Chapter 4: Dance with Me

~~~Aurelia POV~~~

I didn't stop running until the cottage came into view.

My legs were shaking. My head felt stuffed with cotton, and something warm was dripping over my lip. I touched it, and my fingers came away red.

Great. A nosebleed.

I leaned against the garden gate and tried to breathe. The cold had settled deep in my bones, like someone had scooped the heat out of me and poured it onto the ground. Whatever I had done in that alcove, it hadn't been free.

That girl's blank stare kept flashing in my mind. That slack hand.

Let go.

And she had.

I pressed my sleeve to my nose and pushed the gate open.

----

Aunt Kathy was at the table sorting dried herbs into jars. She looked up when I walked in, and the jar in her hand stopped halfway to the shelf.

"Hazel."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"It's just a nosebleed."

She crossed the kitchen in three steps and caught my wrist. Her eyes dropped to my palm, to the thin red line the metal clasp had left, and went very still.

"Did you use it?" she whispered.

It. She knew. Of course she knew.

"I didn't mean to," I said. "They cornered me. It just happened."

"Did anyone see?"

"No."

She let out a long breath, but her grip didn't loosen. Her hand was trembling. I had never seen those rough, steady fingers tremble.

"Then listen to me. I've never asked much of you, but this you must—"

Knock, knock, knock.

We both froze.

"Hazel! Open up! I know you're in there!"

Daisy.

Aunt Kathy's mouth pressed into a thin line. She dropped my wrist, grabbed a cloth, and wiped the blood from my lip so fast I barely had time to flinch. Then she wrapped my palm in clean linen and tucked my hand into my sleeve.

"Smile," she muttered.

I opened the door, and Daisy nearly fell inside.

"There you are!" She caught my shoulders and looked me over. "You vanished after herbology. I looked everywhere. I thought someone had kidnapped you."

"Sorry. I wasn't feeling well."

"You look pale. Good. Pale is fashionable." She turned and beamed at the kitchen. "Hello, Aunt Kathy!"

"Lady Daisy." Aunt Kathy bowed her head. Her smile looked like it hurt. "You honor our home."

"Oh, stop it. Honestly." Daisy spun back to me, practically vibrating. "Hazel. Tonight. The ball."

"What ball?"

"The masked ball! At the castle! Tonight!" She grabbed both my hands, the bandaged one included, and I winced. Thankfully, she didn't notice. "Everyone wears a mask, nobody knows who anyone is, and nobody can take them off until midnight. Uncle Ravik hates these things, but the court insists on one every season. And I finally get to go."

"That sounds wonderful. Have fun."

"You're coming with me."

"No."

"Hazel."

"Daisy, no."

Her smile slipped. "Why not?"

Because the woman standing three feet behind her had just begged me to stay hidden. And I had only been Hazel Asher for two days and was still learning where she kept her spoons.

"I don't have anything to wear," I said.

"Are you kidding me? I have over thirty-five gowns ready for tonight. And let's not even get started on the spare masks. I already had one brought for you." She pulled a silver mask from her bag like a magician. "Please. I always go to these things alone. Everyone's polite, nobody's real, and I stand in a corner like a decoration. Just this once, I want to go with someone who actually likes me."

Something tugged in my chest. Hazel's heart or mine, I couldn't tell anymore.

I glanced over her shoulder.

Aunt Kathy was gripping the edge of the table. She didn't say a word. Her eyes found mine and held, and everything she wanted to say sat right there in her face.

Don't.

But she couldn't tell the Lycan King's niece no. Not without making it strange. Not without making it dangerous.

So she said nothing.

And I thought of the dried flower pressed between the pages of a notebook. A name whispered over and over.

Ravik.

It was foolish. Dangerous. The kind of choice a sensible person wouldn't make.

But I wanted to know why a stranger's heart kept racing for a man I had never really met. And if there was ever a night I could stand in the same room as him without anyone knowing who I was, this was it.

"Just for an hour," I heard myself say.

Daisy shrieked and threw her arms around my neck.

Over her shoulder, I watched Aunt Kathy turn back to her jars, her unfinished sentence still hanging in the air between us.

----

The castle sat on the cliff like a crown made of black stone.

Torches burned along the long road up, and the sea roared far below. Carriages crowded the courtyard. Guests poured through the doors in silk, velvet, and jewels, every face hidden behind feathers, lace, or polished silver.

Daisy had dragged me into a side chamber the moment we arrived, and now I stood in a midnight-blue gown that fit like it had been made for Hazel. The silver mask covered the top half of my face. Gloves hid my bandaged palm.

"You look like a queen," Daisy whispered, tucking her arm through mine.

I almost laughed.

I had been one, once. Look how that ended.

The ballroom swallowed me whole.

Chandeliers glittered overhead like frozen rain. Music poured down from a balcony of unseen musicians. Hundreds of masked guests drifted across the marble in slow, glittering waves, and I couldn't tell wolves from witches or vampires. It was a peace treaty masked ball for every supernatural creature in the realm, all under the law of the Lycan King.

That was the point, I realized. Here, nobody had a name. Nobody had a past.

"I'll find us something to drink," Daisy said, and disappeared into the crowd.

I stood alone beside a pillar, one gloved hand pressed to my ribs. Careful. Quiet. Not a single drop of blood within a mile.

Then my eyes caught someone.

A woman near the dance floor, her gown loose and flowing, one hand resting on the curve of her belly. She was laughing at something the man close to her had whispered. Her partner, probably. She looked soft, happy, and glowing.

Pregnant.

The air left my lungs.

And a memory that wasn't mine slid in.

A woman at a window with long dark hair and a swollen belly. One hand on it, the other against the glass. Humming something low and slow while the wind moved her hair.

I knew she was singing to the baby. I knew the baby was Hazel.

I reached for the tune. I almost had it. A few low notes rising, then falling like a sigh.

Then it dissolved, and I was standing in the ballroom with my hand pressed to my own stomach.

Flat. Empty.

My baby. I had felt that tiny life only two days ago. I hadn't even gotten to say goodbye.

My eyes stung behind the mask. I blinked hard.

Not here. Not now.

And then my heart stopped.

Not stuttered. Stopped.

And slammed into my ribs so hard I thought it might break through. A terribly familiar sensation.

At the far end of the ballroom, near the great doors, the crowd had parted like water. A tall figure stood alone at the center of it, dressed in black and gold. A dark mask covered his face, carved in the shape of a wolf.

It didn't matter. Nobody else in that room carried himself like that. Nobody else made the air bend around him.

Ravik.

Hazel's heart was a drum in my chest. Stop, I told it. He doesn't know who you are.

It didn't listen.

He turned his head slowly and looked across the whole ballroom. Past the dancers. Past the chandeliers. Past hundreds of masks.

And straight at me.

I should have looked away. I should have melted into the crowd and slipped out the nearest door.

Instead, I stayed frozen, one hand gripping the pillar, as the Lycan King began to walk toward me.

The crowd parted for him without a sound. The music seemed to dim. Every step shortened the distance between us, until the gold stitching on his coat caught the candlelight and I could see his eyes through the mask.

Dark. Steady. And fixed on me.

He stopped an arm's length away.

"Everyone in this room is pretending to be someone else," he said, low enough that only I could hear. "Yet you're the only one who looks afraid of being found."

My mouth went dry.

He held out his hand.

"Dance with me."