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According to the theater rules, no one was supposed to announce a rival. It was meant to be a true test of an artist’s skill, to respond in an improvisational manner rather than with something rehearsed.
But the Rival Theater hadn’t actually hosted a rival to a significant performer in over fifteen years. According to the gossip she’d acquired in the music district, the last few rival bouts had been near-disasters, devolving into chaotic performances, rather than the grand displays of musical talent they were meant to be.
Clare had a suspicion the Musicians Guild might have had a hand in that—because the sudden onset of poor performances had coincided with the guild’s rise to prominence. The theater was in a bind because their business license was founded on the rival performances as a core component of their business and, as such, they couldn’t be discontinued. So the Musicians Guild had struck a deal with the theater to vet their performers, in exchange for the theater being the first to require that all musicians performing for them be licensed by the guild in the first place.
Now they hosted rival nights once a month and by all accounts Clare had heard they were fun enough if one didn’t attend them very frequently. They were never bad and they were never surprising. Which said, to Clare, that they were scripted. That, and the fact that to take the rival stage against a prominent performer, such as Estrella Vane, an artist was supposed to win three successive rival nights.
Taius’s ability to circumvent that requirement on so little notice practically proved his true identity was that of the mysterious patron of the arts the attendant had mentioned. Her curiosity burned to know that identity, but she set the desire aside. The only thing she needed to care about, the only thing she could care about, was that she was here. And she would ensure that, after tonight, no one would be able to forget her.
This wasn’t a performance in a small inn, where no one expected to remember the performer. This was where Veralna’s elite came to be seen and entertained. Where they wanted to spend their money to feel like they knew an artist. They would remember her.
And because she was a surprise, because she was a novelty, they would want to possess her. And one didn’t need a Musicians Guild license to be hired by the wealthy for their private parties. Clare would play for them, and she would take their money into the rest of Hightown and she would do what she’d promised Madame Aria she would. Because despite what she’d allowed Taius to believe, Estrella Vane was not the important thing Clare intended to take from the guild owner. Estrella was simply the beginning.
“Miss?”
Clare had stopped listening, at some point after the attendant led her into her dressing room, as he told her things she already knew, and it sounded like this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to gain her attention. She looked at him. Her lapse in focus had him wringing his hands nervously again.
“The room is yours until the performance begins. I’ll be here to lead you to the stage a quarter hour before the start. Do you need anything? Water? Tea?”
She started to answer nothing, until she realized the offer was simply the standard one given to any artist singing at the theater. “Tea,” she said, and because she might as well, added, “with lemon.”
The attendant left and she was alone with Taius. She prickled with the awareness of their isolation and no small part of her waited, calmly, for him to make a move she didn’t like. Didn’t want.
But he only shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the door frame, keeping well back from her, a shadow of a smile on his face. “Well, it seems as if our partnership is concluded.”
“So it seems,” she agreed, because it sounded like the casual kind of response an ordinary person would make. A person who wasn’t constantly expecting everything in her life to go wrong. A person who could say something that didn’t have to have a double meaning, or a threat, or a taunt beneath the words.
She wanted to be that person. Wanted to feel like she had an identity beneath her drive to survive. And somehow, in the oddly peaceful space that existed between her and Taius in this moment, she felt like that person was slowly being born inside her.
That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever thought, the practical side of her nature warned. It was. More stupid was her desire to ask him if he would be there tonight, in the crowd. He’d said he wanted to be and…she wanted him to be. Because she’d never had anyone do something with her before, and even though this wasn’t a true partnership, wasn’t anything more than a transaction where they were both getting something they wanted, it felt different.
And it scared her more than anything in her life ever had. So she didn’t ask. After a moment he straightened, that smile fading from his lips. “I’ll say good luck, because it’s what I’m supposed to say, but you don’t need it. It was…nice to meet you, Clare Brighton.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her alone in the dressing room trying to deal with emotions she’d never expected to have.
Chapter Twelve
Has She?
Saying that Verol was tense was like saying a Taella Province monsoon was a storm. Technically correct, but it didn’t come close to encompassing the ferocity of the actual thing.
Marquin studied his husband as their carriage once again thundered through Veralna’s Hightown. The anxiety had been building in Verol since morning, strong enough that Marquin didn’t even need the connection through the heartstone to feel it. The Kinthing had a wild energy when it got worked up, and it had pushed them out of the house half an hour ago, the carriage taking the winding streets from the countryside to town at inadvisable speeds, rough turns steadied by the careful touch here and there of Marquin’s magic.
“Any idea of our destination yet?” He didn’t think Verol would have an answer, but the question had the intended effect of making his husband stop boring a hole into the carriage floor with his eyes.
“No.” The short syllable was hoarse. “It feels different this time, though. Last time the danger was physical. This time it’s something different. Something worse.”
Something magical. He didn’t say it, but that was the only something worse there could be, where the Kinthing was concerned.
“The king’s Hounds have focused their attention in the south,” he said, telling Verol things he already knew, because the look in his eyes said he needed the reminding. They had spent the last three days working to ensure the bulk of the Hounds were as far away from Clare as possible. Until they could convince her that being with them was the safest place for her.
Except he wasn’t entirely certain Clare wanted to be safe. Not if it meant depending on another person. If it weren’t for the Kinthing’s infallibility, Marquin didn’t think he could be convinced that the same power that had lived in Marie now lived in Clare.
Marie had been such a sweet child—quiet but open. Completely trusting. Clare was her opposite in almost every way. Which was likely why she was still alive. A fact Verol needed reminding of.
“She has made it twenty winters on her own. She has hidden from the Hounds her entire life. She won’t do anything foolish.”
“Has she?” Verol asked, finally lifting his head to truly focus on Marquin.
