Phantom Page 7

  Once his gloves were tucked away in the inside pocket of his black coat, the Prince offered his hand to me. The whispers stopped. Silence rushed over the gardens from the carriage line to the servers at the buffet table hidden under yellow willow trees. I felt every stare burn into me.

  Heat flushed my cheeks as I hesitantly lowered my hand onto the Prince’s bare one. The silence hardened to ice, on the verge of cracking any second now.

  Nerves didn’t plague me because I was expected to touch the Prince. We’d done a lot more than that just this day. I was terrified at what he meant by doing this—brandishing my ability so publicly, for all the surrounding Gods and aniels to see.

  He hooked my gaze with a silent, heated one of his own. The moment our hands touched, his fingertips glided along my palm to my wrist. There, he paused and stroked the soft patch of skin near the clasp of the hand-bracelet. A shiver ran through me at his gentle touch and I almost fell into him.

  The Prince’s mouth turned with a small smirk.

  All around us, everyone melted away as the Prince drew me against him. His focus on me was whole and total. No one else existed. In that moment, he was a whirlpool and I was sucked into him completely.

  With one hand on the small of my back and the other holding my own, the Prince guided me in a slow dance that was foreign to me.

  I moved with him, swaying my hips from side to side in time with the melancholic melody of the violins.

  The Prince captured so much of my attention, of my soul, that I couldn’t even bring myself to steal my gaze away and look at the faces turned towards us. Though, I didn’t doubt they were faces of shock.

  Whispers bit at our heels, and neither of us paid them any mind. This, I thought, was exactly what the Prince wanted. Awe. He wanted mass confusion and wonder at how he, the God of poison, could touch a plain village girl stolen away from a Farther Isle.

  The onlookers were waiting for me to die, expecting to hear me scream. Instead, they watched as the Prince leaned in closer to me and brushed his soft, cold lips over mine.

  Poison ran through me in tiny little aches, headed for the hand-bracelet. My armour.

  In front of everyone, the Prince whispered against my mouth, “Before you, I could not kiss without killing.” Sadness touched his soft tone, the same that dimmed his quartz eyes. “Warm skin on my fingertips turned cold too quickly. Flesh spoiled and mouths screamed. I stopped craving touch. Until you. I hate that all I want is to touch you.”

  A hollowness carved deep into my chest. Behind the sweetness of his admission, I couldn’t help but feel the cold prickles of a distant threat. An echo down a long cave, whose mouth I stood at ready to be devoured.

  “Before today,” I said, keeping my voice low, “had you ever…? With a woman, I mean.”

  Prince Poison ghosted a kiss over my lips before he drew back and watched me. “Not mortal,” he finally said. “None survived beyond a kiss.”

  Jealousy flipped my stomach and send a wave of sick through me. I steadied myself, lashes lowering on the Prince’s stoic face.

  ‘Not even aniels are guaranteed to survive a God’s power.’

  Jasper’s words echoed in my mind as if taunting me. So it could only be a God that the Prince had lain with before me.

  Knowing that it was a God—even if it was possibly centuries ago—tickled my darker urges and made me feel smaller than ever before.

  To hide my twisted face, I rested my head on his chest and let him sway me to the violin’s soft tune.

  “You have not asked about your family.”

  The Prince’s sudden turn in topic stiffened my spine and, slowly, I looked up at him.

  Sincere curiosity made his eyes darken like moons lost behind clouds. He went on, “Months under my protection—” Is that what you call it? “—and you do not mention them. Why is that?”

  I scoffed and shook my head. “You might as well ask me what you really mean.”

  His stony face betrayed nothing.

  “We both know my family is dead.” The smile on my face was stiffer than my poker-straight spine after all the fumbling done that day. “Sometimes I forget that. But ever since…”

  I hesitated and swept my gaze around the festival. No one seemed to paying much attention to us anymore. We were a blimp, lost to memories and disinterest.

  For now…

  “Since you forced me to kill that worshipper—” I spoke delicately, and studied the Prince’s hard face for any cracks to break the mask. “—I forget less often. I wake up some mornings and start writing Moritz a letter, but I don’t make it a few sentences before it comes back to me.”

  After a long moment, the Prince nodded as he considered me. “The cracks in your memory intrigued me for a time,” he said, as though admitting a great secret to me. Maybe that was exactly what he was doing. “Never in your blood memories did I find any fractures with your mother’s death. It was always clear.”

  I licked my lips, then frowned. I’d forgotten all about the pink glitter smeared there, and was now stuck with the grainy texture on the tip of my tongue.

  “I came to understand that your memories fractured when you did.” His words stole my attention. “Around the time you named your dark truths, your memories cracked.”

  I blinked up at him curiously.

  The Prince brushed a loose hair from my face, fingertip grazing my cheek. Distantly, I suspected he was just making up excuses to touch me now, since he’d been so long without warm—alive—skin on his own.

  “In creating your Monster,” he went on, “you dismantled your mind.”

  “So why do I still forget?”

  “Because now, the truth is more pain than you want to feel. It is easier to erase the memory. And perhaps you are not yet whole.”

  I flattened my mouth into a line and hummed.

  This was something I would need to tell Ava about. She always got so frustrated with me in the times that my hold on truth and fantasy started to slip. I would tell her, just to rub it in her face a little.

  Maybe there’s still some anger here…

  I flexed out a growing dull ache in my fingers, the fingers that rested on the Prince’s bare hand. No poison lingered too long in my body, but still, the constant stream of it running through me was starting to leave stains of pain and discomfort in my bones.

  “You know, they hated me,” I said, and looked up at the Prince. He tilted his head, curious gleams in his eyes. “My family. Moritz, his wife—”

  “They feared you.” He cut me off with a distant, cool tone. “It is different.”

  “Is it? What’s so different about hate and fear?” I considered him for a beat. “I find I fear you a lot and sort of hate you too.”

  If my honesty offended him, he didn’t show it. His stony mask was perfectly untouched. No cracks in sight.

  “Yet,” he challenged lazily, “you welcome me into your arms and your bed. Is that love?”

  I was startled. “I … I don’t know what love is. Never have.”

  “That, I understand.” His soft admission came before a whispered kiss over my lips. He drew away from me.

  The small of my back suddenly felt cold without his hand there, and I let my arms drop to my side.

  The Prince didn’t bow at the end of the dance, given that he was a God and all that, but I didn’t either and, for a moment, we just stood there staring at each other.

  Those seconds were longer and heavier than any other that had come before them. In those seconds, I was robbed of breath and thought. Unspoken secrets whispered between us, dangerous to us both.

  Before either of us—mainly me—could say something stupid, the song ended and saved us from too much honesty.

  13

  I took refuge behind a cluster of willow trees near the line of carriages. Sometime during my search for a safe space free of all the dancing and lurking Gods, I stole a tray of the sparkly drinks I liked so much.

  This corner of the Wild Gardens was
meant for this—a hideout, a shadowy corner full of secrets and mischief … or just getting drunk alone.

  Under the dangling black leaves of the willow trees, I polished off at least four of the drinks. I was making my way through the fifth when I heard it. A crunch that sounded like parchment scrunching in someone’s fist.

  I stilled.

  The rim of the glass hovered near my glitter-smeared lips.

  Slowly, I leaned around the thick black trunk and eyed the colours and crowd sweeping about the festival. Aniels moved only some trees away from me. I was so buried in the darkness that I went unnoticed.

  I sighed a small sound of relief and slumped back against the thick trunk.

  Before I could take another sip of shapay, a shadowy flicker ahead froze me in place. The shadow grew from between two fat willow trees and drew closer.

  “Hiding from your lover?” came a familiar voice.

  The shadow stepped into the spear of moonlight and, with the unwinding relief in my chest, I saw his smooth olive-skin and those piercing topaz eyes.

  My mother once collected topaz stones. Small scrapings of them, like the curls left over from sanded wood.

  “Damianos,” I said, unable to keep the smile from touching my lips. “I didn’t think you would be here.”

  I frowned as his greeting sank in. “Wait, did you say lover?”

  There was no amusement in his jagged blue eyes. His stare felt like a thousand pin-pricks stabbing into me.

  Damianos stepped out of the moonlight and wandered over to me, his movements deliberate. He seemed to glide over the white grass, his inky cloak shimmering like black tar.

  The closer he got, the stronger that feeling was—the feeling of home. But I wasn’t sure it was what I liked most about him anymore.

  Like a fool, I wondered if he liked anything about me, or if he liked me at all. But as the Prince’s shiny new pet and—as Damianos said—lover, I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone other than the Prince himself.

  I didn’t need the Prince to wear a ribbon around his wrist for me to know I couldn’t get too cosy with anyone other him.

  Still, I let him get too close. Closer than I should have.

  Damianos stopped in front of me, my back pressed against the smooth tree trunk, and he ran his cool gaze over me, head to toe. Distant songs from the band weeded through the garden, a snaking reminder of those who lurked nearby.

  “Can you smell him on me?” I teased.

  His frosty gaze snapped back up to mine. I wondered fleetingly if that look alone could freeze me.

  Damianos brought his ungloved hand to my cheek. His eyes flickered, fingertips tracing a smear of crimson glitter on my cheek, leftovers from the Prince’s earlier affection.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “He is all over you.”

  His honesty surprised me. I let my head fall back against the trunk to better align our faces.

  Still dancing his fingers over my cheek, he dropped his gaze to my lips. After a long quiet moment, with only the whispered songs from the band snaking around our ankles, Damianos leaned in and his warm, hard lips found the streak of crimson. He brushed a kiss there, as if to cover the Prince’s scent with his own.

  Against my cheek, I felt his mouth turn down at the corners. “You can never be whole with him, Valissa.”

  The gentle whisper of his voice wrenched my heart and I didn’t know why. My lashes fluttered against the secret darkness swallowing us and, slowly, I brought my hands to his firm chest.

  “Do you feel this?” he asked in a breathy kiss.

  Home.

  It feels like home.

  “This,” he said, “is what it means to feel whole.”

  “Why?” I breathed my question against the graze of his cheek as he slowly leaned into me, leaving no space between us. “Why does it feel this way?”

  He ran his hand around my neck and up to the plaits of my hair. His fingers threaded through the braids, deliberately unwinding them, and his lips found mine.

  He didn’t kiss me. His mouth was firm against mine, his breath like warm sweets.

  “Would you have me the way you have him?” he asked.

  Of course I would.

  I wanted him, and I wanted the Prince. Yet, I couldn’t ignore that hidden beacon within Damianos that called out to me like a storm to ships.

  Home.

  My mind, body and soul all craved him more than I’d ever wanted the Prince. But lust was just that—want.

  Nothing I felt was love. Dependence and attraction were all that I knew.

  I avoided admitting my weakness for him. “Do you need me to want you?”

  Braids came undone and ribboned down back. His fingers still weaved their way through my hair, every graze of his touch over my skin setting me alight.

  Gently, he sighed against my mouth and rested his forehead on mine. His lashes tickled mine as he shut his eyes for a beat.

  “I’m afraid to confront the true answer to that,” he said.

  With a sigh of my own, I forced myself to turn my cheek to his inviting lips. Looking at the black willowy leaves hanging all around us, defeat slumped me.

  My hands slipped away from his muscular chest.

  “I can’t do this.” My voice was smaller than the drops of courage within me. “He’ll kill me if he finds out.”

  Damianos didn’t draw away from me.

  He pressed his hard mouth against my cheek and, with a nip to my skin that made me wince, he murmured, “It must be a dangerous position to hold—the woman in the Prince’s bed.”

  Stabs of anger clenched my jaw and I tensed against him.

  “Especially,” he added darkly, a menacing ribbon unwinding through his tone, “when the Prince orders attacks on his favourite little pet.”

  I blinked a heartbeat away. Then, I shattered and turned my furious face back to his.

  The attack…

  Roxhana, set up to take the fall…

  The Prince’s lies.

  No, I couldn’t believe it.

  The Prince didn’t have a motive to attack me or order it. Not when he could easily hurt me himself.

  “What are you talking about?” I gritted out my words as though they were glass that I’d just chewed down to crumbs.

  “Learn for yourself.” His bright blue eyes sparkled as he slipped a small, crystal phial into my hand. “Drink his memories the way he so freely drinks yours.”

  I shot a swift glance down at the phial; crimson liquid filled it halfway. Prince Poison’s blood.

  I didn’t even want to know how Damianos had gotten this blood, and I less wanted to be caught with it. Hurried, I stuffed the phial into my cleavage.

  My eyes turned dark and shifty. I glanced around the shadows of the nook, half-expecting one of the Prince’s aniels to step out of the darkness and attack us.

  “How can I trust you?” I asked.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t.” Damianos smirked, all dark secrets and even worse truths. “Trust your mortal friend, trust the aniel. But ultimately, you are on your own. We all are, Valissa.”

  He ghosted a kiss over my lips.

  A shuddering breath escaped me.

  Before I could pull away from him or melt against him like I truly wanted to, a hiss of wind snaked through the nook and with it, came shadows.

  Crows.

  The cloud of blackness swept by me, rustling my now-free hair, and I blinked away the blindness it left me with.

  Damianos vanished with the wind.

  I was never more certain that Damianos and the crows weren’t only connected, but they were one. Like myself and Monster or, even, myself and my power. Eternally bound.

  I had to find out more about him.

  Tonight, with the whole palace down in the Wild Gardens, I couldn’t think of a better time to break the rules.

  14

  I faked a headache from all the poison that had pushed its way through me that day.

  The Prince bought it. He let me leav
e the festival before the starbursts rocketed through the sky. Their blasts rattled the carriage most of the way back to the palace.

  The closer to the stardust walls the carriage got, the wilder my nerves fought in my veins. All over, trickles of anxiety started to spread through me, and I had to force myself to fake sleepiness for the sake of the guard sitting opposite me.

  At least it was just Felicks that night. No second guard, no Adrik, no Jasper. A lot less suspicion aimed my way. Not to mention very few aniels and Gods in the palace to worry about.

  Still, it wasn’t like I could just walk out my bedchamber door into the corridors. So once Felicks escorted me back to my room and I heard the click of the door behind me, I waited only seconds before rushing over to the panelled windows.

  They were locked from the inside. I fished the rusty iron key into the slot and, with a grimace, twisted it until I felt the lock bolt through my arm.

  I mentally thanked the winds for not coming that night as I nudged the window back, then held it open with a heavy porcelain vase.

  The night was calm and warm as I climbed out onto the ledge. My heavy dress weighed me down, but I didn’t have time to waste changing into something lighter. You know, something made for sneaking along the walls of a Godly palace.

  Hands flattened against the glass, I pressed my back to the window and forced myself not to look down. With six staircases between the foyer and my corridor, I knew I was high up in the Palace. I didn’t have to look down to know that.

  Keeping my weight pushed back against the window, I inched my way along the ledge until I felt the cool glass change into coarse, solid walls.

  Solid marble blocked me from going any further.

  I glanced at the massive statue standing between me and more ledge. It was shaped into the mangled form of a beast I didn’t recognise. Its ears were as long as my forearms, and eyes punched out from its elongated face like fingers out of a hand.

  I fought back a shiver that could have had be tumbling off the ledge, and I reached out my quivering hand for the marble-beast's crooked arm.