was still in here, still screaming.
The demon had broken a little farther through the barrier today, and it now looked through his eyes with an ancient, glittering malice. It was starved for this world.
Perhaps the world deserved to be devoured by the thing.
Maybe it was that traitorous thought alone that had caused such a hole to rip in the barrier between them. Maybe it was winning. Maybe it had already won.
So he was forced to sit on that throne, and speak with words that were not his own, and share his eyes with something from another realm, who gazed at his sunny world with ravenous, eternal hunger.
The costume itched like hell. The paint all over her didn’t help.
Most of the important guests had arrived in the days preceding the party, but those who dwelled inside the city or in the outlying foothills now formed a glittering line stretching through the massive front doors. Guards were posted there, checking invitations, asking questions, peering into faces none too keen to be interrogated. The entertainers, vendors, and help, however, were ordered to use one of the side entrances.
That was where Aelin had found Madam Florine and her troupe of dancers, clad in costumes of black tulle and silk and lace, like liquid night in the midmorning sun.
Shoulders back, core tight, arms loose at her sides, Aelin eased into the middle of the flock. With her hair dyed a ruddy shade of brown and her face coated in the heavy cosmetics the dancers all wore, she blended in well enough that none of the others looked her way.
She focused entirely on her role of trembling novice, on looking more interested in how the other dancers perceived her than in the six guards stationed at the small wooden door in the side of the stone wall. The castle hallway beyond was narrow—good for daggers, bad for swords, and deadly for these dancers if she got into trouble.
If Arobynn had indeed betrayed her.
Head down, Aelin subtly monitored the first test of trust.
The chestnut-haired Florine walked along her line of dancers like an admiral aboard a ship.
Aging but beautiful, Florine’s every movement was layered with a grace that Aelin herself had never been able to replicate, no matter how many lessons she’d had with her while growing up. The woman had been the most celebrated dancer in the empire—and since her retirement, she remained its most valued teacher. Instructor Overlord, Aelin had called her in the years that she’d trained under the woman, learning the most fashionable dances and ways to move and hone her body.
Florine’s hazel eyes were on the guards ahead as she paused beside Aelin, a frown on her thin lips. “You still need to work on your posture,” the woman said.
Aelin met Florine’s sidelong gaze. “It’s an honor to be an understudy for you, Madam. I do hope Gillyan soon recovers from her illness.”
The guards waved through what looked to be a troupe of jugglers, and they inched forward.
“You look in good-enough spirits,” Florine murmured.
Aelin made a show of ducking her head, curling in her shoulders, and willing a blush to rise to her cheeks—the new understudy, bashful at the compliments of her mistress. “Considering where I was ten months ago?”
Florine sniffed, and her gaze lingered on the thin bands of scars across Aelin’s wrists that even the painted whorls couldn’t conceal. They’d raised the top of the dancers’ open-backed costumes, but even so, and even with the body paint, the upper ends of her tattoo-covered scars peeked through.
“If you think I had anything to do with the events that led up to that—”
Aelin’s words were barely louder than the crunch of silk shoes on gravel as she said, “You’d already be dead if you had.” It wasn’t a bluff. When she’d written her plans on that ship, Florine’s name had been one that she’d written down—and then crossed out, after careful consideration.
Aelin continued, “I trust you made the proper adjustments?” Not just the slight change in the costumes to accommodate the weapons and supplies Aelin would need to smuggle in—all paid for by Arobynn, of course. No, the big surprises would come later.
“A bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?” Madam Florine purred, the dark jewels at her neck and ears glimmering. “You must trust me a great deal to have even appeared.”
“I trust that you like getting paid more than you like the king.” Arobynn had given a massive sum to pay off Florine. She kept an eye on the