Reborn for the Hidden Heir

Chapter 11: The Court

The summons arrived on silver paper, sealed with the king's crest in black wax. A reception in the eastern gallery, it read. All noble houses in attendance. Formal dress required.

I read it twice, then set it on the dressing table beside the dragon-scale comb. The white rose had begun to wilt, its edges curling inward like a dying hand. I threw it out the window and watched it fall, a spot of color against gray stone, until it disappeared into the garden below.

Mira returned at midday with water for washing, her eyes fixed on the floor, her hands steady only when she wasn't looking at me. I asked her to help me dress. She chose a gown from the wardrobe... not one of Kael's mother's faded silks, but something I hadn't noticed before, pushed to the back behind the preserved dresses. Dark green, heavy velvet, cut in the vampire style with a high neck and long sleeves. It fit as if it had been made for me. Or as if someone had expected me to need it.

"Where did this come from?" I asked.

Mira's hands stilled on the laces. "It was delivered this morning, my lady. With the other supplies."

"By whom?"

"I don't know, my lady. I only found it when I came to tend the fire."

A gift, then. Or a message. Or a trap dressed in velvet. I wore it anyway. The alternative was Kael's mother's human silks, too bright, too alive, too wrong for a court that fed on darkness.

The eastern gallery was three wings away, through corridors I didn't know, past faces that turned to watch me pass. I walked alone. No escort, no maid, no guard. The palace had decided my status: not prisoner, not guest, not quite noble. Something in between. Something they didn't know how to classify.

The gallery itself was a long room of mirrors and chandeliers, designed to multiply light until the space seemed infinite. Nobles clustered in groups, their pale faces reflecting at themselves from a thousand angles, their voices a low murmur that stopped when I entered.

I felt it immediately. The silence that wasn't quite silence. The turning of shoulders, the shifting of eyes, the deliberate exclusion of a body from a space it was allowed to occupy but not to belong to.

I walked to the refreshment table. A footman stood beside a silver ewer, his face professionally blank. I held out a glass. He filled it with wine the color of old blood. I lifted it to my lips.

"Don't."

The voice came from beside me, low and amused. I turned.

Cedric Noctari leaned against the table with the casual grace of a man who had never been refused anything. He was broader than Lucien, his face rougher, his golden hair cropped short in the military style. His eyes were the same pale blue as his brother's, but where Lucien's held calculation, Cedric's held something simpler. Hunger.

"That wine's been standing open since morning," he said. "The heat in this room's turned it. Drink it, and you'll spend the evening in the privy, not that anyone here would help you find it."

I set the glass down. "Thank you for the warning, Your Highness."

"Don't thank me yet." He reached past me, selected a different ewer, one that had been kept cool in ice, and filled a fresh glass. "This one. Sealed until ten minutes ago. The steward's own reserve. He'd have my head if he knew I was pouring it for a human."

He handed me the glass. His fingers brushed mine, lingering half a second longer than necessary. I didn't pull back.

"You surprised me last night," he said, not looking at me, looking at the room, at the nobles who watched us from the corners of their eyes. "I didn't think anyone had the spine to refuse Lucien. Especially not someone who'd spent two years practicing curtsies for the privilege of being chosen."

"You know a lot about me for someone I haven't met."

"I know a lot about everyone." He sipped his own wine, his throat working, his eyes returning to me with something that wasn't quite appraisal and wasn't quite appetite. "It's a survival skill. When your brother's the crown prince and your father's the king, information is the only currency that matters. And you, Lady Seraphina, are suddenly the richest woman in the room."

"Because I refused the crown prince?"

"Because you chose the hidden one." He leaned closer, close enough that I could smell his cologne, something sharp, metallic, like blood and steel. "Do you know what they called Kael's mother? The Dragon w***e. Not in public, of course. The king had her protected, in his way. But in the corridors, in the dark, that's what she was. A thing that spread her legs for a monster and produced something worse."

I felt my hand tighten on the glass. "Your brother, you mean."

Cedric laughed, a short sound that drew eyes from across the room. "Oh, I like you. Lucien said you were soft. Gentle. The kind of woman who'd break if you looked at her wrong. He was looking at the wrong things."

"And what are you looking at?"

"Potential." His gaze dropped to my throat, to the pearls there, to the pulse beating beneath them. "Evelyne's been telling everyone you're mad. Witch-touched. That the stress of the ceremony broke something in your mind and you latched onto the first dangerous thing you saw, like a child reaching for fire." He paused, his head tilting. "But I don't think you're mad. I think you're calculating. I think you looked at Lucien and saw something you didn't want. And I think you looked at Kael and saw something you did."

"You're wrong about one thing."

"Only one?"

"I didn't look at Kael and see something I wanted." I sipped the wine, letting the coolness settle in my stomach, letting the room watch me stand beside a prince who was supposed to be my enemy and drink his brother's private reserve. "I looked at him and saw a door that wasn't there before."

That's not the same thing.