A hush descended over the gathering. The chatter faded to murmurs, and the murmurs faded to whispers, and the whispers faded to a single, breathless stillness that settled over the room like frost.
Lucie felt it before she saw it. The weight of attention. Dozens upon dozens of eyes, all directed at the same place.
At them.
Ather.
She had expected it. She had steeled herself for it. And still the force of it sent her pulse racing, a sharp drumbeat beneath the golden silk. She could hear the whispers start up again. She saw fans rise to mouths. She saw heads lean close together. She saw, at the edge of her vision, a woman press her gloved hand to her chest in unmistakable shock.
This is what we wanted.
She held on to that. She held on to it with both hands, the way she had held on to his letter. They had chosen this. They had chosen to stand here, unmasked, together, in the center of a Rowanwood ballroom, before the whole gleaming weight of Bloomhaven society. They had chosen to let them look.
Kazrian held his hand out, palm up.
And she extended her own and laid it in his, and his fingers closed warm and certain around hers.
The murmuring swelled. A gasp, somewhere off to the left. A whisper that carried further than its owner had meant it to.
And then a voice rose above all of it—clear, unhurried, and entirely unbothered by the weight of the silence it was breaking—and every last sound in the ballroom dropped away.
“Confectioner girl.”
Lucie’s breath stopped. Slowly, still holding Kazrian’s hand, she turned toward the voice. The crowd parted as she looked, bodies shifting aside in a slow, silent wave, until a clear line opened across the breadth of the ballroom and Lucie could see her.
The High Lady.
She had known, distantly, that the High Lady often attended the Rowanwood Masquerade. Rosavyn had mentioned it more than once over theyears. But somehow, in all Lucie’s careful preparations for this evening—the gown, the mask, the decision to come at all—she had not once stopped to consider that the High Lady might be standing in this very room when the masks came off.
“Miss Lucie Fields,” the High Lady said.
Lucie’s hand tightened in Kazrian’s.She knows my name. She was at the launch, and she spoke of me with Lady Rivenna, and she remembers my name.Whether this was good or very, very bad was yet to be seen.
Lucie breathed, steadied herself, and sank into the deepest, most careful curtsy she had ever made.
The High Lady regarded her a moment longer, and then the faintest curve touched the corner of her mouth. “I do not believe there is a soul in all of Bloomhaven who has not heard tell of you and your remarkable skill, Miss Fields. You take honey and light, and you shape them into something that no fae confectioner has ever thought to attempt.” She tilted her head. “I have tasted it myself. I can attest that the reports do not exaggerate.”
A small murmur moved through the crowd. Lucie’s heart was hammering. She could not yet tell whether the ground beneath her was steady or about to give way entirely.
“I will tell you all a secret,” the High Lady said, “though I daresay it is not much of one. I have always been quite hopelessly fond of a love story. You will recall my delight over the soulbonded couple several Seasons back. And this particular tale, I confess, has held my attention in recent days.”
She let that settle, and the room hung on it.
“Consider it,” she continued, taking a step forward, addressing the crowd. “They met as no more than a girl and a boy—she in a tea house kitchen, he a fae lord’s son—and they loved one another, quietly and against all sense, for years. And then they were parted. Sundered by distance, by half the width of the world, for years more, each believing, I do not doubt, that the door had closed for good. And then—” the High Lady spread one graceful hand toward them “—then they were brought together again, by that charming new confectionery so many of us have already come to cherish, The Honeycomb. Where they worked side by side, day upon day, and discovered that the years and the distance and the whole weight of society’s expectations had changed nothing at all. That they loved each other still.”
She paused, her gaze returning to Lucie and Kazrian.
“And now they stand before us. A fae lord and a human woman, hand in hand and unmasked, before the whole of Bloomhaven, refusing to pretend otherwise for one moment longer.” A small, deliberate silence. “It is my considered opinion that any society which would tear such a thing apart, for the crime of two hearts having chosen each other across a divide, is a society rather more in need of correction than they are.”
The murmur that ran through the room now was different. Softer. Turning.
“So let it be known,” said the High Lady, and her voice rose and rang, “that these two have my blessing. Openly and gladly. And that I shall look with very great interest indeed upon anyone who feels inclined to say otherwise.”
Lucie could not breathe. Tears blurred her vision. Beside her she felt Kazrian standing still as stone, and then his hand squeezed hers, and she squeezed his back, and somewhere in the crowd a lady pressed her hands to her heart, and someone else began, tentatively, to applaud.
“And now,” the High Lady called out, “one final dance.”
The music began, a slow waltz, the opening notes drifting across the ballroom, and Kazrian turned to her.
