She stared at him. “You destroyed an entire bar?”
“It was structurally weak.”
“And the ceremonial site?”
His expression flattened slightly. “Part of the outer stonework collapsed.”
“Oh.” Now she understood the weight behind that memory.
“Yeah,” he said.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“The leaders gave me leniency,” he added more quietly.
“Why?” She tilted her head.
Maldenis gave a small, humorless smile. “Because my family is…important.”
She thought about the flash she’d seen of the elders. The disappointment. The pressure. “And now?” she asked.
His gaze shifted briefly toward Seraphelle across the room, and then back to the lighting rigs above them. “I don’t get a second chance.”
The words were simple. Matter-of-fact. But something about the way he said them made her chest tighten a little.
She thought again of their meeting with the circle of elders, their cold, measuring stares, the weight of their judgment pressing down on him like stone. They hadn’t spoken to him like family. More like a problem they were tolerating.
She shifted slightly closer to him. “I hope I didn’t mess things up with what I said,” she murmured.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Don’t worry about it.”
She looked up at him.
“You’re a mate watching out for hers,” he said with an easy shrug. “If anything, you probably earned a few respect points for that.”
They held each other’s gaze a moment longer than necessary, something unspoken passing between them. She noticed his eyes flick down to her mouth, and for a heartbeat, neither of them moved, close enough that another kiss would have been the easiest thing in the world.
“Alright!” Across the set, the cyclops clapped his massive hands. “We’re ready!”
Liora and Maldenis both straightened automatically. But just before the photographer lifted the camera, Liora leaned a little closer and murmured. “Well.”
Maldenis glanced down at her.
“If destroying things was your rebellious phase,” she said, “we should probably keep you away from the cake at the party.”
For a second, he just stared at her, then a quiet laugh slipped out.
And a camera flashed.
Chapter 9
Maldenis
Even by basilisk standards, the party was excessive.
Maldenis stood at the edge of the grand reception hall and slowly took it all in. The cavernous chamber had been transformed into something between a royal court and a festival. Long tables overflowed with food, roasted beasts glazed in honey and spice, platters of jeweled fruits, towers of pastries dusted with shimmering sugar. Servers moved constantly through the crowd carrying trays of glowing drinks while musicians played from a raised stone platform, their instruments weaving a low, hypnotic rhythm through the air. Above it all hung enormous banners.
Not banners, he realized after a second glance, but portraits. The photographers from the day before had worked quickly. Massive prints from the shoot had been suspended between the columns: Him and Liora standing against the runed terrace backdrop, another of them laughing on the brighter spring set, and—ancestors help him—a very large one of them kissing right in the center of the hall.
