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I hear a breath that isn’t my own and feel a new presence beside me. I don’t look at him.
“What were you discussing with Lady Ziza?” comes Cyrus’s low murmur.
My flush had finally cooled away, and now it’s back. “Your lack of discretion.”
“Mine or ours?”
“Ninety-nine percent yours. Youmoonat me.”
“Have pity, I’m lovesick.”
“You are not.”
There is thankfully no one around us, and the audience’s idle chatter is just enough to cloak our conversation. I sneak a glance at the king. He’s preoccupied with a member of the Imperial Guard, who is whispering something in his ear.
“Do we have to talk now?” I mutter. “People can see, and thentheywill talk.”
“People always talk. This is the last time we can speak before I go through with a ceremony I might regret. I’ll risk it.” I hear the prince shift on his feet. “What if I wished the bride who will walk through those double doors was you?”
Now I look at Cyrus. His smile is like a hook. The way he says it—half-joke, half-not—sounds like truth as much as it does fiction. Or maybe it’s half-love, half-not, two halves at odds. A dare as much as a confession and just enough of an act to deny things later.
I shouldn’t humor him. But I want to know, so I ask barely above a breath, so quietly that I might not have spoken aloud: “Are you in love with me?”
A word seems to waver on his tongue, and the answer seems to change as my glare hardens.
“Stop trying to guess what I want to hear. It’s a yes or no.Are you in love with me?”
“I don’t know,” he whispers, somehow choosing the most agonizing answer of all.
The orchestral music crescendos. It’s time for Cyrus to take his place in front of the throne and await his bride, but still, he stays beside me to rush through these last words:
“You think it’s foolish if I love you. If anyone loved you.” Each sentence is a quick, hushed cut, sharp as his gaze. “Because you wouldn’t be so foolish in kind. Your heart is stone. But the truth is, you never had to be so cold and cruel and mercenary to come this far. You only believe these things so that you don’t feel guilty for being this way.”
I’m trembling as he sweeps away. He’s wrong, so completely wrong. Reacting to him is instinct at this point, and the anger builds up in my throat, wanting to snap something back. If only we weren’t at his wedding.
As I force it down, another part of me rouses, the part that is weary of this world that doesn’t change:
You are proud, but you still aren’t happy.
Across the ballroom, the audience is seated and quiet. The space between me and Cyrus has never been vaster or colder. I focus elsewhere, hiding my fists in the flowers and folds of my skirts.
Finally, the double doors open. I nearly don’t notice; I thought someone would announce the beginning of the ceremony first. A strange clamor erupts from the back of theaudience.
The crowd rises. Even the king gets to his feet.
The officiant at the dais booms, “What in the stars—” Which is not the kind of introduction anyone ever wants toreceive.
But that’s what heralds the two women who barrel into the ballroom screaming. Their white dresses are torn, their coiffed hair frizzed, and their teeth are bared. When they look up, their doe-eyed fury is the same.
Exactlythe same.
Attacking each other in the entryway are two LadyRayas.
For once, I’m as confused as the crowd. I scramble to the edge of the stage. Cyrus is already striding down the aisle, pushing through the throngs that divide us from the scene.
Imperial Guards surround the Rayas. As attendees shove to get a view and Cyrus and the guards try to maintain order, the Raya on the left lifts an accusing finger at her duplicate, her voice ringing clear above the din. “Thisgirl—”
“I’m the real Raya Solquezil!” the Raya on the right interjects. She’s red-faced and looks ready to swing a punch, if it weren’t for a guard swooping in to hold her back.
