Heart of Midnight, page 11
“Tristan, you sound more upset by the ball than you do about the threat of war.”
He laughed then, too, but his laugh was low and short.
“You have so much to do right now,” I said, pulling back and stepping out of his arms until we were connected only by our hands, the cold of the air rushing into the space he just kept warm. “And I think you need to get some sleep.”
“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t let go of my hands, and he made no move to go inside. He just stared at me, all the sharpness of his face moments before melting into the look he got right before he fell asleep, as if all his muscles started to relax.
“Wait,” I said, stepping closer again and putting a hand to his chest, “how tired are you?”
“I’m exhausted,” he said with a laugh.
“Do…” I bit my lip and sucked in a sharp breath when he looked at my mouth, “do you want to stay and sleep on the sofa like you did before?”
His arms wrapped around me, and he kissed my forehead, holding me close and taking a deep breath.
“Yes.”
We went back inside, past my bed, which would have been more comfortable and was calling my name, but would have ended with me in big trouble with the General and Gus and Jacquetta without explanation. And Madam Valentin would probably kill me with poisonous flowers in my bath.
But when we got to the parlor, Jacquetta and Gus were already behind their own closed doors, and the lights were even lower than they had been before.
He sat down on the sofa and pulled me into him so I was curled up on his chest with his coat still on my shoulders.
“Cinder,” he said, running his fingers along my hairline, “when we get to the training grounds, please come find me if I get too stuck in what I’m doing for too many days.”
“Do you want me to make you spend the night in my tent? Because this seems to be the best way for us to get time together.”
He kissed the top of my head and sighed.
“One day…” he said, his words ending in a yawn.
I let a small, breath of a laugh out and his hand ran up and down my arm.
“Yes. If I get too caught up, find me,” he said, and his voice stopped as his breathing evened out.
Tristan was tired, and I must have been more tired than I realized because I still didn’t know what he was going to say after one day. I just knew that it was today. And we were together. For now.
Chapter 25
Communications
Tristan was gone when I woke up, but I wasn’t on the couch anymore. I woke up in my bed with the blankets over me in my gem-encrusted dress, and Tristan’s coat still around my shoulders.
A note sat on my nightstand.
My Beautiful Cinder,
Last night was a dream and I’m sorry to end it, but I needed to get back to work.
Please don’t be upset that I wanted you to sleep soundly once I left, so I carried you to bed. I know it was a breach of your privacy.
Hopefully, leaving my coat with you will mean that I get to see you before the ball tonight. I suspect I will be in my public office all day.
There aren’t words enough for me to thank you for last night.
Love, Tristan
Someday, I wanted to leave him a little note while he slept. Maybe at the training grounds I could find a way to make that happen.
It was a silly thing to want to do. But he had done it so many times, and I never got to return the favor.
Climbing from the bed, the gorgeous gown of the night before seemed rumpled, although I wasn’t sure how that happened when it was entirely covered in sparkles.
But at least this gown was easy to take off and lay on the bed. And the red day dress I pulled from the trunk was easy to put on in its place.
What was harder was trying to decide what to do with my hair.
My updo was messier than it had been, but somehow it managed to look deliberate. Like the tendrils were just multiplied.
So I left it, wrote a letter to Inara asking how she was, how Breakwater fared, and if there was anything I could do for her and her people from the palace, and folded Tristan’s coat over my arm.
I didn’t want to give it back. Not really. I wanted to fold it and put it in my trunk with his letters, and all my clothes, where my mother’s shoes once sat.
But he asked for it, and it gave me an excuse to see him again.
Opening my door, I peeked out and tried to spot movement from my friends.
Gus and Jacquetta weren’t up yet. I took a minute to order us some breakfast and left them a note that it was on its way before I headed down the hall.
No one else was up yet, either, except guards posted along the hallway.
By the time I got to Tristan’s office, I was chewing on my lip and questioning whether he would even be in there.
Voices floated into the hall through the open doorway.
“My King, you need to think this through,” the Chamberlain said, sounding exasperated.
“I have thought it through,” Tristan said. “Which is the only reason I am waiting.” If the Chamberlain was frustrated, Tristan was furious. If I was the Chamberlain, I would have probably shut my mouth.
“But there is an obvious answer here, and you refuse to do it,” the Chamberlain said, persisting in what sounded like a suicidal argument.
“Chamberlain,” General Pace said, “perhaps you need to explain to King Tristan why only you seem to think the course of action you are suggesting is the best one.”
The General was going to kill the Chamberlain, that much was obvious. I didn’t want to be around for that, and if I didn’t get back soon enough, Gus and Jacquetta would panic on the day of a ball.
I swallowed and knocked on the door as I walked through it and into the office.
“Good morning,” I said, smiling all around.
The General looked at Chamberlain Rezan like a smug cat who just stole the milk off the table.
Chamberlain Rezan spluttered as if there were some magic word that was just beyond grasp and it would save the world.
And Tristan…Tristan bit his lip around a smile, walking toward me while a blush spread across his cheeks.
“Lady Cinder, I am happy to see you this morning,” he said, coming to take my hand. “I have something for you in my private office. Will you come with me?”
“Of course, King Tristan, I am happy to see you, too.”
I turned toward the door and Tristan called over his shoulder, “I will be back in a moment.”
We made our way into his office, and he slumped against a bookshelf, keeping hold of my hand and leaving the door open.
“Sorry, Cinder,” he whispered, shaking his head with his eyes wide. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough to know you’re angry with the Chamberlain, but that’s all. I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
Much.
His smile was massive then and he tugged me to him, wrapping his arms around me and tucking his face into my neck.
I could have stayed like that all day, but I had a lot of Gus and Jacquetta time scheduled before the ball that they weren’t going to let me forget.
Stepping back, I held out my arm with the coat draped over it and the letter to Inara.
“Your coat, as you requested, and I wrote a letter to the Duchess of Breakwater. Can you see that it gets delivered?” As I asked the question, I realized I was piling more on him at a bad time to do that. “It’s okay though. I can get the letter out. Don’t worry about it. You’re too busy.”
“Not for something you need,” he said, standing up from the bookshelf and taking both things from me before tugging me back against his chest and holding me with his one free arm.
“Cinder, you ask little of me, and there’s little I can give right now. But I’m glad I get to do this.”
His eyes met mine. Our bodies close together, and our faces so close I could have bent my head up a fraction and kissed him.
Instead, I took a deep breath, buried my face in his chest and hugged him back.
“Thank you, Tristan.” I stepped out of his embrace, letting his hand trail down my arm to lace his fingers with mine. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Save a dance for me,” he said, and I smiled before I turned to go back to my rooms, wondering what they were arguing about, and how soon it would be that the Chamberlain was reprimanded for it.
Maybe it already happened.
After that thought, my walk back to my room was light, and I was back to being buoyed by the night before.
Now all I had to do was make it through another ball.
Chapter 26
Name Change
“No,” I said, looking at the dress they wanted to put me in, my heart twisting and making it difficult to speak.
“What do you mean, no?” Gus asked.
“It’s beautiful,” Jacquetta said, smiling down at it on the bed.
“Yes,” I said, touching the flowing fabric of the sleeve. “But it’s not what I want for today.”
And I had my doubts I would ever want to see it again.
They looked at each other, sighed, and went back to my trunks to find something else.
On the bed, the dress they picked was pale gray, shining silver in a soft, delicate looking fabric that billowed at the sleeves, and the skirt but was cinched up tight in a corset look for the bodice complete with shaped cups for my breasts.
It looked like a wedding dress.
My heart squeezed looking at it, knowing that it would never be used.
Someone who wasn’t me would wear something like it one day to marry Tristan, and if I wore it now, I wouldn’t be able to forget that.
As they went through the dresses, one caught my eye.
“How about that one?” I smiled at the gray and silver they held. It was almost perfect.
“But you don’t like the off-the-shoulder ones,” Jacquetta said, pulling it out anyway.
“You’re right.” But I liked this one. Even if it wasn’t actually practical. Even if I wouldn’t be able to have full range of motion of my arms in it. It looked like I could kill someone in it. That was good enough.
“Okay, well we don’t have time to argue,” Gus said, holding it up for me to step into.
They helped me put it on and I was right. There wasn’t full range of motion in my arms. But it did look great.
A strap of silvery leather circled my shoulders with the Dragon King sigil embossed on it. From that strap, from my arms around the back, flowed a single layer of organza in white as if it were a cape. The bodice was tight against me in a pale gray with something in the fabric that shimmered when I moved. More of the silvery leather crisscrossed the bodice in a way that made my breasts look far larger than they actually were. And the skirt, in the same shimmering gray, flowed down to the floor but a hand’s width of white lace in a dragon pattern stuck out from under the whole back half of the hem and dragged on the floor.
Not only did I look like I could kill someone in this dress, I looked like someone who could do it with a pointed look and a raised brow.
“Perfect,” I said, standing in front of the mirror, my hair in an elaborate braid that hung down my back.
Gus and Jacquetta wore the bright yellowish green of hellfire water again, Jacquetta in velvet and Gus in taffeta.
“We look good,” Gus said, turning to look at herself in the mirror.
“Now we need to see everyone else.” Jacquetta swept her skirt out as she turned to leave the room.
“Yeah,” I said, following after her, “what will they wear on the eve of a war?” My voice thick with sarcasm.
Gus and Jacquetta shook their heads, looking at each other.
“Whatever helps them forget,” Gus said.
I looked down at the hallway in front of me as we headed toward the ballroom, wondering if she was right.
Maybe my embrace of my position in this war, as someone who was going to fight it, would upset some of the people there.
“Cinder,” Jacquetta said, a question in her voice, “why didn’t you want to wear the other one?”
“Because it looked too much like a wedding dress to me.” There was no point in hiding what I thought about it now. They weren’t going to turn me around and make me change. But a twinge still ricocheted through me saying it out loud.
“Wedding dresses are gold,” Gus said, as if that was common knowledge.
“Am I supposed to know that?” Because it wasn’t like the people of Lehar had big weddings. They came to the manor in their best clothes, which were almost never that great, had Ash perform the ceremony, and left again.
“Have you never been to a court wedding?” Jacquetta asked, her eyes huge.
“No, I haven’t.” Even when Solaria married Lord Fall, Ash went and I stayed home, training.
General Pace met us at the top of the grand staircase.
“My apologies, I have been working,” she said, looking over her shoulder toward the courtyard.
“You have much more important things to do than be at a ball,” I said.
She turned back toward me and smiled. “Not if this goes the way I want it to.”
I rolled my eyes and stepped past her.
“Tristan isn’t going to do anything tonight.” He wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, least of all at a big ball. And he made it clear, right now, with all the threats in the air, he couldn’t afford to send Ziya home and risk angering Amethyst.
“Not anything that would end it all,” the General said, walking alongside me.
“Why does it seem like you know something?”
In her answering grin, I saw secrets and tricks waiting for me at this supposed ball. Something was up, for sure.
“Because I know a lot of things,” the General said, smiling at me.
Reaching the giant doors of the grand ballroom meant stopping to wait while Jacquetta and Gus situated my skirt so the lace laid just right.
“Are you announcing me again tonight?” I asked General Pace.
She grinned, nodded, and stepped inside.
First, she announced Gus and Jacquetta, who slipped through the doors to leave me standing on my own.
Everything was exactly the same as it had been the last time, until…
“For King Tristan,” General Pace’s strong voice announced.
Wait, she didn’t say that before. The ‘for the King’ part of her statement wasn’t there the first time. My heart hammered in my chest.
“Your Candidate Potential for future Queen of Onyx, Lady Cinder Ahmya of Lehar, friend of Breakwater, hero of the Battle of Obsidian Wings.”
I was going to pass out.
Friend of Breakwater? Hero? Battle of Obsidian Wings? Since when was any of that in my announcement?
But I didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t even have time to register that there was a name for the fight with the Corvids now.
All I had time to do was shake out my hands, and walk through the doors into the ballroom.
Chapter 27
Focus
Stepping into the ballroom, every eye in the room turned toward me.
Gus, Jacquetta, and the General stood at my sides, their heads held high.
Jacquetta breathed deeply, her face in a small smile her mother would have been proud of.
Gus was on my other side, beaming with a wicked glint in her eye like she was daring one of the others to top that announcement.
The General waited in her perfect mask, not allowing anything to show.
I swallowed, holding my breath, waiting for…something. For the charge in the air to manifest into something that made sense.
What was that feeling?
But a second later, it happened.
All around the room, the guards saluted and bowed.
Trying to catch my breath, trying not to panic that they were doing it again so publicly, I found Tristan’s eyes.
He stood on the dais at the end of the room, smiling that soft smile that made me feel like we were alone.
Then he saluted. And bowed.
My stomach thrummed as if my rampaging heart was centered there instead of my chest.
General Pace held her arm out to me, and I placed my hand on her elbow, my eyes not leaving Tristan’s as we walked forward into the crowd of the few who were invited to this shrunken and impromptu ball.
People moved as we drew closer, blocking my view, and it was like a spell was broken.
I took in the looks on all the faces around me.
Chamberlain Rezan’s narrowed eyes and pursed lips, the snake’s mouth twisted to the side, the tight features of so many others, all of it made me clench my fists at my sides.
Maybe they were angry at my announcement, maybe they were angry at the way the guard responded. But I had to tell myself that the only thing that really mattered was Tristan’s reaction.
Finally, we got to a point in the group gathered by the dais where I could see Tristan again.
He smiled as he looked out at us, not the private one that seemed like it held a sweet secret, but the public one of the King.
I took a deep breath as he raised his hands, the movement calling everyone to silence without a word.
“Good evening, everyone. I want to thank Chamberlain Rezan for setting this up on short notice.”
Everyone clapped politely, and I pretended I didn’t want to kill his chosen potential for a minute. Out of respect. For the Chamberlain’s work. Not who the Chamberlain was championing. I had no respect for that. Not unless it was all a ruse and tomorrow the snake was undermined.
“You all know that I wanted to end this attempt to find a queen.”
Murmurs and shuffling were all around me, but I froze.
Was he going to do it again? What would that mean for my move to the training grounds? And all my plans to keep him safe?
“But you have also given me support in this difficult time, and I want to thank you for that.” He took a deep breath, and I couldn’t breathe at all.
“For a while, I will be away from the palace. Unfortunately, I do not know how long I will be away, or how long this threat will plague Onyx. While I am gone, I leave it up to you what you do. You can stay at the palace. It is a safe place. Among the safest there is. Or you can go back to your homes, and wait until we can reconvene this search for a queen. I will promise you that nothing will be done regarding the search until we resume it officially.”
