Midnight strikes, p.2
Midnight Strikes, page 2
The prince.
Infante Leopoldo Cardona—known as Leo the Lush for his signature vice—has a servant trail him across the room with a bottle of wine at the ready. As the youngest and most irresponsible of the king’s three children, he usually pops into a given event only long enough to ensure that no one can deny he was, at one point, there. Then he slips away to carouse in Marenca proper, or gamble with sailors in the river district, or whatever activities are more to his taste. I have no idea what those are. More importantly, I have no idea what someone like him would want with me.
When he finally draws up before me, his eyes like embers taunting an innocent onlooker with the possibility of their igniting, my legs twitch, begging me to run. But his presence fixes me in place, and like a proper Ivarean lady, I begin to curtsy.
The prince waves me up before I can complete the gesture. “No need for such formality,” he remarks, magnanimously drunk, his hand loose on the hilt of a ceremonial sword he’s carrying for the occasion. “I am simply your Infante Leo.”
“As—as you say, Vuestra Alteza Real.” Damn it.
“And you’re that girl from the Duque de Tarrazas’s ball, aren’t you?”
I can’t believe he remembers that. The prince scrawled his name on my dance card a few weeks ago to avoid dancing with some poor Castaran girl who had never gotten in the habit of carrying breath mints. The second the girl’s back was turned, he stole a bottle of Vornolmian red and abandoned me with little more than an insouciant wink.
I still have that dance card in my room. If my mother ever found it and realized I failed to use that chance encounter to my advantage, her screaming fit would break all the windows in our rented Marenca townhouse. She could not accept the truth: the story of an insignificant bumpkin and a prince who is second in line for the Ivarean throne will never end well. And I know I don’t want to be just another Proensan for a Cardona to conquer, like his ancestors did mine two hundred years ago.
If I’m nothing but a nameless girl to him now, I must have been right.
“My name is Anaïs, señor.”
Despite his intoxicated state, the prince curves his lips in an indolent grin. “Now, what makes you think I do not remember who you are, Doña Anaïs? Daughter of Don Eduard Aubanel, Conde de Massilie?”
Oh. Well, whether he’s drunk or bored or trying to stir up a bit of scandal, I am not in the mood to indulge him. Not after everything I’ve already had to endure at the hands of people like him. “Maybe the fact that it’s taken you all this time to remember me.”
Only the last remnants of my dignity stop me from clapping my hands over my mouth. Leo is almost as taken aback by my insolence as I am, tucking his chin into the gilt-embroidered collar of his black tailcoat and letting go of the hilt of his sheathed sword. Briefly distracted by the way his gray-gold brocade waistcoat sets off his bronzed complexion, I almost miss the fact that he’s slowly grinning back at me.
“Luckily, my lady, I’m no oath breaker. If I promised you a dance, a dance you shall have.”
Somewhere, my mother is surely swooning. I manage to stay upright for now, but giddy disbelief still rushes through my veins as I take his hand and let him lead me to the center of the dance floor. Couples bow and part as he passes, my scarlet skirts casting nearly as wide a berth as those of the ladies already glaring daggers at me behind their fans.
“If I may be so bold,” he says once the music has begun, “what has been the highlight of your time in the capital this season, Doña Anaïs?”
“Oh, the…the picnics at the riverside, I suppose.” I add with a wry undertone, “At least I didn’t spend them praying the sun would evaporate me.”
“Ah, nothing quite so alluring as sweat in the capital. I’ll bet you’re missing Proensan weather terribly by now, aren’t you?”
“Well, not just the weather, señor. Proensa is my home.”
Is it me, or does he set his jaw slightly? “Then this place,” he says quietly, “must feel like your own personal hell.”
For a moment, I think he understands the costs of merely existing as a Proensan in the heart of the Ivarean court.
But that can’t be. He’s the prince of these vipers.
Isn’t he?
“Certainly not. Hell is not nearly as hot.”
He laughs now, a true laugh. “Come outside with me, Doña Anaïs. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
This dance—this proposition—it’s simply too overwhelming to be real. An intoxicating fantasy. I feel as drunk on the thrill of his attentions as he is on wine. But his hand feels like my only tether to the world as I spin and twirl like a storm about its eye. And underneath it all, he looks at me as if he doesn’t want to stop.
To my great confusion, I find myself feeling the same.
So, as the last bars of music reverberate off the mosaic tiles of the wall, I let Leo lead me away from the dance floor and out of the ballroom entirely. Over the last four hundred years, the Cardona kings have turned the Alcázar Real, a medieval fortress crowned with arched gateways and sun-kissed bell towers, into a seat of power carved in their own image, modern and glorious. That extends to the Mirror Garden, where Leo leads me. Torches flicker on either side of the soaring arches that surround the garden’s four quadrants, divided by narrow rectangular reflecting ponds. Each quadrant houses mazes of fragrant rosebushes that close and open again, independent of the breeze, and shrubs enchanted into animal shapes, which seem to be dozing this late at night. This garden might as well be a gateway to another world.
An involuntary gasp slips out between my lips. “Oh.”
We stop in the middle of the bisecting paths, the bombast of the ball distant at our backs. “Hell this may be,” says Leo graciously with a sidelong glance at me, “but it can do a reasonably good job of disguising itself from time to time.”
I have to shut my mouth before he notices my gaping. “Yes, well…it must be very impressive in daylight,” I lie smoothly.
A curl plays on the corner of his lips. “I think you’re the first girl who’s ever been unimpressed by Jardín de Espejos.”
“Maybe they didn’t admit it for fear of offending you.”
“But you are not afraid of causing royalty offense. Are you, Anaïs?”
All of a sudden, he grabs my hand and pulls me closer, as if we’re about to dance again. But this is like no dance I’ve ever been taught.
No, this is so much worse.
I’m already in a full-fledged panic when Leo closes his dark eyes and begins to lower his lips. By the time I figure out what to do with my arms—namely, flap them about like wings—his lips have already brushed mine. A strange heat spreads through my tingling body like a spell.
A moment later, he registers the batting of my arms and releases me at once. We stare at each other, each more alarmed than we’d probably like to admit. When he speaks, his voice is soft, unsteady. “Did I do something wrong?”
No. You did, Anaïs.
I let Infante Leopoldo Cardona sweep me off my feet. I flirted with him. I danced with him. I went off with him. I forgot myself. It was stupid, and far too easy to do, with those shimmering eyes inviting me to indulge myself just a little more. But that kiss brought the brief, reckless fantasy to a grinding halt. After all, a prince of Ivarea will never want anything more from a Proensan count’s daughter. And I’ve been through too much with too many people like him at this goddamned court to let Leo the Lush just seduce me.
He didn’t cast a spell on me with that kiss. He broke it.
Without a word, I back away slowly and turn for the palace. Just as I cross the threshold of the western arch into the ballroom, the first chime of midnight clangs across the entirety of the capital. The royal court erupts in cheers and cries in its wake. “Four hundred years and four hundred more!”
I keep going, drowning myself in the cacophony. On the royal dais, Rey Rodrigo and Reina Isabel stand from their jewel-encrusted, dragon-winged thrones to bask in their triumph. Their elder son, Príncipe Felipe, and his wife, Princesa Helena, cheer at the left end of the dais, their daughter, Infanta Clara, at the right. Behind me, Leo has taken up a position beneath the western archway, calling loudly for more wine.
My parents must have seen us disappear together. By now, they are probably itching to commence talks for our swift betrothal, gloriously heedless of what the king and queen would have to say about such a thing. But somehow the thought of my parents accosting our monarchs no longer brings me any anxiety. Tomorrow, we’ll sit with my failure, but at least it’s over.
At least we can finally go home.
A high, shrill voice nearby exclaims, “Out there! Fireworks!”
For a moment I think I hear them, a popping sound as they ascend into the silken night sky. The sounds are too loud to be coming from the hills, though. A courtyard? The garden I just abandoned?
No…no, not out there…
The windows are blown out. The air is suddenly thick with eviscerated tile and smoke. I’m knocked onto a bed of glass and rubble. My heart pounds so hard that I can’t feel my lungs fighting for breath.
The wall mosaics burst like grenades in showers of glass. Proud columns and arches shudder and begin to crumble. Floating chandeliers plummet to the ground. Servants and grandes alike flail for leverage to pull themselves clear, choking on plumes of dust and smoke. The whole of the ballroom is suddenly molten with flame.
Explosions.
Explosions in the Alcázar.
Minutes, days, hours later, the palace stops shaking. I don’t know how long I lie there, atop the rubble of the windows. It feels like the whole world has been counting time as the Alcázar was decimated, and me inside it. Shards of glass seem embedded in my scalp. The broken boning in my corset nearly pierces me through with new, alien ribs. Spent gunpowder and sizzling flesh invade my nostrils, force their way down my throat. My vision hitches on the stubbornly gleaming thrones, overturned like beached whales.
The king and queen. Their elder children. Gone.
I hear people begin to call for their friends and family members. Rifles and shotguns blast through the smoke. I flinch into my jagged shroud and don’t move. Don’t understand. The detritus of the ball falls on me like heavy silt—fans, rings, hats, feathers, shoes, brooches, an appendage or four—but if I look at it, I’ll look for my mother in those orphaned objects, or my father, and I can’t do that.
“SURVIVORS!”
Staggered by the word, the absurdity of it, I try to raise my head. Blood trickles down the back of my neck, too fresh and deep to clot. But there—there, across the way. Leo. Climbing atop an upturned table. His stupid sword raised like a beacon. He spits blood onto the ruptured floors of his home.
What the hell just happened?
“TO ME, SURVIVORS!”
What did we just survive?
He shouts again, and his voice, clear and singular and terrible in the chaos, stuns me into motion. I force myself to roll over. Glass and gravel press into my arms and chest as I start to crawl. There are bodies everywhere. Heads misshapen with shrapnel. Limbs gone black with soot, still warm beneath my palms. Screams frozen in death.
I don’t look longer than I can help it. I don’t stop for anything. Not even when I notice a familiar celestial jacket melting into ashen skin, its owner’s mercurial grin replaced with a mask of horror. I can’t even look up when Leo heaves me to my feet. Without a word, he drags me toward the Arco de Léon on the eastern side of the ballroom. A girl I might have recognized before midnight shoots with an orphan rifle into the room to cover our retreat.
From whom?
Leo shoves me under the shadow of the arch. Enchanted limestone lions mewl piteously at the base of its pillars, missing haunches and tails. Each person Leo’s stowed here seems more stunned than the one before, but they’re alive.
“Stay here,” he snarls pointedly at me. Then he dives back into the melee in search of more survivors.
I’m too numb to disobey. Instead, I tug my singed gloves off, press my fingers against the wound on my neck, and close my eyes. I don’t know exactly what my blood magic can do to protect against this, but I try to focus my thoughts into a coherent intention: Keep me from harm. Don’t let me die here. Eventually I feel the spell settle in my skin with a faint blush of power, but it doesn’t feel much like armor. Not when everything is falling apart around me.
But I guess it’s more than others can do. I shuffle vaguely toward the person closest to me, bloody hands raised as if in surrender, but stop short when I hear a new, insistent sound. The stomp of boots. Coming from the tiled walks beyond the ballroom. And beneath the marching, the cold snick of steel being unsheathed. The click of revolvers at the ready.
I peer into the corridor.
You really, really shouldn’t have done that.
A many-headed wave of people crashes inexorably down the hall toward the ballroom. Their faces are indistinct in the lithe shadows that sprang up around the fallen chandeliers, but their weapons are nothing like the aristocratic ornaments that now litter the ballroom floor. These are efficient, ruthless, practical. And the people bearing them do not seem afraid of using them.
All thoughts of gentle protection spells dissipate in my head. Nothing I do will be able to stand against so many people, so many weapons. So I throw myself back into the chaos. The chain of my locket thuds against the hollow of my throat as I run.
“Alteza! Leo! Come back!” I scream. “Intruders—from the arch—”
Behind me, a bloodcurdling shout. Someone crashes to the ground, followed by the clatter of a rifle rolling through limp hands. The girl, the one who was shooting. I whirl around as Leo diverts his bloody path to look for the assailant. But it’s impossible to find that one person in the stream of the armed intruders. They fall on the little band of survivors I just abandoned with gleeful efficiency until the stalwart Lion Arch above crumbles at last, turning all of them, innocents and perpetrators alike, into a pile of twitching limbs.
If I had stayed—if I had offered them what meager protection I could—
But more and more intruders keep streaming in over the ruin of the arch. Over the bodies caught in the rubble. Armed and just as eager to kill as the earlier arrivals.
The ones who blew up the Alcázar.
Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they here?
I don’t know, but ahead of me, the prince isn’t stopping to ask those questions. He roars, sword raised, to charge. And while I watch him, my mind comes to a sudden, precarious stop.
The prince…
But Leo’s still alive and his family is not…so…so that means…
A thunderous crack of bullets. The new king collapses backward as the shots pierce him. Amid a growing chorus of guffaws from the attackers and strangled screams from the remaining guests, I dive to his side.
Leo raises a shaking arm to cup my face. He looks like a broken doll. The one I was taught to magically repair as a child. Helpless, I press my hand to his. His blood mixes with mine, with all of Ivarea, on my cheeks, down my throat and locket, before dripping onto his bleeding side. “You,” he chokes out.
I don’t know who I am. I don’t think he knows, either.
“My king.”
My skin prickles with residual magic—the protection spell. Then I hear another boom. Lightning tears through my body. A strange amber light blows out my vision. When I try to look down, I see a dark flower with jagged edges blooming from my chest.
The world turns black.
With the phantom touch of the late Rey Leopoldo Cardona still heavy on my cheeks, I open my eyes. And shoot up from bed.
My bed.
This is my bed.
My body. In my bed. In the townhouse we’re renting in the capital for the season.
Alive.
But…but the ball…the prince…the explosions…all those bodies…
I saw them. I know I did. I crawled over them. I fled across the ashen ballroom toward a king in a battle for his life. I died with him in my bloody arms.
Didn’t I?
Only just thinking it, I glance down at my body. My ribs are demonstrably not broken. No cuts or bruises crisscross my arms or legs. My hands fly to my throat and find the skin smooth, if pale, and my empty locket quite whole and unbothered. I seem to be wearing a plain linen chemise, but the more I run my fingers over the hem, the less sure I am that I’ve ever touched it before. I stare at the wall across from me as if it will break open and reveal the Alcázar ballroom, burning just as I remember it.
Then, I hear footsteps.
Before my eyes, Lion Arch crumbles over the intruders once again. Everyone I know dies again.
A voice cuts through the memory.
“One hour, Anaïs, that’s all I promised. Come on, come on, we haven’t much time!”
I let out a shuddering breath. Maman. It’s just Maman. See, there she is at the threshold: wide umber eyes, straight dark brown hair, cheeks so round even now that you can’t really tell where her cheekbones are. Just as she should be. But I can’t for the life of me understand what she’s talking about.
“Time until what?”
Instead of herding me out from the flimsy butter-yellow hangings around my bed, Maman hovers where she is with a strange glint in her dark eyes. As if she, too, can tell that something’s wrong. With all of this. With me.
What’s wrong with me?
“Till the ball, dearest. Don’t think for a second that you’re going to sleep through the whole day.”
The ball. The Anniversary Ball.
Memories—real ones, not visions from a nightmare—come back to me now. The scent of wildflowers as my lady’s maid washes my hair. My father evaluating kerchief options with his valet over breakfast. Onion-and-olive tart turning to sawdust in my mouth. My mother’s brow creasing at the expression on my face. The snap of buttons as I shrug off my morning dress and dive into an old shift.
