Page 125 of To Dance with Death

“Give me an hour,” Anton told me.

All the while, I wait outside Anton’s hastily erected tent, where the queen’s physician supplies me with tonics and herbs to help speed my recovery. Using the mirror has left me shaking and fatigued, and I’d nearly fainted a few minutes after my father’s execution.

True to his word, Anton returns to me less than an hour later, kneeling before my bench and cupping my cheeks. When he asks me how I’m feeling, I pull him into an embrace, because we survived when I thought we might not.

Together we walk back to the tower in the forest—away from the camps. But not before he doles out final orders: for Basile to oversee the cleanup efforts and report back to Ansa after.

Anton seemed to think it made sense to redirect the portal I had used to Ansa with the mirror’s power.

“Very unlikely someone is going to take a chance and jump through broken glass in the foreseeable future.”

When we emerge from the portal into Mercy’s old chapel, Anton says, “I have everything I need, though we will have to make haste. The resin itself will need time to dry.”

“You could have done it all this time,” I say. Before I had stolen the pendant, that is.

He folds my arm into his, escorting me through the palace’s passages. “I could have, yes, but I wouldn’t have. It was too risky.”

“And now?” I ask. “Have you really changed your mind?”

“I suppose that Moranya succeeded in her quest to prove that love and devotion can change someone. Through you, that is,” he says, pausing in a dark corridor, a single beam of light cascading from a skylight above. “If we weren’t in a rush, I’d—”

I kiss him on the nose. “I know.”

Then he scoops me up and carries me the rest of the way.

I try not to think about how I am no longer a political match, not now that my father has been killed. Not once the Syndicate rules his reign illegitimate.

The moment we reach his workshop, Anton commands the guards outside to fetch Gustav but otherwise keep our presence here a secret. When I inquire as to his reason, he tells me we can’t risk being disturbed—or something going wrong. Then I watch him as he gathers his tools, and there’s something about the tense line of his lips, the furrow of his brows, that feels more dire than mere concentration.

It’s almost like there’s something he isn’t telling me. Another risk he hasn’t yet shared.

A few minutes later, Gustav parades in, his expression disbelieving. “Sire? How—”

“Later,” Anton says. “We must get to work.”

And the reparations begin.

I marvel as the two of them fall in sync, collecting ingredients for the resin as Anton gives Gustav the briefest of explanations, whichGustav trusts without hesitation as only a friend might. Anton then snags the bag of shards I saw, laying them out on a cloth.

“Even with the resin, there can be no gaps,” he says, both of them sliding on pairs of spectacles unlike anything I’ve ever seen, each with several glass ovals they can slide down to magnify their work at different proximities.

“But how can that even be achieved? Many of the shards are broken into dust,” Gustav asks, reaching for a metal tool resembling tweezers.

“We’ll grind a few of those minuscule fragments—whatever is left over—and add them into the resin to seal the gaps. Theoretically, it should allow the power to move freely through its surface as if it were whole. We’ll use silver to bond it to the reflective backing. The final piece, however—I won’t fit it into the resin until I deliver it to Moranya, or else Kastiel would be released here instead.”

I watch for a time, mesmerized, taking a break only when I convince them they’ll need sustenance. Gustav tells me how to find the kitchens, which aren’t far, a peculiar grin on his face. “There’s someone there who will help. They can be trusted with discretion in regard to our presence.”

A guard leads me to the kitchens.

The moment I step inside, there’s a loud shriek, the clattering of a tray. Then I’m enveloped in a hug before I can make sense of what’s happening.

“Vasalie, you’re here,” comes a voice next to my ear. Then my assailant pulls away, her eyes bright and lined in threatening tears.

“Marian,” I breathe, my throat tight.

“Laurent told us you were in Razam, but the last we heard was that you vanished. We were all so worried—”

“Laurent,” I say. “Is he here?”