, confirming my suspicion that any attempts at friendliness would have been a wasted effort.

The laughter around us settled into an awkward silence. I felt Luke’s grip tense on my arm. I placed a reassuring hand on top of Luke’s. He knew I didn’t want him to fight my battles. I’d been called worse before. And, anyway, I knew Cole’s type: the type who wanted very badly to fuck me and secretly hated himself more than he hated me for it.

“Cole,” I said, my calm voice cutting through the bated silence of those who waited to see how I would react. “We all know that the women who end up in your bed are the ones who get paid and not the other way around.”

There were more than a few snickers from the crowd forming around us, confirming what I’d said to be true. One of the Court whispers I’d picked up and saved for just such an occasion was that High Lady Tragon bribed women to go to her son’s bed. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive enough to get women on his own—if you could look past the permanent sneer on his face, he was good-looking enough. But his personality was so vile, apparently, that the only way women would visit his bed was weighed down with his mother’s coin.

I hoped Elenor took heed of this show as the warning I intended it to be. Based on what I’d heard, Cole Tragon was not the prince she dreamed of in her happily ever after. Even if we weren’t friends, I hoped for better for her.

“And, anyway, there’s no amount of money your mommy could pay me to touch you,” I said.

Luke started off the laughter; he was quickly joined by several others. The red in Cole’s face continued to deepen. Without waiting for Cole’s reply, I pulled Luke by his bulging bicep toward where he’d previously stood talking with Rhett.

I felt myself immediately relaxing in Luke and Rhett’s company. I felt comfortable with them. Almost every minute I was not with Jay, I was with Luke these days. We attended all the same functions and meetings and were constantly running into each other, even when we didn’t attend the same events. I ran into Rhett at a lot of the same events as well, and the three of us would invariably conglomerate by the end of the night.

“That looked like fun,” Rhett commented as we approached.

“I enjoyed it,” Luke said with a chuckle, leaning into me.

“Al, how nice of you to save Luke from yet another dateless soiree,” Rhett teased.

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