Page 22 of The False Vow

Our session ended as poorly as it had begun.

In the evening, Mia found me examining my reflection in my bedroom mirror, Eliot’s coin held out in my palm. After our guest list discovery, Noé and I had unearthed no other clues in the mystery of Sybil’s death. We’d stalked out of the library an hour later, both of us grouchier than we’d been before.

Now I snapped my fingers over the coin as Mia entered. “Did you find anything?” I asked, not bothering with a greeting.

My maid shook her head. She was dressed in the dark uniform of all Alaire staff, her auburn hair neatly combed and braided. “Not a thing, miss,” she answered. “Lucille said they cleaned the maidens’ quarters straightaway after the competition. Those rooms were as bare as bone.”

I frowned. Lucille was another maid—and from what I’d witnessed, deathly afraid of Mia. She would not lie, a fact which made my own servant’s information even more disappointing. Aside from the moniker on the guest list, Marie-Louise’s hint about Anais’s missing gloves was the only one I had; it did not bode well that, already, one of the two leads I’d gathered was running thin.

As if in recompense, Mia lifted the small silver plate she held in her left hand higher. A single letter rested in its center: a blood-red envelope sealed with a daub of wax. “Your correspondence, miss.”

I accepted the offering, along with the accompanying letter opener, sliding the latter’s long metal tooth beneath the envelope’s lip.

“There was a note…” Mia’s voice interrupted me as I teased the letter from its sleeve. As soon as I glimpsed the spidering handwriting crawling along the top of the paper, my mind emptied, my thoughts flashing white with alarm.

Brusquely, I dropped the letter back on its plate. “Take this one away,” I ordered. “If any more like it come, burn them.”

To her credit, my maid did not question my reaction, only nodded, her lips pressing together as though registering her mistake. “I was only going to say, miss,” she added hesitantly. “I’ve had a note from my cousin this afternoon.”

My heart leapt as she pulled a second letter from the pocket of her uniform—this one plain, unremarkable compared to the first. Eliot. At last, he’d written.

The speed with which I snatched the envelope from her was almost embarrassing. The paper was cheap, selected to avoid attracting attention; inside it, the envelope was empty except for a newspaper clipping. An engagement announcement for one Miss Elspeth Winn, celebrating her betrothal to Sylvain Hugo of the Hugo Weaver line.

On the back of the clipping was a message.

Meet me at the party. Formal dress. Urgent.

The accompanying announcement provided the rest of the details. In three evenings’ time, apparently, the Winn family would be hosting a ball at their townhome to celebrate their daughter’s upcoming union. Plenty of time to prepare, except for the fact that regardless of the occasion, I was certain Bastian would not allow me out of the house unaccompanied. Not unless…

The realization settled over me like a weight. Reluctantly, I glanced toward the candle still sitting on my desktop—unlit since Noé had written to me the day prior. Soot clung to the top of the diminishing wax pillar, dirt on a dog’s muzzle.

I knew what I had to do.

Chapter Ten

The town house was stifling.

The two days between Eliot’s missive and Elspeth Winn’s engagement party had passed with disturbing swiftness. Since our meeting in the library, Noé and I had made little progress in the matter of Sybil’s murder—though we had managed to get into several additional arguments—and for the first time, I was becoming distinctly aware of how short the three-week period which Bastian had given me to solve the case truly was. A narrow and diminishing boundary, like a thread tugged close to snapping.

And when it did…the cloisters would be waiting.

Now sweat clung to my skin, dampening the pits of the ivory gown I was wearing. All around me were people—packed into the sitting room I was standing in, throbbing in the corridors and up the narrow stairs—yet thus far, I’d caught a glimpse of the guest of honor only once. Elspeth had been a competitor alongside me in the Vainglory, though she’d been dismissed after the second trial, when Bastian had challenged each of us to beat him in a game of cards. She’d looked much happier when I’d spotted her earlier than she had while being escorted out of Fortblanche: Her skin was glowing, her dark eyes shining almost as brightly as the ring on her finger.

I pulled at the sleeve of my gown, sidestepping to avoid falling casualty to the crush of bodies. Noé had absconded to the bar shortly after our arrival, leaving me—for once—blessedly alone. But where was Eliot?

“Miss Lovett!” My hopes briefly rose at the sound of my false name, then fell as I took in the speaker. From across the room, a tall, fair-skinned girl was shoving through the crowd, her arms extended as though to embrace me. Her golden hair was bound in a loosely knitted caul, the strands glinting with the violent, toothy shine which only silkwitch hair did, like a white grin spread too wide.

Anais Tremblay. Of course, the society witch would be present at an event such as tonight’s. Though I wouldn’t have previously thought it possible, life seemed to have poured more money into my fellow maiden’s purse in the months we’d spent apart. Her clothes, already some of the finest among ours during the Vainglory, appeared new, unwrinkled as though they’d just been stripped off a dress-shop model. I wagered the upgrade had something to do with the rather ridiculously sized engagement ring she now sported: set with an emerald, almost an exact match to the color of her eyes.

Betrothed, then. I hadn’t seen that in the papers. To whom, I wondered?

My eyes focused on her hands as Anais drew nearer, and the pink lace gloves she was wearing differed vastly from the accessories which Marie-Louise had described to me—the gloves Anais had lost the night of the Midway Ball—and yet…

I felt my attention focus. Bastian still had yet to gather any suspects for me to interrogate as he’d promised, but here was one in front of me now. How to approach this?

“Hello, friend.” The cheerfulness in Anais’s voice took me briefly aback. I flinched as she reached for my hands, squeezing my fingers as though we were intimate acquaintances. “So good to see you. A bit earlier than expected, no?” She glanced around. “Is Noé with you?”

I collected myself. “He went to fetch a drink. It is lovely to see you as well—”