Page 61 of A Dance of Lies

He’s made the entire place an illusion.

I don’t know if I’m impressed or unnerved. Has he been spying on us? Onme? Or are they merely an escape route, like Laurent said? My room is free of sea glass, perhaps because I am mere staff, but who’s to say he hasn’t been watching from the halls?

Chills spike the hairs on my arms. Is this why he suspects I’m working for his brother?

It was confirmation I sought, Miss Moran,he’d said. But then, if he had proof, he would have detained me by now.

I will have to be more careful.

I continue on, drifting past several more mosaic displays. There are small ones, clustered like jewels on the walls, and large ones, like the great tapestries in Illian’s palace.

I find the Dome Hall next. It’s above me now—a wide circular expanse, with a small mosaic designating the center of the floor. I use the mental mark and veer left, toward the Miridranian wing.

Crimson light teases a passageway ahead, and I find what I’m looking for: the mosaic of Illian’s coronation. It’s an older one, clearly predating Anton. Only, it’s as if Anton had it moved out a few feet from its original place on the wall, narrowing the hall just fractionally. And though the glass is thicker than the new ones, it’s still somewhat translucent.

A quiver passes over me as I recall his lucent eyes, the feeling of being watched. Perhaps I had been.

Farther down, the next mosaic is the West Miridranian crest, just outside the tall, double doors of Illian’s corridor. Two guards stand sentinel outside. I follow the bend until I reach another: a black and red diamond over a hearth. I peer through. It looks like an antechamber, and a plain one at that, with a few wingback chairs angled over a luxurious, crimson rug.

Until I notice the chandelier.

Like the rest, it’s glass. It hangs unlit, crystalline, looking as if it was sculpted from ice. And it’s massive. Hundreds of shards hang down like spears, each carved to a thin, fine point.

I shudder, tearing my eyes away, my gaze snagging on Illian’s desk, just there in the corner. I recognize the seal stamped on scattered documents.

But he is nowhere to be found. I swallow my disappointment and press on, but even as I find more mosaics, the remaining rooms are dark and empty. Nothing.

I’m about to turn back when I reach the outer edge of Illian’s wing. I don’t have time to explore further, as much as I want to, and it’s too much of a risk.

But then a flash of blue draws my eye.

A quick peek, I decide, and then I’ll return. Only, this time, it isn’t a mosaic I find but a crack in the wall.

No, not a crack. A door, set ajar. A quick glance tells me the spaceis empty, so I nudge the door a sliver more, enough that I might see what lies beyond.

My fingers rise to my lips.

There are images everywhere. Strange ones, blurry, as if I’m looking at them underwater, each one individually lit. Faces, trees, blooms. White-capped waves. They remind me of the ones I saw at Anton’s banquet, but there’s nothing to project them. No tubes, no torches.

Whatisthis place?

It must be artwork of some kind, magnified by glass, extraordinary in detail.

Then one, brighter than the rest, pulls my eye, and the breath catches in my sternum. Because it’s Anton, his virescent eyes sharp as a cutlass. And he looks so real, as if someone froze him in time. In fact, the longer I stare, the more I return to one detail.

His eyelids are mid-blink.

Odd, that an artist would capture that.

Unless they aren’t paintings. At the banquet, I hadn’t asked where the images came from. Art, I had assumed. But these aren’t canvases laden with brushstrokes. They are different, more . . . immediate. I would almost think it magic if I dared.

But magic exists only in myths and tales of old, reserved for divinity and the Fate of Morta. So how is this possible?

A figure eclipses the doorway.

I lurch back, but it passes by. Voices crowd into the space, more entering from the far door.

I race down the hall, not willing to get caught. Nor can I keep Annais waiting any longer.