Marianna
I rise as Queen Maeve comes into view, holding the hand of the striking young man I’d noticed in the ballroom. It was hard not to notice him, honestly, with his multi-colored eyes and casual disposition, and it strikes me, quite suddenly, that this is her mate, the man the news can’t stop talking about. Fretting about, more like it.
Blake rises, and I follow, my heart standing still as the Queen of Eastonia, dressed in a soft silver gown of lace that flows around her like water, turns the corner of the staircase and spots us with a start.
Blake narrows his eyes at her. The queen looks surprised to see him and then tilts her head in my direction for a moment before her head whips back to Blake with an expression I can only describe as… smug.
“Well, well, well,” she grins. “Sneaking away from the party, Blake?”
“Speak for yourself,” Blake says without a hint of emotion, even though I sure he meant to tease.
Queen Maeve turns to me as I step down from my perch, bow deeply, and open my mouth to thank her for inviting me here to play, but suddenly, she’s in front of me, touching me, her hands gripping my own.
“You were awesome,” she says, drawing out every syllable. “Brie’s been talking about you for years, and I was so excited you were available to play tonight.”
“Oh,” I grit out as her heat funnels between our joined hands. I briefly look her in the eyes, and they’re just as amazing as everyone says they are. A deep, vivid blueish green that I’ve never seen in the natural world. “Thank you, Your Majesty–”
“No, call me Maeve,” she smiles, squeezing my hands until her mate clears his throat.
“Babe, are we going upstairs or…” He glances at Blake, lifting a brow. “Were you guys going upstairs?” There’s a hint of something I can’t decipher in his voice, an edge that forces tension between our little quartet.
Blake steps down to stand beside me. His hand brushes my lower back, but his fingers hover just above the low-cut fabric of my dress without touching me, but I can feel his heat, feel the way his fingers curl into a fist. “I haven’t seen Marianna in a very long time and caught her as she was leaving for the night–”
“Oh, don’t leave yet!” Maeve barks, giving me a stunning smile. “Please, stay! We have so much food and sparkling wine. The kitchen went a little nuts. They’re about to bring out the punch, too!”
I glance at Blake, noticing the perplexed and entirely suspicious look behind his violet eyes, but then his gaze slides to mine.
“I–I can’t stay, really, it–it wouldn’t be appropriate,” I stammer, raising my hands in surrender. “I was paid to play for you.”
“And you’ve played,” Maeve urges, her eyes wide and lit from within with… excitement. Her mate notices and furrows his brow, briefly looking in Blake’s direction before rolling his shoulders and crossing his arms over his fitted tuxedo jacket. “Please? Oh, you have to, Marianna! Brie will be so jealous!”
“Oh–okay–”
Maeve beams and whirls to her mate, who sighs, extending his hand to her. They move back into the shadows toward the ballroom, where music drifts on a phantom wind, lacing the air with soft melodies that merge with the thundering rain just beyond the massive windows made of… crystal? I have no idea, but just standing here is overwhelming, and it’s not because of Blake.
“I really don’t have to stay,” I tell him, swallowing past a knot of apprehension.
“I think you do,” he replies, but he doesn’t smile. His mouth is a tight line. He steps down, holding out his hand, and I take it, curling my fingers around his.
Despite the stern look on his face, he gives my hand the gentlest of squeezes and guides me back to the party.
His fingers don’t leave mine, but his touch is light. We walk at a slower than necessary pace, like he’s dragging out the few moments we have alone.
I’m correct about that theory, because in a shadowed alcove near a side entrance to the ballroom, he pauses and turns to me, pulling his fingers away from mine. “Maeve is being weird,” he says quietly, his eyes on the crowd swaying to music and drinking to their heart’s content. “She’s not normally like this.”
“Like what? She seems really nice. I met Brie once, remember? I can tell that they’re sisters.”
“Brie is actually adopted,” he replies pointedly, which is news to me. I’ve never kept with the royal family, mostly because news of Blake could have been enough to send me over the edge into a dark, spiraling oblivion. “I doubt her affinity for kindness is nurture based. That’s just who she is, but Maeve is tricky. I find it hard to trust her right now.”
I can’t help but laugh. “You’re cousins. Of course you trust her–”
“Soren knows about you and Skye.”
I blink up at him, furrowing my brows. “Who?”
“Maeve’s mate.”
“Oh–with the eyes?”
“Yes,” he says in a whisper.
“But–are you friends with him?”
“No,” he says quickly. “I don’t–I don’t have friends, especially not him.”
“Well, I see that hasn’t changed–”
“Marianna,” he says, cutting me off as he closes the distance between us with a single step, “about a month ago, I was… in deep water, so to speak, as was he, and I said some things that I should have kept quiet. I know how you feel about Skye’s safety and anonymity, and I want to keep it that way, for her sake and yours. If the press were to find out about her–about either of you? They’d have a field day. It would be chaos. You’d never have a normal life again.”
Something twists deep in my stomach, a sharp pang of remembrance. A conversation we had just like this one but years ago, toward the middle of my pregnancy, when he showed up at my apartment, drenched, like he’d walked there through the rain.
“What happened?” I ask, banishing the memory of the absolutely gutting conversation we’d had almost eight years ago, praying those fragments fester and die for good.
“Nothing,” he lies. He’s never been good at lying.
“Blake–”
“We need to talk,” he says, cutting me off, his fingers slipping back between mine. “Tonight, preferably, but Maeve isn’t going to leave me alone about you, so I doubt that’ll happen. Either way, this conversation needs to be had.”
“Does she know we used to date?”
“Not to that extent. But she’s scheming, and I don’t like it.”
“Do you want to… go to your office? It would be quieter there, I’m sure. Less listening ears?”
He considers the offer, his eyes searching mine and… holding, which is such an intense and unnerving feeling that quickly bleeds into… heat. A kind of intimacy I vividly remember and have… missed.
His eyes are exactly like Skye’s, down to the silver star-like flakes around their irises, like the entire universe is just… there. Right within reach. A single blink away.
“No. Like I said, Maeve is entirely suspicious of me right now, and I have very strict rules about my space within the castle.”
“You’re saying I’m not allowed in your office?”
“She’s not allowed in my office,” he deadpans, but there’s the smallest, teeniest glimmer of mirth in his eyes. “But she’s never once respected that. She’ll eavesdrop.”
I look at the party again. The crowd is younger now that we’ve reached the late hours of the night. “So we don’t talk about Skye right now,” I tell him with a shrug.
“Not right now,” he agrees.
“Then what do I do? Play–”
He takes my violin case and steps through a door directly to the side of us, tucking it just out of view. “Enjoy yourself. I think Maeve is jealous Brie got to meet you, and she never got a chance.”
“Why would she be jealous? I’m a nobody!”
“You’re not,” he says low in his throat as he turns back to me. “You’re tied to me, and she’s curious. That’s all. There’s nothing nefarious about it other than new ammunition to use against me to get under my skin, which she has no problem doing.”
I find myself smiling as our eyes meet in the shadowed haze of the alcove. Blake tucks his hands in his pockets and turns to the party, the distance between us growing so wide I quickly lose him to the crowd, leaving me on my own.
I don’t know anyone here. Not a single soul other than Blake, who is now taking up residence near a drink table, leaning into what seems like a tense conversation with Soren, Maeve’s mate.
Soren is looking directly at me, however. He gives me a tight smile, nodding his head in my direction, before turning to pour what looks like whiskey into a short, crystal glass.
“Thank the Goddess he left you alone for a second,” Maeve says as she appears out of what feels like thin air. I nearly jump out of my skin, my hand flying over my heart.
Maeve is tall. The tallest woman I think I’ve ever seen. She exudes power, if that’s possible. It falls from her, invisible to the naked eye, but I can feel it brushing over my skin like flakes of embers as she stands by my side, overlooking the party. She sighs heavily when she looks in Blake’s direction and then chuckles, shaking her head. “Did you guys… date? Like boyfriend girlfriend date?”
“Us?” What the hell do I say? What would he want me to say?
“I just find it hard to believe Blake could talk to a woman without getting totally flustered.”
“Oh, well, that is true–” I bite my tongue, my cheeks burning a bright, fiery red that’s most definitely bleeding down my neck and flaring over the low-cut bodice of my gown.
“I knew it,” she whispers, smiling to herself as she stares at Blake. “So, you were his girlfriend?”
“No,” I rush out. Technically, it’s the truth. We never had a conversation about that. What we had in those few weeks we were… taking our friendship to the next level… was brief and quickly turned strained. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be his girlfriend or anything, but he… couldn’t do it. “He tried tutoring me in math, actually. That’s how we met.”
I can feel her eyes scanning my profile but can’t bring myself to look at her.
“Boring,” she whispers to herself, and I fight the smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “So, that’s it, then? My sister made it sound like he was desperately head over heels in love with you.”
That… absolutely crushes me.
“Mhmm,” I manage to hum. “I mean, I don’t know. He never said anything about it.” He did. He did, in fact, tell me he loved me, but months too late.
Maeve grumbles something unintelligible over the music then straightens, clutches her breasts, of all things, and abruptly turns toward the archways lining one wall of the ballroom. “Shit, shit, shit–”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice is strained as she peers into the darkened hallways leading off the ballroom into what I assume are the recesses of the palace. “I’m–our daughter is a month old, and I’m breastfeeding. I’m about to soak my gown, and it’s lace from the Deadlands, impossible to replace.”
“Oh, well, let’s get you out of here–” I instinctually fist a stack of napkins from a side table as she hurries away. I follow, and I’m not entirely sure why, but she does look back to make sure I’m still within view before sliding through a side door and flipping on a light switch that brings a sitting room into startling focus.
I kick the door closed behind us. She sinks into a chair, accepting the napkins, which she promptly stuffs into her gown with a relieved sigh. “Thank you. I would have had to change, and it took me half an hour to get into this dress in the first place.”
“It’s fine. I’ve been there a time or two.” I immediately regret opening my big, fat, stupid month.
Maeve’s unnerving eyes meet mine. “You have?”
“I–I have a daughter.” I shrug one shoulder, leaning against the door for support as my mind reels over what lies I can spin to get out of this and keep Blake safe. This is what he wanted. This is what he said needed to happen. His family couldn’t know. Otherwise, the whole world would know about Skye, and… I agreed with him.
At least, back then. Back when I thought I could handle it all by myself.
“She’s seven now, so I’m way past this.” Another shrug. I tuck my hands behind my back, unsure what to do with them.
Maeve blinks up at me from the stool she just fell onto. “What’s her name?”