Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Silvercrest Gala

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Six weeks went by faster than I had counted on.

I had thought, in the dark of that first night, that the time between the Welcoming and the autumn gala would feel like a long, slow holding of breath. It did not. It felt like a season packed into a fist. Argent Loom posted its first whisper of the Drakhold contract three days early; Garrison moved my dowry through three brokers under three names before the letters even reached the trade pages. The Wolfe Pass options went on at a quarter the price I had remembered. Halia Voss, the Ironclaw widow, replied to my letter with one shaking line written in pencil: I would know the bracelet on any wrist. I will come if I am called.

Damien wrote me four times.

I burned three of the letters. I let the fourth, by mistake, get caught in the rim of the fire and only half blacken; Lyra found it on the hearth two nights later and read the corner that had survived, which said in Damien's clean upright hand my dear Lady Selene, I confess I cannot stop thinking of — and broke off into ash. Lyra had looked at me over the curl of paper and said, "He's good," and I had said, "I know," and she had said, "Have you written back?" and I had said, "No," and she had said, "Don't."

By the time the gala came round my edges were sharper than they had been in the past life at twenty.

The autumn gala was, by Silvercrest tradition, Mother's project. The great hall was hung with garlands of bronze and silver leaves. The chandeliers were dropped and re-strung. The long table was put on its trestles for the formal supper; the orangery was opened for the dance. Ewavite's five major Alphas were invited with their seconds and their wives and their eldest daughters. Damien Cross was there, of course; Vivienne Marlowe was there as the guest of his great-uncle, of course; and Lord Brennan would later go down in my private accounts as one of the few men in this game whose face I never had to dislike.

I dressed without jewellery.

I had thought about it for a long time, that morning, sitting at my mother's vanity. I had a moonstone collar of my grandmother's that would have lit my throat. I had pearls that would have softened the line of my shoulders. I had a thin chain my father had given me on my twelfth name-day, with a tiny silver wolf-tooth pendant. I touched all of them. I closed the box.

I went down in moonlight grey silk and bare skin.

Mother saw me at the foot of the stair and stopped in the middle of a sentence to Lady Whitlock. She did not say anything; she only blinked once, twice. Lady Whitlock, two-thirds deaf and entirely formidable, turned her head with the slow ceremony of a deaf old wolf and said, audibly across the gallery, "Eleanor. Why is your daughter naked."

"She is not naked, Beatrice."

"She is wearing no stones."

"That is fashion, Beatrice."

"That is defiance," Lady Whitlock said, with great satisfaction, and held out a gnarled hand. "Come here, child. Show me what you are doing."

I came. I let her hold my hand. I let her look at me in the brassy pre-supper light. Beatrice Whitlock was eighty-three, half-blind in the left eye, half-deaf in both ears, the sole surviving widow of a four-husband life, and she had gossiped, in her sixty years on the Bluemoon council, more men into political extinction than any three Alphas combined. I had decided, in week three of my new life, that I was going to put her firmly in my pocket.

"Walk me to my chair," she said.

"Yes, Lady."

I walked her, slow as a tide, the long length of the gallery to her place at the high table. She gripped my elbow with the small hard claw of an old woman; she peered at me sidelong as we went.

"You have grown up since spring."

"It happens, Lady."

"Not to most. I have known your mother since she was sixteen and full of opinions, and you have grown up in three weeks faster than she did in three years." She lowered her voice. "What have you done, child."

"I had a long fever," I said pleasantly. "And I dreamed."

"Pfft. Fever-dreams. There are old women in this room, child, who think every fever is the moon herself sitting down on a girl's chest. You did not dream all this." She squeezed my arm. "But I will not pry. Not yet. Bring me my tea after the second course and I shall pry then."

"Yes, Lady."

"And, Selene."

"Lady?"

"You are very pretty. Even without my late husband's pearls, which I had meant to give you when you were nineteen and which I shall now consider giving to you by the end of the year."

"Lady."

"Hush. Sit me down. There. There. Bring me my fan. Your mother's seating plan is shameful; she has put me opposite that Marlowe creature."

I had, in fact, asked Mother to put her opposite that Marlowe creature.

I gave Lady Whitlock her fan, fetched her two small honey cakes from the sideboard for her own private supply, and went to take my own seat. Across the table, four chairs down, Vivienne Marlowe was lifting a glass of pale wine to her lips. Today she was in burgundy. The bracelet was not on her wrist; it had not been on her wrist, in any company, for six weeks. I had counted.

I caught her eye once. I smiled small. I looked away.

The first course came out. Quail in cream. The Bluemoon dowager on my left held forth on the autumn calving. Lord Brennan opposite was kind about the soup. Damien, four chairs further down, talked low and easily to my father; I did not look at him, and he did not, in the manner of a man who had given up writing letters to no answer, look at me. He was a careful hunter. He was waiting to see where I had set the trap.

At the start of the second course, Lady Whitlock drew breath. I was already pouring her tea.

"Tell me, child," she said, in her great carrying gala voice, "is it true what your mother tells me — that you have been writing letters to a widow in Ironclaw."

"It is true, Lady," I said.

"What widow."

"A wolf called Halia Voss. Her husband was killed in a rogue raid two years ago. She has been writing me about a stolen bracelet."

The Bluemoon dowager paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. Two of the older Ashfall ladies further down the table turned their heads. Across the table, Vivienne Marlowe had gone very still over her wine.

"Stolen jewellery." Lady Whitlock had the trick of an excellent gossip; she said the next thing very loud, as if she could not help herself. "What jewellery."

"A sapphire bracelet, Lady. Six stones. The third stone slightly larger than the others. Family piece on her grandmother's side. Cut off her husband's body, she believes, on the morning of the raid."

"The animals," Lady Whitlock declared, with such satisfaction that two footmen flinched.

"Yes, Lady."

"And have you found it for her, child?"

"I have not yet been able to confirm it, Lady. But I have heard a description of a piece on a wrist in this region which corresponds. Six stones, third slightly larger. I have written her to invite her up. She would know the bracelet on sight."

"Is the wrist in this room?"

I let the silence stretch by exactly one beat. Across the table, Vivienne lifted her glass to her mouth in a hand that had begun, very faintly, to tremble.

"I should not say, Lady."

"Pft. Discretion. Useless girl." Lady Whitlock turned, with the deliberate slow ceremony of a tank rotating its turret, to the Bluemoon dowager beside her. "Lottie. Did you hear that."

"I heard it, Beatrice."

"Six stones, third larger. Cut off a dead man's wrist. Travelled north."

"I shall make my own inquiries," said Lottie of Bluemoon, very dry. "I do enjoy a stolen bracelet."

"I as well," said the Ashfall matriarch from three seats down. "I have an excellent memory for stones."

I did not smile. I cut a small piece of the second course. I ate it. I took a sip of my watered wine. I let the rest of the table do what the rest of the table was, by the second course of a Silvercrest gala, congenitally bound to do, which was to gossip and to listen and to repeat and to embroider.

By the time dessert came, I had counted four separate ladies of three different packs glancing sidelong at Vivienne Marlowe's left wrist.

By the time the dessert plates had been cleared, Vivienne had set down her glass, made her excuses to the dowager beside her — a sudden faintness, the closeness of the hall — and risen.

By the time she reached the main door, her shoulders were shaking. The tears, when they came, were beautifully timed and very wet and entirely a performance; Lady Whitlock said, quite distinctly, into her tea, "Hm," in the tone of a woman who had been at a great many funerals and not been fooled at any of them.

I rose. I went to the orangery at the side of the great hall, ostensibly for air. The night was clear and a thin moon was up over the eastern wall. The orchids smelled, at this hour, like cold honey and old pepper. I took two breaths. I waited.

He came.

"Selene." Damien Cross stepped through the side door behind me. His voice had a low, controlled fury under it that he had not, in front of the table, betrayed by so much as a flexed jaw. He was very pale around the mouth. "What in the moon's name are you playing at."

I turned, slow.

"Lord Damien. You'll forgive me. I do not play."

"You sent her out of that hall in tears."

"I sent no one anywhere. I told a story to an old woman with bad ears, and the story walked itself. I have, you may notice, said no name."

"Don't you dare —" His hand moved, half a step, toward my arm. He stopped it. He had, in the past life, never had to stop his hand from anything in front of me; he had never had to. He stopped it now because, for the first time, he looked at my face and could not find the girl who would have wept. "What has gotten into you."

"The truth," I said gently. "I just speak it. You may want to step back, my Lord. My father's footman is at the orangery door."

He stepped back. He had to.

From the side door, where the orangery opened back into the hall, Lyra leaned with her shoulder against the jamb, a flute of champagne in her hand. She raised it, very slightly, in my direction. She did not say anything.

I let Damien see her. I let him absorb that he had been watched.

"Good evening, Lord Damien," I said.

I walked past him, back into the hall, on my mother's posture and my father's name.

The first knife was in.