I
was drunk. Drunk on the glass of wine that I had gulped down, yes, but also drunk on the attention of the crowd.
A buzzing headache throbbed behind my temples, but I didn’t have to fake my grin as I rolled off of Ahzeen’s table and twirled to the center of the room.
“And what of these?” I said, gesturing to my scars. “Do you know how I got them?”
I didn’t dare chance even a glance at the servants’ door, or what happened beyond it. But I did catch Max’s eye, just once. I loved the way he looked at me.
Reshaye’s delight had begun to sour, hissing and spitting like a cat at the back of my skull. Still, it ignored me, refusing to speak.
That was fine. I was doing quite well without it.
I smiled at Ahzeen, even though my headache spiked. “Your father gave them to me. The night that I killed him.”
Ahzeen’s one visible eye widened.
A shocked wave of whispers rippled through the crowd.
I didn’t stop dancing, basking in the scale of what I had just said.
Ahzeen leapt to his feet, his furious recognition rolling over me all at once. Oddly enough, it didn’t hit me quite as
hard as I would have expected it to, considering the fierceness of his reaction.
“A mere slave whore could not have killed Esmaris Mikov,” he snarled.
“A slave whore did indeed.”
I scanned the room, watching the other Lords and ladies whisper furiously to each other. Odd that I didn’t taste their reaction in the air— but I could see it, the scale of their surprise and their judgement.
Ahzeen Mikov, I knew, did not want to remember me, even if he could.
Vos had already told me that Ahzeen had all of the information he needed to at least suspect that I was responsible. But it did not help Ahzeen politically to punish some faceless, nameless slave. No — Ahzeen needed power. He needed respect. And in the world of the Threllian Lords, respect was earned through honor and dominance.
“Liar,” Ahzeen hissed.
“Which one of us is the liar?” I stopped at his table, blinking sweetly up at him. “How many wars did you use your father’s death to justify? How many Lords did you kill in his name?”
If I had not been so transfixed on the delicious rage on Ahzeen’s face, I might have noticed that the room was beginning to brighten again.
I might have noticed that, beneath the pounding of my headache, Reshaye had gone silent.
I might have noticed that I couldn’t hear or feel the rippling emotions of the party guests.
Instead, I watched Ahzeen’s lips curl into a sneer.
“Fragmented cunt,” he spat, sending flecks of spittle across my face as he bore down on me. “I knew the Orders were threatened by me. But I thought more highly of them than to send some wench to topple the most powerful family in Threll.”
And then, as that sneer split into a terrible, cold smile, I noticed.
I saw his hand raise, and in the split second before he brought it down, I tried to shoot a gust of air at him to push him back.
I tried, and nothing happened.
His hand collided with my face with such force that I went careening to the ground. But I didn’t think about the pain. I only thought about one terrible realization as my blurred vision settled on the broken remains of my empty wine glass:
The world had gone dull, like half of my senses had been cut off.
I had no magic.
