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“Prince Nikolai!”
“It’s so wonderful to see you again!”
They were surrounding me like vultures around a corpse, and I felt like one, bloated and lifeless beneath the blistering sun. They all wanted pieces of me, so eager to get their bite that nothing else remained.
“Prince Nikolai.”
A voice I knew far better than most cut through the din building between my ears, and I craned my neck in that direction. I was definitely surprised to see Seraphina standing there, but she was never an unwelcome presence.
Even in my peripheral vision, I could see some of the nobles around me giving her curious or odd looks. I was sure only a few of them knew her identity, and those that did likely held onto the prejudices and bigotry so popular in older generations. That was the thing about shifters and other long-lived cryptids. Progress tended to take quite a while since those who were “old fashioned” stuck around a lot longer than humans did.
“Princess Seraphina,” I said, using her full title, because fuck my father and his attempts to hide her. I wasn’t going to be a part of it any longer if I could help it. “It is so good to see your face again.”
I didn’t miss both how her face flushed with happiness, but also how shocked whispers issued out of the people around us. Good, let the gossip from that overcome the rumors of what was going on between me and Felicity. Pushing that subject as far out of the public eye as possible would behoove both of us.
“As with you, brother.” Hah. Brother. It looked like my baby sister was just as interested in rebelling as I was. Good. I hated how much she pressed herself to try to obey every whim of my family when I knew it didn’t matter. She could be the perfect child and all they’d care about was the fact that she was a latent shifter. “May I have this dance?”
Oh, that was most certainly going to piss my father off, so I was all ears, and it would definitely draw plenty of attention. So many would want to know who it was I was dancing with, an unknown, young woman, barely old enough to have her full court debut. It would make me incredibly happy if word got out that she was my sister and my long-hidden sibling.
I was biased, but I felt that if the people got to know Seraphina, truly know her, they would all adore her. She was smart, caring, kind, and intelligent. The princess had a certain naivete to her, yet she had a way of seeing through people’s artifice. She merely had a blind spot when it came to our family.
Not that I could blame her. I remembered once being the same way when I was young, trying to please my father and be the son he’d always wanted.
“I could think of no better partner. I’m sure, soon enough, you won’t have any space on your dance card for your elder brother.”
“As if I could ever not make time for you,” she said back.
I was so lucky that she’d forgiven me for leaving, that while she didn’t know everything, she still understood. In my eagerness to escape and find myself, to carve my own destiny, I’d truly left her to the wolves. Pun fully intended.
Seraphina took my arm, and the two of us headed onto the center of the dance floor. It was a slower song, a traditional one, so it was less popular than more modern music as there were fewer couples taking up space.
All the better for us to steal the show.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Seraphina said quietly once we found a corner and fell into the old, simple dance. “I just wanted to help you escape from the flock that’d surrounded you.”
“I want to do this,” I countered. “It’s not right how our family has hidden you away, you know.”
Seraphina sighed, stepping under my arm when I raised it for her, spinning slowly as she did. I definitely would have loved to have been able to dance with Ayla, yet it was still ever so lovely to have a bonding moment with my sister.
“I’m beginning to understand that. I just…it’s hard, you know? Because if I admit that to myself, there’s so much else I have to face as well. Things I don’t want to.”
“I’m so sorry, Seraphina,” I said, not quite sure what to say. I wanted her to realize that she deserved so much more, but I hated the pain that came bundled along with that realization, because realizing how people failed you meant, well, realizing just how much everyone in her life had failed her.
Including me.
“No, don’t be. It’s an important part of growing up, isn’t it?”
“It is, but it’s one I wish you didn’t have to go through.”
“I’m certain both of us have regrets, yet here we are.”
I chuckled. There was my witty little sister. “Here we are indeed.”
She spun again as I bowed, and her grin was wry when she returned to the traditional hold. “Since we’re being so emotionally honest with each other… you and Ayla are in love, aren’t you?”
Shit.
“What makes you say that?”
