Author: Leah Cypess

She went so stil she stopped breathing—stopped for far longer than a living girl could have. Then she said, “Why are you tel ing me that?”

The scent of her perfume was suddenly overpowering. She had to be doing that on purpose.

Varis’s heart pounded. He wondered why Cerix had kil ed her: a real plot she had been part of, a plot she had been pretending to take part in, or just because she had taunted him once too often? He supposed it didn’t mat er. “I thought, rather than stay here and see him, you might be wil ing to meet me in my chambers. The wine would be bet er, and we could enjoy it in private.”

“The wine is tempting,” Clarisse said. “But I do want to dance.”

“So wil Cerix.”

Her eyes went hard, and for a moment he thought she was going to at ack him. Instead, she smiled. “I can stay away from him. I have excel ent self-control. But after the first few dances, I would enjoy some wine. . . .”

She lowered her lashes and brushed her fingertips across her lips.

Varis bowed again, and when he straightened she was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

Cal ie, watching her brother walk out of the makeshift theater, didn’t realize Jano was behind her until he tapped her shoulder. She turned, then went stil when she saw who it was. They stared at each other in silence for several moments. Jano looked incongruously genteel in a brocade green overcoat, ruf led sleeves, and a high pleated col ar—like a child playing dress-up.

“Wel ,” Jano said final y. “It seems there’s something you forgot to mention to me.”

So Clarisse had told him. Cal ie drew in her breath and tried to think of something to say. Final y she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Jano said, with genuine curiosity.

“For not tel ing you. It’s not . . . it’s not that I didn’t want you to know. I just didn’t want to say it out loud.”

“It wil get bet er, you know.” Jano gestured to a passing serving girl, snatched two pastries of her tray, and of ered one to Cal ie. “You’l learn to pretend. We do it so wel , here in this castle. We busy ourselves with parties and hunts so we have no time to think. It’s the only way we can bear being what we are.”

He was smiling at her with calm pity, and suddenly she was angry; a hot anger that dried out the tears. She took the pastry from him and bit into it savagely, her mouth fil ing with spicy sweetness. Even though she was dead and shouldn’t be able to taste anything.

“Are the living so dif erent?” she asked.

“No.” Jano popped a pastry into his mouth. Flaky dough trickled from his lips as he spoke. “No, not at al .

But the living don’t have to justify being here. They belong here.”

“So do we,” Cal ie said defiantly, after she had swal owed. “There’s nothing wrong with being a ghost.” She had never said it before, and the words felt wrong leaving her mouth. She didn’t believe them.

But she had bet er start believing them.

Jano laughed. “Oh, you have been here awhile, haven’t you? Long enough to believe what they al spend so much energy pretending.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Let me tel you what you wil know, Cal ie, when you’ve been dead for hundreds of years. Dead is dead. Every second that you’re dead, every second that you know it, you die al over again. Watching your life escape from your grasp, over and over and over. Parties and banquets wil only distract you for so long before you have no choice but to face it. And that’s when you go mad.”

“Which, apparently, you have,” Cal ie snapped.

He laughed even longer this time. “Oh, no. I’m close, but not quite there. When I go mad, Cal ie, you’l know. I won’t be able to hold onto this human form anymore. I won’t be able to bear the presence of the living, when I hate them so much for having what I never wil again. I’l disappear, but I won’t be at peace, I won’t be at rest, I won’t be free. I wil be hiding beneath the earth, with the other ghosts, dying again and again and again.” He stepped so close she could feel his breath on her face; except of course he didn’t have to breathe, so he was doing that on purpose. “That’s where the spel is, chaining us here no mat er how badly we want to go. That’s where I’l be, close to the spel , clinging to my chains because they’re al I have left.”

By the time he finished speaking, she was yards away from him, her back pressed against a round table. She dropped the rest of the pastry to the floor. He didn’t move closer, but he pinned her with his gaze. “Did I ever tel you how I died, Cal ie?”

Mute, she shook her head.

“My mother did it.”

“Your—”

“I fel of a horse, and the wound got infected. The doctors told her it was too late to save me . . . but she didn’t want to lose me. So she kil ed me.”

Cal ie tried to step even farther back, and the pastry crunched under her foot. “But . . . if she was the one who kil ed you, and you knew it, then didn’t you want to . . .”

“Yes.”

So much anguish fil ed that one word that Cal ie felt a surge of pity. She said, very quietly, “Did you refrain for her sake, or for yours?”

“For hers.” Jano watched another servant go by with a tray of fruit, then turned back to her. “I never asked her to make me a ghost. But I was al she had. And then when she died, my chance was gone.”

“I’m sor—”

“I should have realized it sooner,” Jano said. “I could have had my vengeance and died in truth, if I hadn’t clung so tightly to the il usion that I loved her. This is what death is: not having to love anyone.” He grimaced.

“It’s why Clarisse is so glad to be dead. More than anything, she wanted to be free of the people she once loved. And the living are never free.”

Cal ie’s fingernails dug into her palms. “The dead are?”

He smiled, faintly and bit erly. “Not noticeably.”

After that, they stood in silence until Jano spot ed another tray of pastries and headed after it. Cal ie let out a long, shaky breath. She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes, and when she uncovered them, Jano was a long, shaky breath. She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes, and when she uncovered them, Jano was nowhere to be seen.

I won’t be at peace, I won’t be at rest, I won’t be free. Cal ie grabbed a goblet of wine from the table behind her and downed it in one long swal ow. It didn’t help.

Dying again and again and again.

She would rather he had lied to her. She would rather he had let her become one of the unthinking masses, believing what everyone else believed. He would have, if he were truly her friend. But he was too long dead to be anyone’s friend.

He didn’t kil me on the hunt, she reminded herself. But that was when he had thought she was alive, that she could be kil ed, or saved. He had, she realized suddenly, not turned away because he didn’t want her dead.

He just hadn’t wanted her to become this. What he was. What she was, now.

What she would be forever. And no one, not even Darri, could change it.

It didn’t mat er that Cal ie wouldn’t help her. It was bet er, in fact. Darri had a plan, and it was one that Cal ie wouldn’t like very much.

She watched Kestin, who was standing near the dais smiling graciously, exchanging greetings with the stream of nobles who came up to him. He looked very regal in gold-trimmed black velvet, his stance as carefree as if this was just another of the castle’s endless parties. As always, he looked more alive than most of the people around him, with a glowing vibrancy that made it hard to believe he could no longer walk in sunlight.

Even so, Darri could barely manage to keep her focus on him, to keep from looking around the banquet hal for Cal ie. She couldn’t wipe from her mind the expression on Varis’s face when Cal ie told him the truth: the blankness of disbelief, the refusal to recognize something too horrible to be true. She had felt the same way when she first found out the truth about her sister.

She stil felt the same way.

“My lady Darriniaka,” someone said behind her, and Darri turned to face a lanky man with over-oiled red hair and a fine sheen of sweat covering his face. “I have long looked forward to meeting you.”

And Darri had long wondered when Cerix would make his move. He could not have chosen a worse time.

“My lord,” she said politely.

He smiled at her, coming far too close and giving Darri an up-close view of several newly erupted pimples.

She resisted the urge to back away, and the even stronger urge to stab him in the stomach. “You are as beautiful as they say.”

You’ve known what I look like for days, you idiot. Darri suddenly changed her mind about being polite.

This could work for her, if she played it right. “As who says?”

He blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“If there’s someone in this court who thinks I’m beautiful, I’d like to know about it.”

“I think you are beautiful, Lady Darriniaka.” He actual y put one hand over his heart. “The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“Then there’s a problem with either your memory or your eyes.”

Momentary anger marred his ardent expression. People within earshot were starting to snicker. “Do you not know who I am, my lady?”

“Of course I know.” Darri copied his moonstruck expression as best she could. “You’re Prince Kestin’s heir.”

The snickers stopped. People were listening more closely now. Darri glanced across the room and saw Varis scowling at her. Apparently he didn’t approve of her taking sides.

Which was merely a side benefit.

Though if he was that upset now, she would have to make sure to sneak another look at him in a few minutes.

“Prince Kestin is dead,” Cerix snapped, loud enough to be heard halfway across the hal . “I am his father’s heir, not his.”

Now many more people than Varis looked angry. It was unfortunate for Cerix’s faction, real y, that they had to back Cerix. This was why the Rael ian method of confirming new leaders through combat made so much sense.

“Prince Kestin is not dead,” Darri said, as loudly and stupidly as she could. “He’s standing right there. And I wish to dance with him.” She turned her back on Cerix and marched across the dance floor to Kestin, whose dark eyes were fixed on her. Unlike the other people in the hal who were watching her—which was, by now, most of them—he looked amused.

He also, fortunately, had picked up enough of what was going on to bow and hold out his hand. She took it without thinking, and it was warm and cal used in hers; warm enough to let her pretend it was a living hand.

Darri fol owed him onto the center of the dance floor and realized abruptly the first flaw in her hastily conceived plan: she didn’t know how to dance.

Considering what she was about to do, the prospect of looking like an idiot in front of the court shouldn’t have bothered her. Nevertheless, it did. She considered asking Kestin for help, and realized that looking like an idiot in front of him would bother her even more.

Wel , that was going to be a problem.

She concentrated on moving in more or less the same direction as the prince. That was just about al she She concentrated on moving in more or less the same direction as the prince. That was just about al she could manage; the same speed was out of her reach, and moving her feet the way he did was completely beyond the realm of possibility.

Kestin raised his eyebrows, and she was mortified to feel herself blush. Then he stepped forward and put one arm around her waist.

That was bet er. She barely had to move at al , with him guiding her so closely. But she was unbearably tense, and she couldn’t even tel if it was because he was dead or because he felt so alive.