Page 63

“Stop holding your breath,” Thalia murmured, giving the laces one last gentle tug. “You’ll faint before you reach the doors, and then I shall have done all this for nothing.”

“That might genuinely be the kindest thing that happens to me all night… hey, do you think if I did faint that I could get out of being there?” I asked, and she laughed. It made me smile that she no longer looked like she wanted to bolt for the door when the laugh escaped her. Now she only shot me a sheepish grin in the mirror and carried on smoothing the skirts. Then I caught sight of myself properly, and all the air left my lungs.

The gown was deep emerald green, so dark it shifted toward black where the fabric folded and was threaded all over with fine silver. It fit like it had been poured onto me. My hair had been swept up and pinned with tiny silver leaves. A few loose, curled strands framed my face and were left to soften the whole thing. Which meant the woman staring back at me looked like she belonged in a fairytale instead of a foxhole.

“I don’t recognize myself,” I admitted, the shock on my face evident.

“Good.” Thalia stepped back, hazel eyes bright with pride. “Because you look like a queen you are destined to be.”

“Oh god, not you too,” I groaned, pressing a hand to my stomach. “Don’t say that word. That word is exactly the problem.” She opened her mouth, no doubt to make it worse, but a knock came at the door before she could and saved us both.

When she pulled it open, Lazaros stood waiting in the corridor, and I almost laughed at how thoroughly he’d transformed.

Gone was the rumpled, pastry-thieving menace from breakfast. He was now dressed in deep sapphire velvet that seemed to glow against the candlelight. His formal coat was tailored to perfection and trimmed with silver at the collar and cuffs, the crest of his house embroidered over his heart.

It still unsettled me how alike Atlas he looked. The same dark hair, the same proud line of his jaw, the same maddening twinkle they’d both inherited from gods knew where. And yet where his brother was all breadth and brutal, immovable power, Lazaros was leaner, lither. One built for speed and, apparently, sarcasm, rather than the open battlefield. The silent blade to Atlas’s war cry.

He’d pushed his hair back from his face, and the bruised shadows that had clung beneath his eyes since the throne room had finally begun to fade. He looked, for the first time since I’d met him, entirely himself.

His gaze landed on me, and he stopped dead in the doorway.

“My Queen, you look…” His eyes went wide as they swept over me, and heat climbed straight up my chest and into my face.

“Lazaros, get up,” I said the second he folded over into a deep bow, making me flap a hand at him as I shot Thalia a desperate look. “I am not your queen yet.”

Lazaros’s grin detonated across his entire face.

“Ah-ha!” he actually shouted aloud. “So, you have thought about it.”

I blinked. “Thought about what?”

“Being queen.” When my face apparently gave me away entirely, he pressed on, delighted. “You said ‘yet’.”

“I did not… I mean, that’s not what I… shut up,” I grumbled, and I rolled my eyes hard enough to hurt, and turned to Thalia for backup. But the traitor had pressed her lips together and was staring very hard at the floor, her shoulders shaking with the effort not to laugh. “Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side,” I whined, making her grin.

“I’m on whichever side gets you to the banquet, my… Alex,” she managed, eyes dancing.

“Hopeless. Both of you. Utterly hopeless.” I groaned without any heat, and they both knew it.

Lazaros only swept into a low, ridiculous bow again and offered me his arm, no doubt doing it on purpose.

“Shall we, before you talk yourself out of it entirely?” His eyes narrowed with mischief as I took it, and he tugged me a step closer. “You are, for the record, the very picture of beauty.”

I blushed. “Thanks, oh and of course, you too look very handsome, but you also look like a man who knows this.”

He grinned and ran a hand through his hair again in a slow, exaggerated way. “Do you really think so?”

I swatted his arm and rolled my eyes. “Come on, Mr. Ego, let’s go before your brother declares me a runaway and goes hunting again,” I said, and I didn’t think his grin could get any bigger.

He nodded to Thalia as we stepped out, and I threw her one last pleading grimace over my shoulder. She pursed her lips at me, pretending to be stern. But just before she turned away, I caught it break into the warmest, most genuine smile. Then came a quiet little wave of encouragement that did more for my nerves than anything Lazaros could have said.

Friend, I thought again fiercely. I had decided, and she didn’t get a vote.

The corridor swallowed us, and somewhere ahead, the distant hum of music and a hundred murmuring voices drifted toward us, and my stomach turned itself inside out.

“You might as well get used to this,” Lazaros said, his voice pitched low for my ears alone, though there wasn’t another soul around to hear it.

I shot him a sideways look. “Used to what?”