Page 24 of A Fragile Enchantment

He did not exactly thrust the lemonade toward her, but he offered it to her hastily, as though he’d been compelled against his own volition or better judgment. The ice inside rattled ominously. Too bewildered to refuse, Niamh accepted it. The glass chilled her skin, and a trickle of water slid down the side, soaking into her glove. She stared, transfixed, at the condensation beading on the rim, where his lips had left behind the faintest impression. She’d have to rotate it before taking a sip. Gods, nowshewas flustered.

Sinclair looked at the two of them with an expression warring between awestruck and nauseated. Very slowly, he took a sip of his punch, as though he had to physically restrain himself from saying anything.

A murmur swept through the ballroom. It multiplied, until Niamh could make out the content of it:Infanta Rosa has arrived.

“I have to go,” Kit muttered. “Bye.”

And with that, he was gone. What a strange man. But she could not dwell on it. Right now, she had better things to do than wonder at his behavior. She stood on her toes and craned her neck to look out over the crowd—and instantly spotted Rosa.

Once again, she wore all black like a mourner. She walked arm in arm with her pretty lady’s maid, following the path her father’s broad, epauletted shoulders carved through the ballroom. A thick ribbon of black banded the empire waistline of her gown, and the jet beads on her skirt caught the light with every step.

Jack waited to receive them on a makeshift dais, his handsclasped before him and Sofia standing serenely at his side. As the king and the prince regent spoke, the guests shifted restlessly around her. Everyone was eager to dance.

At long last, Jack stepped forward and projected over the crowd in his stately cadence. “I am honored to open the floor for the inaugural ball of the Season. As many of you know, it has become tradition to mark the occasion with art chalked on the dance floor. This year, I have prepared something very special for our guests—who soon I will have the honor of calling family. Without further ado…”

He gestured at a pair of footmen, who lifted the corners of the tarp in unison.

“What will it be this year?” someone muttered eagerly. “Last year’s will be hard to beat.”

“A portrait of the princess herself, do you think? The one he had done of Princess Sofia on their wedding was absolutely exquisite.”

Inch by inch, the footmen rolled back the tarp to reveal the floor.

The giddy murmurs of the crowd intensified.

And the hope dropped clean off Jack’s face.

Rosa gazed out at the dance floor with a studiously blank expression. Her dark eyes, however, twinkled with amusement. Her father, meanwhile, did not look at all impressed. He turned to Jack expectantly, but the prince regent did not seem to notice him at all. His complexion brightened from ghostly pale to livid red.

From her vantage point, Niamh could see the dance floor laid out before her. In bold, angry lines, someone had drawn the sun in the style of a Machlish rune: the symbol of the god of justice and his ruthless, illuminating glory. It was an emblem even the Avlish would recognize. It’d been scrawled on buildings and hoisted up on flags in the lead-up to the Machlish War of Independence. It was a clear enough message alone, but the artist had also scrawled Machlish words beneath the sun.

Sinclair leaned over to Niamh and whispered, “What does it say?”

Niamh flushed. She could not very well repeat what it said—especially not here of all places. “I do not think you want to know.”

Sometimes, she believed their language had been made for curses, for there was a spare elegance to them in the Machlish tongue. It lost some of its power in Avlish, but what it said was this:

Jack Carmine, may the gates of heaven never open to you.

May there be guinea-fowl crying at your child’s birth.

May you see what you’ve become.

8

“Well,” Jack called above the chaos. “Do enjoy yourselves.”

He all but fled the room, with the King of Castilia hot on his heels. Sofia’s serenity chipped just enough to reveal the barest glint of icy displeasure. Kit and Rosa, abandoned on opposite sides of the dais, stared each other down like two fluffed-up cats in an alleyway. Niamh could not bear to watch him insult Rosa, as inevitably he would. The evening was already an unmitigated disaster.

She withdrew a few paces, pressing her back against the wall. The air had thickened with the smell of spirits and perfume and sweat. A few bold couples stepped onto the dance floor, their shoes making hazy smudges of the curses chalked beneath their feet. Niamh still sensed their power as though it were real magic, ancient and raw,crackling like lightning in the air. To some of Jack’s court, the incident would be nothing more than a spectacle to be picked apart and laughed over. But others had taken it as the threat it was. Two women drifted nearby, their fans fluttering and their heads bowed together conspiratorially.

“I say, the Machlish have gotten bold lately,” one of them remarked. “My staff have gotten even lazier ever since that woman Carlile decided to make a nuisance of herself. The nerve of them, to demand more when they give less.”

Niamh’s stomach dropped, sudden and sharp.

Sinclair rested a hand on her shoulder, startling her. She could read the reassuring but firm pressure of his fingers plainly:Let’s go, before you overhear something you’d rather not.“May I be so bold as to claim your first dance?”

It should have been so easy to accept, to slip away and pretend she had not heard a thing. And yet, she felt rooted to the spot. The dull, shimmery sound of the string quartet reached her from a thousand miles away.