“I had no idea Daryl’s sister was so beautiful. If I’d known, I would have been pestering him to introduce us ages ago.”
Smooth and a little oily, as compliments went. Kasha gave a minimal nod of acknowledgment, not bothering to hide the slight narrowing of her eyes.
“What kind of nonsense are you talking? Don’t go trying anything.”
“Trying anything — listen to you. Already in protective older-brother mode? Speaking of which — shouldn’t you be over there?”
“What? Why?”
Kasha kept her face neutral and let herself listen.
“That Margaret Yonder you’ve been quietly pining over. She looked a bit… caught in something just now.”
“What? What do you mean? Be specific.”
Margaret Yonder. The name landed unexpectedly, and Kasha went still.
At that moment, the musicians began. The opening notes of the first dance filled the room.
Already?
Kasha’s eyebrow moved.
No one had yet tried to push her onto the floor. And what was this about Margaret Yonder?
She tuned in more carefully to the two men beside her.
“She got swept into the middle of the floor.”
Theo shrugged and gestured behind him.
“The middle?”
Both Daryl and Kasha turned to look where he was pointing.
Music, loud laughter, the wheeling blur of colored skirts. Dozens of couples turning and turning across the floor. Through the motion and the movement — there, at the center, someone standing completely still.
A pale sky-blue dress. Brown hair.
“Margaret!”
Daryl gave an involuntary shout.
Kasha almost said it with him.
Why are you standing there, Margaret Yonder.
She knew that spot. She knew it precisely.
Before her return, on this same night — that had been the cage they’d built around Kasha. And surrounding that cage, people had laughed down at her like spectators at a blood sport.
The only one who had extended a hand toward her — a white hand from a pale sky-blue dress — had been Margaret Yonder.
And now Margaret was standing where Kasha had once stood. Inside the cage.
⁂
Odette glided across the floor, one hand resting in the grip of a handsome young marquess who was loyal enough to be of use. With each step she felt a little better.
Especially each time she swept past Margaret Yonder, who was standing hunched in the middle of the floor, being knocked from side to side by the dancing couples around her.
Admittedly, it would have been more satisfying if it had been that Kasha-or-whatever-her-name-was standing there instead.
Ba-bam.
The music ended in a flourish.
Applause and cheering filled the hall. Odette slid a glance toward Margaret.
She was staggering, trying to drag herself out of the crowd.
Oh, I don’t think so.
Odette watched with folded arms. Her partner for the dance — the young marquess — read the look immediately and moved in, giving Margaret a sharp shove.
“Ow!”
Margaret went down awkwardly, her skirts flipping up to expose thin legs and a worn petticoat.
Pfft.
Odette raised her fan to hide her smile.
How unsightly.
She was just savoring that thought when a voice cut through the crowd.
“Margaret!”
Loud, clear, carrying. And in the same instant, a slight silhouette stepped in front of Margaret and extended a white hand.
Odette’s eyes went up when she saw whose hand it was.
Again?
Kasha Rüschino. That insufferable, irritating girl — she was holding her hand out toward Margaret. No hesitation. Not so much as a flicker of it.
“Get up.”
A slow, colorless voice. But her hand was pointed squarely at Margaret. Steady. Certain.
Margaret hesitated briefly, then took it, trembling as she rose.
The moment the two of them were upright, Odette let her fan drop from her face. Her eyes met Kasha’s directly.
You dare ruin my entertainment?
The smile left Odette’s face entirely.
“Miss Margaret.”
A large figure pushed through the crowd and called Margaret’s name, his face tight. Daryl Rüschino — and he was fuming.
“Are you all right? Who did this—”
“Brother.”
Kasha cut him off before he could go further.
“Miss Yonder seems very shaken… if you could help her find somewhere to sit and recover.”
“Oh — right, yes. Miss Margaret, will you take my arm? This way—”
Daryl, redirected by Kasha’s instruction, guided Margaret carefully away from the floor. Before she went, Margaret paused and looked at Kasha for a long moment — then let her gaze drop, and allowed herself to be led out.
When they were gone, the center of the ballroom held only two people: Odette and Kasha.
Odette’s followers, and dozens of watching eyes besides, were fixed on them.
Odette felt what had been a manageable mood plummet straight through the floor.
All she had done was a small bit of fun. Somehow she had been made to look like the villain of the evening.
While she was turning over how best to repay this particular feeling, Kasha spoke.
“You really are consistent. I’ll give you that.”
“Excuse me?”
Odette worked to smooth out the expression forming on her face.
It was Kasha’s look that was doing it. That unbearable look, as though she could see straight through Odette to something ordinary and unimpressive underneath.
“There are two kinds of rulers in this world.”
“What are you rambling about, Miss?”
Odette snapped back sharply, but Kasha didn’t appear to hear her.
“There are rulers… who command respect so naturally that everyone follows them, without being made to. And there are rulers who can only feel certain of their position… by constantly treading on the people around them.”
Kasha was looking, now, at Odette’s followers — slowly, one by one.
“Who among us, I wonder… can honestly say with certainty… that their turn to be trodden on will never come.”
She was halting, slightly clumsy in her delivery. And yet not a single person laughed at her. Every young face in the ballroom had gone quiet and was listening.
Odette’s own followers were wavering. Over the words of Kasha Rüschino.
Odette stepped in quickly, reclaiming the air.
“Oh my — Miss Rüschino. You do speak so slowly. It’s quite difficult to follow what you mean, isn’t it. Poor thing.”
A few thin, obliging laughs followed. Weaker than before.
Slightly mollified, Odette pressed on with composure.
“The music has been stopped too long. Time for the next dance.”
She signaled the orchestra, then turned back to Kasha with a pointed smile.
“Oh dear — no partner yet, it seems?”
A glance from Odette, and every young noble in the surrounding circle took one step back from Kasha. A neat, familiar ring opened up around her.
Kasha was perfectly alone again.
In the old days, this is where I would have gone white and started looking for a way to escape.
Kasha thought it without bitterness.
It was strange, actually. The pity and contempt in all those watching eyes — it didn’t hurt. Not even a little.
None of you can hurt me. Only I can hurt myself.
She had once walked into her own death through nothing but ignorance and naivety.
But she was neither ignorant nor naive anymore.
And so she stood her ground, alone at the center of it all, and looked back at them without flinching.
Something in Odette’s self-assured expression began, slowly, to crack.
That was the moment.
Step. Step.
A pair of footsteps — distinct, deliberate, unhurried.
The quiet in Kasha’s eyes shifted. And then, gradually, the crowd parted before a figure with platinum hair who moved through it as though it was simply what the crowd was there to do.
Leon Aranias.
Kasha looked at him standing alone in his own light, and felt an emotion rise in her chest that surprised even herself.
Unlike the broken man she had found in the ruined temple after her return, Leon’s arms were both whole and unhurt beneath the white of his Holy Knight’s uniform. Those eyes, which had been hollow and vacant there, were jewel-bright and present.
Most of all — she was simply, purely glad to see him alive. It nearly made her smile without meaning to.
He had been the only person in her short life with whom she had shared the particular understanding of the ruined. His helpless death had left a mark in her that nothing had reached before.
Seeing you now — I realize. Without knowing it, I’ve been waiting for this moment.
She spoke the confession quietly, to herself. He would not hear it.
Two meetings in a lifetime — and yet he had left the kind of mark that doesn’t fade.
Could she untangle the knot of fate that tied them together this time?
Kasha listened to her own heartbeat and waited for him to reach her.
But she was not the only one waiting.
Odette had been waiting for Leon since the ball began. The sight of him at last made something in her almost leap. She smoothed her dress quickly and gave her current partner a pointed look; he stepped back at once, looking deflated but compliant.
Meanwhile, Leon walked without pause into the center of the floor. The three of them — Odette, Kasha, and Leon — took up the three points of a triangle, each at a distance from the others.
An almost uncomfortable tension settled between them.
Odette assumed it was the tension of two people — herself and Leon — finally in the same space. She opened her lips to speak to him, arranging her most seductive smile.
But by a hair’s breadth, Leon’s voice arrived first.
“Do you not have a partner?”
Not to Odette.
To Kasha Rüschino.
Odette’s eyes went wide. She doubted what her own ears had just told her.
“…No.”
A beat late, Kasha answered.
It was as though time had stopped for the two of them. Everyone else in the room suddenly felt like a backdrop, irrelevant and dim.
Odette bit her lip until she nearly drew blood. This made no sense to her. None.
I knew from the moment I saw that girl that she was bad luck.
And the thing that galled Odette most of all was Kasha’s expression.
In the face of the miraculous reality that Leon Aranias was asking her to dance — Kasha looked calm. Steady. As though she had simply expected it.
Odette began to shake with fury.
Because in her ballroom, the man who was obviously meant for her had extended his hand to someone else.
To something as inconsequential as Kasha Rüschino.
“Then shall we dance?”
Leon asked again, his voice low — indifferent to Odette’s white-hot rage.
Measured. Cold. Entirely without any private intent.
Those listening understood all at once what Leon was doing.
He was issuing a warning. To everyone who had abandoned the dignity required of nobles and chosen instead to prey on someone weaker.
Some of them, hearing it, felt the blood come back to their faces.
On Odette, however, the effect was precisely the reverse.
Her anger doubled. She had been made the aggressor in front of Leon.
Odette’s mask fell off completely. Her face, even by her own reckoning, was ugly with feeling as she fixed her eyes on Kasha with every intention of scorching her where she stood.
“That,”
Kasha’s unhurried voice opened.
“I’d rather not.”
