He moved through them and found his quarry.
Duchess Venderré barely glanced at him when he approached her. She wanted an excuse to leave. She was angry at her husband, who was pawing every young woman he could.
Grei watched Duchess Venderré carefully, and he opened her locks.
“Their anonymity gives them an excuse to act badly,” he said. “They have put on their true faces at last.”
“And is that your true face?” she asked.
“I have a dozen faces. But this one is just for you.”
She gave a frown. “How droll. And you think I have interest in your bad behavior?”
“It might teach your husband a lesson, if nothing else.”
“You know who I am?”
“Some women radiate a strength that no mask can hide,” he said.
Her hawk eyes narrowed, but he saw the interest kindle within her. Her gates opened on silent hinges, and the conversation really began.
He looked down at her now, memories of their passion like coals growing cold. She was every inch the lioness the stories claimed. She had hungered for him, devoured him.
She was his latest. She had done the most to mask his pain, but he didn’t expect it would last. It hadn’t with any of the others.
Grei had been with five different women in the last six nights of the Harvesthome masquerade balls. His first was Neviva, a childhood friend who had shunned him like all the rest when he first started questioning the Debt. He found her at Lord Nasbith’s manor at one of the earliest masquerade balls. With a mask in place, he gave Neviva an elaborate lie, and she did not recognize him. And after half an hour, she took his hand and led him to Lord Nasbith’s stables, and they lay down together in the hay. It was Grei’s first time, that night.
The urgent sensations, the rise of his climax stole away his anger. It wiped away his helplessness for one precious second. When he was in Neviva’s arms, breathing her breath, feeling her naked skin against his, he wasn’t Grei anymore. He was someone new. He was a man who took what he wanted and ignored the suffering of others. He was a true Thiaran.
He awoke in the middle of the night, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of horses with Neviva’s arm draped across his chest, and his reprieve had fled. In its place was a cold regret like congealed fat at the edge of a pan. The crushing helplessness returned, and suddenly he could barely be in his own skin without retching. Neviva’s scent, which had enflamed him only hours before, was repellent. The hay was dirty, the barn suffocating. He left her underneath the horse blanket. It was only after he had begun walking back to his empty house that he realized he had never taken off his mask. She didn’t even know to whom she had given herself. That wasn’t uncommon at the masquerade balls, but he had never envisioned it happening to Neviva. She knew what she wanted, a man to be hers alone, with whom to raise a family. A man who would stay with her.
He ripped the mask away and threw it into the gutter.
He spent the next day and night alone, wrestling with the ruin of his life. His father moved through the house like a ghost, making outlandish shoes that would never sell, then sleeping, then making more bizarre shoes. They passed each other in silence.
Adora tried to reach him. She knocked on the door of his house, but he slipped out the window as his father answered. He didn’t want to talk to her ever again.
The following night, he donned a new costume and went to another masquerade ball, this one on the arch of Skybridge. That night it was haughty Calinne, the daughter of a Venishan merchant come as a visitor to Fairmist during the famous Harvesthome Festival. She barely deigned to look at him at first, but that was before he started talking. Soon she was hanging on every word. After half an hour, she led him away from the bright covered lanterns, somewhere dark where she could kiss him.
The merchant’s daughter rode him on the grassy bank under a little bridge by Bullbend Street, and Grei felt good again. As they lay sweaty on the wet grass, it reminded him of being on the Blacktale with Adora, of how that night might have ended. An implacably dark mood descended on him, then he recited The Whisper Prince to Calinne, just as he had to Adora. She breathed approval, whispered the poem back in Venishan.
But that cold satisfaction didn’t last. By the time they had dressed, he wanted to vomit. He stayed with her long enough to bring her back to the center of the party at Skybridge. Calinne’s father hadn’t noticed her absence, and she was flush with the adventure.
“Tell me your name,” she said in her light accent, gazing at him with excited eyes.
“Tell me your drink of choice,” he said, plucking a red rose from a bush next to the bridge and handing it to her. “I shall bring it back with my name.”
She did, and he left her standing on Skybridge holding a rose.
Three more, one every night. He wore a mask. He recited the poem. He left them a red rose. And the legend of the Whisper Prince began.
Word spread unbelievably fast for something that had happened in a matter of days, but that was how the Harvesthome Festival was. People sought out the juiciest stories and reveled in the telling.
Grei had overheard rumors of the Whisper Prince at The Floating Stone just the other night. Apparently there were already imitators, young men who looked up to the myth, young women who longed to be a part of it.
But there were some women who didn’t, or perhaps hadn’t heard the legend yet. Grei had listened last night to a story that gave him a brief smile. Apparently Meek had fulfilled his promise to Highblade Ash, delivered a flowery apology in the form of a poem, and saved himself from “trading hands.” When Grei’s exploits as the Whisper Prince began to spread, Meek took his poetic victory to heart and was overheard trying to woo a young lady from Thiara on the Darkspan Bridge. The story went that she had listened politely, nodding her appreciation. Meek then took it upon himself to fondle her backside, perhaps hoping she would succumb to his charms. Instead, she pushed him over the rail. The Darkspan Bridge was one of the highest in Fairmist, and somewhere in the fall or the inevitable tumble downstream, Meek hit his head. After his friends fished him out, he lay unconscious for a full day, then rose and put on his mother’s clothes. Yesterday, he had been seen in an ill-fitting dress, his voice slurred as he spouted bad poetry at the gates of the palace.
That night, Grei had told Blevins the truth, that he was actually the Whisper Prince, and the fat man’s eyes had sparkled with amusement.
“A fine game,” Blevins had said, “Now for a real challenge. Turn your magic tongue to a fitting purpose,” the fat man had said. “They took your brother. Take one of theirs. Take the delegate’s daughter.” Then he gave one of his dark chuckles and shook his head. “No. Not a girl. A woman. Take the Duchess of the Highward, if you dare.”
And now he was here. He had talked his way into the bed of the most powerful woman in the city.
Maybe it was the danger, that the Duke would kill him if he was caught, but Grei didn’t feel sick this time. Or maybe it was that Venderré was not young or innocent. She was a woman of consequence, ruler of the Highward east of Fairmist, and as much to blame for the Debt of the Blessed as anyone.
When he was finished dressing, he glanced at the open veranda and went quietly to the rail. They were on the fourth story, and the top of the stone rail was beaded with moisture. There was no way out except the front door.
He left the veranda and crept to the sleeping Venderré’s side. He carefully arranged his gloves on the edge of the bed, then kissed the tips of his fingers and reached out to touch her bronze cheek. He stopped, hovering just above her skin.
He pulled the rose from the lining of his cloak, leaned close and mouthed the lines of the nursery rhyme he had spoken to every woman over the last week.
He lingered another moment, then laid the rose down and went to the thick, wooden door that led into the palace. As his hand reached for the handle, Venderré spoke.
“You’re the Whisper Prince.”
He stoppe
d, and the imagined threat of his death became very real. He paused a half-second before turning. She pushed herself to a sitting position.
“Aren’t you?” Her voice was abominably loud in the silence.
“The who?”
“Do you think me a fool?” she asked flatly. There was a serpent’s coldness in her words. She lifted her arms, rested them along the top of the brass headboard, and shivered slightly. In the silver light, he saw goose bumps on her smooth, bronze skin.
She was the lioness again, ready to pounce and devour him.
“I told you. I’m from Moondow. I only heard of your Whisper Prince today,” he said.
“Did you.”
One scream from her and the hall would fill with Highblades. He made himself walk back to the bed and sit down, but his eye began to twitch beneath his mask. Venderré reminded him of Ringblade Ree. Both of them were women of power, except Venderré did not seem interested in ushering Grei to the door. “This Whisper Prince, he does what again?” Grei asked.
“He flies through the open windows of virgins in Fairmist, ravishes them and flies out again, but not before stealing their valuables, and not before speaking the nursery rhyme The Whisper Prince.”
Grei forced a chuckle. Legends, he had noticed in the short time he had been a subject of one, had a life of their own. He’d never stolen valuables from anyone. Of course, “valuables” was a vague sort of word.
“I assure you I shall not fly out that window,” he said. Though they may well throw me out.
“And I am no virgin,” Venderré said.
“So you see?”
“And yet you spoke the rhyme to me.”
“Downstairs at the ball? I was a little drunk, I admit—”
“Just now.”
He did his best to look confused, then smiled again. “I have angered you. I only thought it would be prudent for me to stay the night elsewhere, lest your husband discover us. I would have woken you, but you seemed peaceful in your slumber.” He slid his hand across the smooth sheets toward her hip. “But I shall stay if you wish.”
“Touch me, and I will scream,” she said, though she made no move to draw away from him or to cover herself. His hand stopped inches from her skin. Her lips widened in a cold smile.
“But—”
“What is your name?”
“I have already told you. I am Balish from Moondow—”
“Take off your mask.”
“My lady—”
“Tell me who you really are,” she said.
“I am—”
“Lie again, and I will scream.” Again, that cold smile, so potentially sweet. So...not.
Grei paused. Blevins’ words rose in his mind: If you lie badly, you’re a bad liar. If you insist on a bad lie, then you’re a fool as well.
He stood, shrugged. “It is a masked ball. The point is to remain unknown, is it not?” he admitted.
“The ball is over,” she said.
“But the dance continues.” He stepped to the door.
The left edge of her smile curved further upward, a lovely nuance. He would have been feverish with desire if only his palms would stop sweating.
“Tell me your name, and I will consider protecting your identity.”
Grei stopped for a moment. He wanted to believe her. Perhaps he could. Her gaze did not waver. Those deep brown eyes pierced him.
The last time he trusted a woman, he’d lost a brother and a mother.
He smiled. “Alas, my lady, it is a risk I cannot take.”
“It is the only chance you have of leaving alive.”
Hearing the threat from her own lips set his resolve, and it reminded him who this woman was. Part of the empire. A champion of the Debt of the Blessed.
He took another step toward the door. “There are so many chances in life.”
“Touch the door,” she said laconically, “and I will scream.”
His hand hovered over the brass handle. “And what will your husband think if he finds me here?”
“That you are a thief and a rapist.”
“And if I tell him different?” he said, thinking of how her back had arched, how she had gasped his name. His fake name, but nevertheless...
“He will, of course, believe you. Especially with your mask in place.”
With a sweeping bow, he said, “It was an unforgettable night, my lady. Your beauty is as eternal as the sunrise.”
Her dark eyes twinkled, and she shook her head as she might at an errant-but-charming child. He opened the door.
She screamed.
Booted footsteps pounded up the hall. A Highblade turned the corner, spotted him and shouted.
“Hold there!”
Grei slammed the door, throwing the bolt. He left it and raced across the room. She continued smiling, the lioness.
Let it be here, then, he thought. Let it be now.
He burst onto the veranda, slipped on the wet flagstones and slammed into the wide stone rail. He wrapped his arms around it to steady himself and looked at the very hard, very distant flagstones far below.
If he was to die tonight, he wouldn’t make it easy for them.
Swinging a leg over the balcony, he blew a kiss to Venderré as the first blow landed on the door. Maintaining the role fed the darkness within him, and the darkness didn’t care about anything.
He dropped off the rail and began scaling the stones of the slick wall. He took his time, found toeholds before moving, checked each handhold. He tried not to think about how his hands slipped a little each time.
He began shimmying across to a line of windows. The window ledges would give him better purchase. The door thundered, and then Grei heard the latch being undone. “Thank you for not breaking my door,” Venderré said. “He’s on the veranda.”
Booted feet tramped to the balcony. Grei dared a look, clinging desperately to the side of the wall. He’d barely descended five feet. There were two Highblades now.
“Go get help,” the first said. “Take some men to the street below. Make sure they have bows.” The second guard disappeared back into the room. Venderré walked onto the balcony, the silk sheet wrapped around her. She watched with feline curiosity.
The first Highblade unsheathed a dagger that looked suspiciously shaped for throwing. The guard narrowed his eyes, raised the dagger, and threw.
The shining knife flipped end over end, straight and true.
“No!” Grei shifted to the side, and the blade clanged into the wall just to his left, slicing through his tunic and spinning away below him.
He slipped and fell.
“No!” he shouted. The cobblestones raced toward him. “No no no!”
He hit, and the fierce pain of snapping bones, the sickening crack of his head breaking—
Did not happen.
He splashed into the stones as if they were water. He spluttered, thrashing, grabbing for something solid. His arm slapped the street, and he hauled himself out. He jumped to his feet, backing away from the human-shaped hole in the stone. His heart hammered in his chest.
He looked up at the balcony. The Highblade and Venderré both looked down, open-mouthed.
“By the Faia!” the guard shouted, echoing the very sentiment that rattled in Grei’s mind.
Grei looked at his hands. He brushed them. Solid, dusty stone flaked away, drifted to the ground. Not liquid. He was covered head-to-toe in white dust.
He walked over and touched the indentation with his toe. It was rock. Hard enough to break bones.
He heard the sound of pounding feet, coming his way, coming for him. He turned and ran into the shadows.
Chapter 15
Adora
Adora stopped near the side door of The Floating Stone, put one hand against the wall and one hand to her forehead. Her little alley was cold and wet, and there were no pleasant thoughts to warm it. Fairmist had been a wonder when she had first arrived, but now the floating water represented her broken heart and her absolute failure
as a steward of the prophecy.
It had been a week since Grei’s brother was taken, and everything was in ruins. Grei was slipping away. And yet the Order demanded she return to work and perpetuate the lie.
She’d gone to the Order House after the masquerades had begun. She had screamed at Lyndion.
“You knew! You sent him away while his family was torn apart!”
“I did not write the prophecy, Adora,” Lyndion said. “I follow it.”
“He’s out there heartsick and alone, using his magic to seduce women. Is that what you wanted? Is that what the prophecy demands, you twisted old man?”
“His pain will shape him into what is needed. You will see.”
“The man I knew is gone,” she said.
“The man you knew was not the Whisper Prince.”
“You’re not human!”
“His hardship will drive him to save the empire,” Lyndion said, then he paused as he looked at her. “Assuming he is properly guided.”
It always came back to that, and the accusation was unmistakable. It was her job to set things right.
She took a step away as though the breath had been slammed from her body. Sometimes it seemed as if these old men cared for her. Sometimes she felt like she was just a tool.
“I am chained to your deceptions because of my blood,” she whispered.
Lyndion showed his teeth then, like a feral dog. “Our world is on the brink of ruin. What are Grei’s trials—what are yours—compared to that?”
“I know the prophecy!” she screamed.
“Then do your part! The suffering of the Whisper Prince is necessary. It will temper him.”
“At what cost?”
“And what is his cost to you? He does his part. You do yours.” His eyes narrowed, and she saw understanding in them. He knew she was smitten, that she loved the one person she was forbidden to love. He was calling her out, daring her admit she had failed.
“It’s needlessly cruel,” she whispered, turning away to deny him the satisfaction.
“And who would you be without the cruelties visited upon you?”
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