Eventually, they broke free of the crowd and stepped into a less congested area of the room. There were a few leather couches and chaise lounges, an array of bodies sprawled upon them, drinking under candlelight and whispering between fits of drunken giggles.
“Here. Take this.” Samira handed Irene a glass flute with a shimmering amethyst liquid inside. Truthfully, Irene hadn’t evennoticed her grabbing it, too fixated on the chaotic scene in front of her. “It’s just a light euphoric.”
Irene sniffed the drink and—oh. An array of scents washed over her like springtime mist.
Honeysuckle. Lavender. Gardenia. Mint.
As Irene took a sip and the drink trickled down her throat, a weightlessness flooded through her limbs, an all-consuming bliss. She blinked sluggishly, taking in the room around her. What had once been a claustrophobic cesspool of inebriated idiots had now transformed into Irene’s personal Eden. A shimmering light engulfed her vision, a dazzling prismatic ray of colors. Even the air tasted of lavender, of sweet syrup coating her tongue.Are the walls sparkling?Irene looked around, dazed and delighted, a dreamlike sensation in her movements.
“Well…” Samira’s face came into view and—wow. Had she always been this lovely? Her features seemed almost regal, her skin petal soft. “…I suppose it was atinybit stronger than a light euphoric. I think Petra might have spiked the glass with some Angel’s Breath.”
“Angel’s Breath…” Irene echoed, adoring the way the words tasted in her mouth. She was touching something unbelievably soft. Featherlight. It wasn’t until Samira giggled in front of her that Irene realized she had reached out and begun to stroke Samira’sface.
“You’re sosoft.”
Samira laughed and a prism of color trickled out of her lips. “Oh dear. You’re going to have a fun night.”
And she most certainly did.
Time fragmented as Irene lost all sense of reality. She was dancing, swaying in time with the music, hands greedily roaming the bodies around her. How long had she been like this?Minutes?Hours? Days?It was impossible to tell. She no longer cared. Not when everything felt this wonderfully, perfectlygood. Not when all the pain, all the suffocating grief, had seemingly vanished with nothing but a single drink. She only existed in that moment, in that song, in that feeling of euphoria.
But then something hurled her back to reality. A flicker in her peripheral vision. Aface.
Irene froze. The bodies around her continued to dance, moving against her, but Irene couldn’t tear her gaze away from what—no…whoshe saw at the far end of the room. She kept her eyes glued on the face staring back at her as she pushed through the crowd, desperately shoving anybody who stood in her way. As the strobe lights flickered, the face moved farther away, as though every flicker were carving a rift between them, an invisible set of strings pulling them apart.
“Wait!” Irene shouted, her voice hoarse, lost within the music. “Please…Masika—”
Her words were cut short as someone rammed straight into her, sending her toppling to the floor. Irene fell onto her hands and knees, a dizzying wave clouding her senses. When she got back onto her feet, legs shaking, she frantically searched the sea of dancing bodies, but Masika was gone.
Of course she’s gone.
Irene felt sick. Everything was too loud, too bright, toowrong. She staggered through the crowd, shoving her way forward, ignoring the hands attempting to pull her back. But before she could make it to the entrance, someone stepped into her path.
Irene blinked, dazed, trying to make sense of what she was looking at.
In front of her stood a figure shrouded in a gauzy white fabric. Was it another hallucination? The others around her didn’tseem to notice the figure, their revelry undisturbed by the ominous presence. The euphoric still had its hold on her, its dizzying effects coursing through her body, but there was somethingsolidabout the figure in front of her.
Something real.
This isn’t a hallucination.
Just as the thought shot through Irene’s mind, the figure reached out, gripping her by the wrist before she could pull away.
And then, from one blink to the next, Irene was no longer at the Ascended party.
Her eyes shot open and she found herself standing at the center of a dimly lit room. Twelve figures shrouded in that same gauzy white fabric surrounded her, heads bowed and faces obscured, all standing in a perfect circle. A reverent silence engulfed the space, the feeling of it washing over Irene’s skin like warm water. Beneath her feet, right at the center of the circle, was a symbol carved into the wooden floors: the Blackwood emblem, the carcass of an oak tree surrounded by bone fragments.
As Irene’s heeled boots settled on top of the grooves, it was as though a simmering current coursed through the soles of her feet and up her legs, traveling through her limbs until she found she could not move, even if she’d wanted to.
And then one of the figures spoke.
“Irene Manette Bamford.” She couldn’t tell who had said her name, the voice reverberating around the circle, as if somehow all twelve figures had spoken at once. Irene’s head pounded. Her vision blurred and refocused. “The Council has seen promise in you. The possibility of greatness. Therefore, you have been selected as a potential initiate. If you pass the test period…you will be initiated into the Council—an honor few will ever get.” A deephum echoed around the room, and Irene swore it was somehow coming from inside her.
“The test period ends in three days’ time. Do you accept?”
She had done it. She hadactuallybeen chosen. A surge of relief rushed through Irene’s chest, though it was quickly snipped by the reality of the challenge.Three days.Irene had no idea how she was meant to prove her worth in three days, but she’d have to worry about that later.
She gave a single nod in response. “I accept.”
