FREYA
I smell the hall before I reach it. Too much of everything. Too many flowers, too much perfume, a wall of scent that hits me at the doors and tells me, before I have even seen it, that something has gone very wrong in here.
I step inside and stop.
It is a circus.
Garlands everywhere, so many the beams have vanished under them. The long tables dragged out of their order and crowded with gold cloth and towers of fruit and candles in a hundred places they should not be.
The dais turned to face the doors, draped until it looks less like a seat of honour and more like a throne in a children's story. It is gaudy and it is graceless.
My heart races hard as I set my eyes on Eli who is standing in the middle of it with a face like a thundercloud.
He turns the moment he feels me, and t
