Blake
The Night Before
Soren pours another glass of punch, bracing one hand on the table as the ladle scrapes the bottom of the bowl. “Shit, it’s almost gone,” he murmurs, his words slurred. “It’s fuckin’ good, though.”
I squint past my blurred vision and spot Marianna in the small crowd as she moves in what I think is my direction, but there’s three of her. Someone trips behind her, and Patton, who was just standing at my side, takes off in a rush to rescue Jane, who’s now on the floor, tangled in her dress.
I’m not sure where the night went. One moment I was watching Marianna mingle with Maeve. Then, they disappeared, and reappeared, and the punch was served.
Music growled from speakers that sent smooth vibrations across the ballroom as conversations ran wild, and then… everything blurred. I think I danced at one point, which is incredibly unlike me. I think I might have actually danced with Marianna.
Everything got incredibly hazy after that first glass of punch.
“Where’d Maeve go?” My mouth feels incredibly dry. I take another sip of the punch, wondering why it’s not going down as easily as the first three cups. I’m not normally a sweets guy, especially when it comes to drinks, but this stuff is good. Too good. Stupidly, unexplainably good.
“I think she left,” Soren slurs, looking around like he just realized his mate is nowhere to be found. “I mean, what time is it? It’s gotta be midnight. Her parents are with–with Fallon. I just have one kid, right? I think–I think so?”
I check my watch.
“It’s four A.M.”
Soren scratches his head. “No, it’s not.”
I extend my wrist to him, and he looks down at my watch, blinking repeatedly like he’s trying to clear his vision. A few yards away, Patton tumbles trying to untangle the fabric of Jane’s intricate, fluffy gown, one of his shoes flying across the room.
Pressure on my forearm steals my attention from the drunken scene taking place throughout the ballroom, which is… more like a war zone now.
“I am so thirsty,” Marianna whispers like it’s a secret. “Blake, help me. I’m going to die of thirst.”
“Here.” I try to hand her the punch in my hand, but she just opens her mouth like a bird, and I pour it in, then pause. “Wait. Soren, what’s in the punch?”
“Fruit? I dunno.” He takes two stumbling steps away from the table.
“Who ordered it?”
“Maeve. She planned the whole thing.” He laughs, waving a hand in dismissal, then stumbles away, trips over Patton and a man I don’t know but who’s friends with Jane, I suppose, and falls to the ground.
“We’re not drinking any more of this,” I hiss, taking the glass of punch away from Marianna’s mouth.
“Where are we?” She sways into my body. I rope an arm around her waist, glancing around the room at the dwindling crowd of guests who should have dispersed… hours ago.
“Shit.”
Marianna starts to slump over my arm, her head lulling, but she grins, her eyes open to slits. “Blake?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember when we drove all the way to the coast and watched the ferries?”
“Yes,” I whisper, looking down at her as the room spins out of control. Gods, she’s beautiful. A soft, full, lovely weight in my arms. She turns to me, wrapping her arms around my neck to steady herself.
“Why didn’t we just get a ferry and leave? We talked about it.”
“We were going to go past Maatua. Past KiloKilo to sail the open seas.” I smile, dreary, my body feeling more noodle-like than it ever has. Laughter rings out around the room in every direction, bouncing from wall to wall like music, but I know the music turned off hours ago. I think. Fuck, I can’t even think right now.
“Why didn’t we?”
“Because I would have had to stage a mutiny and steal a ferry, remember?”
“Sounds fun.” She yawns, her cheek pressed against my chest. Her hair smells like nectarines. She must use the same shampoo she always has. I like that.
“Let’s go to bed,” she whispers around another yawn. “I’ll walk you there because you’re–you’re so drunk.” Her words slur into intelligibility.
“You don’t live here, Anna. You have no idea where my room is.”
“You do.” Her hand rests on my chest, her fingers clutching my shirt, which is somehow unbuttoned halfway down. I’m not wearing my tux jacket anymore, either, and… I only have one shoe.
“I think we’re in trouble,” I say, blinking to clear my hazy vision. All around the ballroom, people are swaying to nonexistent music or sleeping on the cold tile floor.
Marianna murmurs something unintelligible, tightening her grip on my shirt. Her scent is overwhelming my senses, cutting through the alcohol clogging my veins. I want to carry her upstairs and into my bed. I want that so badly it hurts, but I forbid myself to even consider it, even if I were to just dump her on my mattress with the last of my lucidity and fall asleep face down on the floor.
When her knees start to give out, I pick her up, cradling her like a baby, and pick my way out of the ballroom, stepping over discarded shoes until I find my missing one.
“My shoes,” Marianna groans, pointing into thin air. “Blake–”
“I’ll get them.” I swing her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She grunts but quickly slumps back into semi-consciousness. I can’t find her shoes anywhere, and by the time I breach the foyer, early morning light is already drifting through the windows, highlighting Soren trying to crawl up the grand staircase.
He gives up, lies down on the runner, and falls asleep.
“What the fuck is happening?” I murmur then turn for the door.
Moonrise is quiet this time of day. The town square outside the entrance of the castle shimmers in the hazy gray morning light. The beginnings of what will soon be a massive mating festival, always held in the spring, paint the normally gold and alabaster streets in shades of pink as I carry Marianna toward the guarded gates of the Wisteria Way neighborhood, less than two blocks away from the castle.
I’m out of breath, which is unusual, when I reach the security gate, my mouth full of cotton and drier than the middle of nowhere in Tarsian.
The security guards give me measured looks before rolling back the gate, nodding slightly, and I wave them off.
“Prince Blake,” one of them says, “do you need assistance?”
I shake my head, mumbling an inaudible no before stumbling past the gate, trying not to fall over with Marianna still slung over my shoulder.
“Which house is yours?”
“The white one.”
“They’re all white,” I growl, starting to feel a little bit more aware of my surroundings and our situation.
She points, but her arm quickly drops, and I spend the next ten minutes walking up and down the streets, trying to get her attention long enough to figure out which house is hers. They all look the same. Rows and rows of immaculate townhomes line cobblestone streets still damp from last night’s storm. Toward the end of one street, along a row of homes closest to the exterior wall of the castle, a light switches on on the lowest level, highlighting a figure moving behind the curtains as they move through the first floor of the neat home.
I have a sudden burst of memory through the haze of punch rendering my mind utterly useless. There’s one person in the entire world who takes pleasure in waking up before the Goddess, and it’s Marianna’s mother.
Leona steps out onto the porch wrapped in a robe when I reach the front gate. Her eyes, so like Marianna’s, widen before she jogs down the steps.
“Blake? Oh, Goddess, is she all right?”
“I believe–” I wobble trying to unlatch the gate while keeping my arm braced against Marianna’s thighs. “Something happened at the ball.”
Leona stares at me for a moment, taking me in. I haven’t seen her in seven years. I used to be at her house all the time. She took up an immense amount of space in my life for a solid two years. She knows me. She knows her daughter, too. Marianna doesn’t party. She rarely drinks.
“Are you drunk?” Leona hisses, her eyes searching mine.
“Very,” I gut out.
“Oh, Goddess, get inside right now!”
She bustles me inside where I quickly deposit Marianna on the couch, covering her with a blanket.
Leona hovers beside us, tsking, her face etched with what I believe is disappointment, but then she smiles. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“What?”
“Marianna went to a party. There’s a first for everything, I suppose.”
Silence sweeps into the room. I feel it descending against my shoulders when I look down at Leona, who looks at me with an appraising gaze. “You’ve grown up, Blake.”
“It’s been a while.”
“It has indeed.”
I shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I can put her in bed–”
“I’m not risking you falling down the stairs, especially with her in your arms. She’ll stay on the couch. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
Another heavy beat of silence passes. I should leave. I need to leave, actually, to not only clear my head but to find out what happened at the party, which was, by all accounts, supposed to be a classy engagement ball.
“I’ve met Skye,” I say before I can stop myself, my usual filter failing completely. My head swims as I brace my hand on the back of the couch.
“She mentioned a tall man with purple eyes,” she says, nodding in acknowledgement. “I only know one such man, so I figured it was you.”
I wait for her to tear me apart, to rip me to shreds. She never has, even though I deserve it. I’ve deserved it.
“I forgot her violin,” I whisper, wincing. “I’ll bring it back in the morning.”
“It’s already morning, darling,” she says with a knowing smile, her hand gently clapping my upper arm. “Go to bed, Blake. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
***
Kenna moves through the pink room, glancing between me and Soren, who’s fuming, rubbing his aching temples as he casts icy glances in Maeve’s direction. A handful of healing drafts made from Misty’s tears cleared the worst of the hangover, but my head still pounds, radiating heat, and Soren isn’t much better.
“I feel like I’m in a room full of teenagers,” Kenna says, raising a brow as she stares us down. Fallon rests against her chest, totally oblivious to the tension in the room.
Maeve pours Soren another cup of coffee, and rain patters against the balcony a few feet away. “I had no idea someone brought homebrew to the ball. Otherwise, I would have put my foot down. The ballroom is completely trashed.”
Soren sighs heavily, giving her hand a little squeeze before she walks away, retrieving Fallon from Kenna. “I’ll talk to Beckett, that bastard. I’m sure it was him.”
“We’re lucky no one died,” Kenna says sharply. Her eyes betray her tone, however. She’s amused. Thoroughly. I find it odd that I can tell. I find it even odder that I’m not completely distracted by the voices and visions that normally dance through my brain without an off switch. They’re quiet today.
I doubt it was the home brewed liquor because, admittedly, I’ve tried that. Tried to drown them out using a bottle of whiskey. It normally makes the voices louder and more demanding.
It’s almost 10:00 in the morning now. I haven’t slept. That also makes the voices and visions more vivid, but now they’re… gone.
My head is practically empty save for the innate desire to be elsewhere.
“It was so nice meeting Marianna,” Maeve says to Kenna, but she briefly glances in my direction. “Blake really fumbled the ball with that one, if you ask me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, arching a brow.
“I might have cornered her and asked what kind of relationship you had with her, and she said you were just friends. You know she has a daughter, right? I guess she separated from her mate a few years ago. I’ve never even heard of that happening. Maybe you still have a chance, Blake.”
My stomach tightens, but I keep my eyes on Maeve as she drops into conversation with her mother.
Maeve still has no clue about Skye. That’s probably for the best.
I rise, checking my watch, and say, “I have somewhere to be.”