An apple was a trivial thing to waste, and yet, to Charis, it was another example of the non-stop displays of extravagance she had encountered since arriving in Maze. Turning away from the window, she ran her hand over one of the many clusters of silver leaves and acorns that accented the ebony frame of the tufted chaise she sat in. The cold, smooth feel beneath her finger tips made it readily apparent that the leaves’ color was imparted not by silvered paint or silver foil—the inlays were silver metal. Only the faintest tinge of tarnish blemished the crevices within the intricate swirls of the pattern.
Her eyes dropped from the chaise to the alternating light and dark planks that made up the herringbone pattern of the floor. A portion of the design was obscured by a plush indigo rug, which stopped a few feet short of the marble hearth where a well-stocked fire merrily crackled. The mantle above it was lined with statuettes and porcelain figurines that looked so delicate Charis dared not touch any of them for fear of breaking one.
Her discomfort did not originate from a lack of familiarity with wealth. Indeed, even if her father’s position as University President had not afforded her own family an elevated social status, her friendship with Nerissa would have provided ample exposure to the kind of luxuries enjoyed by the nobility. Still, although the Royal Manor in Chiyo had been a grand residence, the Royal Family purposely chose not to put their affluence on display. Clearly, the well-to-do citizens of Maze felt no such need for restraint.
Charis supposed she shouldn’t have been too surprised to learn that the home Amon inherited from his father was as opulent and lavishly furnished as its neighbors. After all, his father had been a successful businessman and a member of the gentry in his own right before he married into the Royal Family. But, despite her unease with the ostentatious decor, the study was a place where Charis felt comfortable—for it hosted an entire wall lined with a most glorious selection of books.
Just when her gaze landed on the bookcase, she heard a distinctive sound.
Scratch, scratch.
Charis inhaled sharply. Unfortunately, she recognized that sound.
Scratch, scratch.
It was the scurrying of a rat.
Is it in the room with me? She shuddered and instinctively drew her knees to her chest, then yanked up on the blanket spread across her lap so that the ends no longer brushed the floor.
She leaned forward, her ears straining to pinpoint the direction of the long-tailed intruder, but the silence only heightened the sound of her own breathing. Her eyes skimmed along the floor and baseboards for signs of the furry horror while a mixture of disgust and desperation welled up in her chest. I guess even the fanciest homes aren’t immune to pests, she thought wryly. It was a small comfort.
And then the sound came again, so faint it was barely audible. Was it coming from behind the bookcase? Charis couldn’t say for sure. The binding of the book she had been reading creaked as it was pressed tighter between her knees and her chest. She sincerely hoped the creature hadn’t gnawed a hole anywhere in the shelves. For the books’ sake, of course.
At that moment, the door to the study swung open, its hinges emitting a gentle squeak under the burden of the heavy wood. The minute sound might have gone unnoticed under normal circumstances, but given the sound’s similarity to the chatter of a rat, it nearly sent Charis clambering up the curtains.
Amon’s housekeeper, Thea, peered at Charis from the doorway. “Is everything alright?” she asked, her eyebrows raised so high they turned her forehead into a pile of wrinkles. “I came in to suggest that you may be more comfortable reading in the parlor. That room gets more sunlight at this time of day.”
Charis pointed a trembling finger toward the bookshelves. “I heard a scratching sound coming from over there. I think there may be a rat inside the walls.”
“A rat?” Thea’s voice cracked, and she shook her head in vehement denial. “Certainly not!”
Scratch, scratch. Scuffle.
Both women’s heads swiveled, their attention automatically drawn to the direction of the sound.
Scowling, Thea marched across the room and banged three times with all her might on the carved wooden panels of the bookshelves. No additional sounds arose from within.
“Well, it does seem like something was back there,” she admitted. “But it definitely wasn’t a rat. We would have heard it run away when I knocked. We’ve had troubles with birds nesting in the eaves outside. I’m sure that must have been what you heard.”
Charis reluctantly eased her feet back to the floor. That was not the sound of birds in the eaves. Yet, if the sound was caused by neither birds nor rats, what other explanation could there be?
Thea’s firm expression brooked no argument, and Charis did not want to risk seeming ungrateful for Amon’s hospitality by pressing the issue. “I suppose you are right. You know the house better than I do, after all,” she relented.
“Why don’t you come to the parlor? I’ll bring you a fresh cup of tea,” Thea said. She folded her arms beneath her chest, making it obvious she was not going to leave the room until Charis did.
“No, but thank you for the offer,” Charis said. Were all servants in Marise this bossy? “I’m attending the festival tonight, so I was planning to go upstairs and prepare to leave soon anyway.”
“Very well, I’ll summon a hackney coach for you.”
Charis dropped a bookmark between the pages of her book and laid it on the chaise beside her blanket. “I would appreciate that,” she said, casting one more skeptical glance at the bookcase as she left the room.
When she climbed into the hackney a short time later with her pink-feathered hat in hand, the curtains were closed, so there was no way for her to notice that a second carriage followed closely behind hers—all the way to the festival.
Chapter 4
The Festival of Flames
Nerissa
The central square of Maze was flooded with vendors and festival-goers, its lines of stalls and kiosks overflowing into the adjoining streets like the sprawling arms of a giant octopus. Every path was bathed in the flickering candlelight of multi-colored paper lanterns that were suspended in neat rows between street posts, casting the area in a rainbow of hues. Beneath those lights, the merry citizens of Maze passed from one patch of color to the next in a seemingly unbroken flow as they gradually made their way toward the towering bonfire that was the centerpiece of the Festival of Flames.
Some of the revelers cradled bags of newly discovered baubles, while others had their hands full of delicious treats, but every one of them carried a folding fan. The fans—traditional gifts exchanged during the Festival of Fans in the springtime—were to be thrown into the bonfire as a symbol of the end of warm weather and the onset of winter.
And somewhere amidst the waving fans and laughter was Nerissa, who stared in open-mouthed wonderment at the array of peculiar glass columns on display in front of her. The columns were filled with a clear liquid, and a dozen spherical bulbs floated at various levels within—each one half-filled with brightly colored liquids as well.
Rian leaned around the display and made a face at her through one of the cylinders, his features comically enlarged by the curvature of the glass. Nerissa clapped one hand over her mouth at the sight of him and stifled a giggle.
“What are you laughing at?” he demanded, rounding the table to rejoin her with an impish grin on his face.
“I’m not laughing! Can’t you see that I’m trying very hard not to laugh?” she replied. Her cheeks twitched under the strain of maintaining a neutral expression. “I find myself feeling impressed once again by your ‘stunning’ good looks.”
Rian let out a huff of feigned indignation and playfully jabbed her with his elbow. As he did so, the display table shook ever so slightly, evoking a gentle rattle from the tiny, floating bulbs within the columns.
The sound was minute, particularly in comparison to the din of the crowd, yet it summoned the vendor as surely as if a gong had been struc
k. She scuttled over to them, wringing the front of her apron between her hands. “Be careful! The termometro lentos are very delicate!”
How the woman had even heard such a faint sound was a mystery to Nerissa, but a flush of shame colored her cheeks anyway. She bowed her head apologetically, and beside her Rian did the same. “Please accept our apologies. We should have been more cautious. What exactly is a termometro lento? I’ve never seen one before.”
“You must be foreigners.” The woman lifted her chin in a show of pride, and if Nerissa wasn’t mistaken, her Marisianne accent suddenly became even more pronounced. “Everyone in the Twin Cities knows about my termometro lentos. To describe them in the most simplistic terms, they are thermometers.”
Nerissa tugged the front of her cloak closed to shut out the cool air and leaned forward to study the columns in front of her with renewed interest. “A thermometer? How does it work?”
The woman pointed at one of the small metal tags that hung from the floating bulbs. “Each of these tags has a number imprinted on it. When the temperature changes, the individual bulbs rise or sink. The number on the tag of the one floating lowest indicates the temperature.”
“Amazing,” Nerissa said, feeling a sense of longing well up in her chest. “I wish I could purchase one, but there is no way I could transport such a fragile instrument home.”
The vendor’s expression darkened at Nerissa’s admission. “Then I will move along to help actual customers. Do be careful not to shake the table again.”
Shocked by the woman’s abrupt change in manner, Nerissa took a step away from the display and bumped right into Rian.
“Unfortunately, she does have a point, My Phoenix,” he murmured, his breath a warm tickle against her ear. “We aren’t here to browse. We’re supposed to be looking for Charis.”
Nerissa’s heart fluttered, and she nearly stumbled into the table in her haste to put more distance between them. “I know that. Finding Charis is our top priority. Still, do you have any idea how much I want to explore this festival? Being here is exhilarating! Some of my most cherished memories from childhood are of attending festivals with Charis, and yet it’s something I haven’t been able to do since...” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she couldn’t finish her sentence without revealing her identity.
Rian’s brows drew together. “Since when?”
The paper lanterns overhead swayed, painting an azure sheen across Rian’s dark hair and accentuating the intense blue of his eyes. Just say “Since being named Heiress,” her inner self urged. He’s already shown you how he feels. You have no doubt that he truly likes you for who you are. There’s no reason not to tell him everything now.
But before she could open her mouth to speak, another reveler brushed up against her shoulder on his way to view the termometro lentos. Nerissa’s chest tightened as her awareness of the crush of people around her returned, and the momentary spell she had fallen under was broken. This was neither the time nor the place for such confessions.
Heaving a sigh, she quickly amended her intended answer to something more ambiguous. “Since I came of age, I couldn’t go to the festivals with Charis because I had to start attending the parties at the Manor with my parents.” Disgusted with her half-truth, she turned away from his gently inquiring gaze and made a show of scanning the area for any sign of Charis’ pink-feathered hat. “I wonder if Charis is somewhere nearby. Maybe someone else has found her already.”
Despite Rian’s obvious incredulity, he nodded in understanding. “Let’s keep moving. We can’t afford to get distracted and neglect our mission. I made that mistake once, and I’m not going to do it again.” Then he leaned closer to her and added, “I won’t press you if it’s something you’d rather not talk about.”
The sentiment should have been comforting, but Nerissa felt her heart sink like a lead weight instead. Keeping her identity a secret from Rian was becoming a heavier burden every day. While she might not be able to tell him everything she wished to right now, she vowed that the time to keep withholding the truth from him would soon come to an end.
As they merged into the crowd, Rian glanced over at her with a look of concern on his face. He flipped open the fan he had brought with him and used it to hide his mouth as he spoke. “I didn’t mean to sound harsh a minute ago,” he said, apparently misunderstanding the reason for Nerissa’s change in demeanor. “Even though we do need to stay focused, we also have to blend in with those around us. So, there’s no harm in having fun as long as we keep an eye out for Charis at the same time. Come on—let’s see what other new things we come across. There’s plenty of time before we are supposed to check in with the others by the bonfire.”
Nerissa forced herself to give him a smile and pushed her wistfulness to the back of her mind as they wandered from one booth to the next. At first, Rian lead the way, animatedly pointing out interesting or unusual finds. Nerissa knew that he was merely doing it for her sake, but it didn’t take long for his enthusiasm to become contagious.
Although she had fully expected there to be regional differences between the festivities in Maze and Niamh, she was still shocked by how disparate the two celebrations really were. Here, she had not seen a single purveyor of crystals. There were no wandering actors to put on impromptu performances, no cones of roasted nuts for sale, no handmade crafts, no displays of fine woodwork. Instead, the lines of booths contained an array of the latest technological novelties, each one more incredible than the last.
She marveled at the sight of an extraordinary white fluid that flowed from its container as easily as water, yet was as hard and impermeable as stone when touched. It was exactly the sort of thing the twins—who had stayed behind at the inn with Desta—would find amusing. So in spite of Rian’s smirk, Nerissa bought three vials of the liquid. One for herself and the other two for the twins.
For Desta, she found a tiny glow lamp attached to the end of an articulating arm that clipped to the pages of a book. It was the perfect solution for when she awoke late at night and wanted to jot down her dreams in her notebook.
Nerissa had just tucked the gift away inside her cloak when she spotted a wisp of pink jutting out over top of the crowd. “Rian, I think I found her!” she exclaimed and then dashed off without waiting for a reply.
But her excitement was quashed by the discovery that the “feather” she had spied was, in reality, neither pink nor a feather. It was the last serving of a dessert called a “sugar cloud,” which had been temporarily tinged pink when the vendor selling it passed beneath a red lantern. He held the rack displaying his wares at shoulder height, which made the glossy white strands appear to be hat embellishments whenever someone passed by.
“This is what you were so excited about?” Rian asked when he finally caught up to her, chuckling and panting at the same time.
“It really did look like a feather…for a moment, at least,” Nerissa protested.
Rian patted her shoulder, an amused smile playing across his lips. “Well, now that we’ve gone to all this trouble, we may as well try some for ourselves. Wait here.” He passed a few coins to the vendor and handed the treat to Nerissa.
Upon closer examination, the white threads truly did look more like a piece of a cloud than a bird’s plumage. Not that she was going to admit that to Rian. She was debating whether she should pinch off a piece or dive in face first for a bite when a chorus of “Lady Udele is coming” rippled through the crowd.
All around them, conversations halted midsentence and people hastened to either side of the walking path in order to clear a space down the center. Who was this lady? And more importantly—was she accompanied by Senka attendants? There was no way to know for sure. Nerissa and Rian exchanged a quick look and then pushed against the forward surge of the curious onlookers to meld into the background before the young woman and her entourage strolled past.
“I’m glad I’m not a member of the Marisianne nobility,” Rian mused, once again raising his fan to
create a semblance of privacy. “I wouldn’t like having my every move scrutinized like this in public. When people are always fawning over you because of your title, how would you ever know who genuinely liked you?”
An icy breeze eddied around Nerissa’s feet, momentarily lifting the flaps of her cloak before sweeping away into the night. And yet even that fleeting surge of cold air did not lessen the warmth she felt in response to Rian’s comment. “Exactly!” she exclaimed, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.
Rian flinched at the sound of her voice, seeming not to have realized he’d spoken his thoughts out loud. His fleeting look of surprise was rapidly replaced by a lopsided smile. “I thought you were being coy with me when we met on the night of the masquerade, but were you actually hiding your identity from everyone at that time?”
The people around them began to spill back into the walkway, rapidly filling in the gap left in Lady Udele’s wake. “That was my intention,” Nerissa said. “Although, without any memories of that night, I can’t say for sure what actually happened.”
Rian reached out with his free hand and brushed his thumb across the back of her knuckles in a fleeting caress that was the boldest gesture he could make in public. “You may not remember that night, My Phoenix, but I will never forget it.”
A pleasant tingling raced up Nerissa’s arm in response to his touch, and whatever coherent response she might have formulated evaporated from her mind like darkness fleeing sunlight. How was it that such a simple thing could send her heart racing?
She attempted to mask how flustered she was by plucking a dainty tuft from the nearly forgotten sugar cloud and stuffed it into her mouth. Or at least, she tried to. She ended up clumsily pulling off a huge swath instead—only half of which would fit in her mouth. Her eyes widened—and her embarrassment deepened—as some of the sugary goodness began to dissolve on her tongue and the remainder of the strands attached themselves to her chin like a glossy beard.
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