by Terah Edun
Lillian looked down at the musician in displeasure.
“So I have. But even I wouldn’t have wanted this,” Lillian conceded reluctantly as she eyed the slightly ajar door beyond the musician.
“Well,” prodded another bored dilettante from her circle.
Lillian looked over her shoulder at him with a sniff. “If you’re so interested, Charles, why don’t you go ahead and inspect the room?”
Though it wasn’t necessarily senselessness that had pushed her to dare the man at that moment. It was numbness. It was disbelief.
“Don’t!” said another one with more wisdom than either Charles or Lillian at the moment. “And if you do, at least take off those shoes first.”
“What?” Lillian asked.
“Shoes,” said the man firmly. “It’s important.”
Charles, a young man too proud to be shown up in front of his peers, did exactly what she had dared him to do. Though he took off his shoes at the man’s behest first.
Lillian and her friends waited with no little anxiety outside the door.
Soon enough he called out with a harsh whisper, “You lot get in here, quickly! I assure you boredom is long gone now.”
If his tone had a bit too much bravado, then Lillian couldn’t blame him. She was torn between running back to the ballroom to get a sentry and going in to see what he’d found.
Apparently the others thought the choice was between the room and the drooling person outside, so they took off their shoes and two of the airheaded girls rushed in without further thought. Lillian and one young man along with Demetre hung back.
When she turned around she was startled to see a nobleman not often caught participating in court antics. She raised a curious eyebrow.
The staid young man said with a censorious eye to the room. “I’m not quite as bored as you lot.”
“Is that so?” asked Lillian unimpressed.
“It is,” the man confirmed with a grimace as he walked towards Matthew. “But this young man needs a healer’s aid or at the very least a stiff brew to knock off whatever fugue has overcome him.”
“Yes, yes a good jolt of alcohol should do the trick,” Demetre said from behind his handkerchief.
To Lillian’s critical eyes it looked like the musician needed more than a mug of swillwater to get through the night but she didn’t object as the young man heaved up the musician with a grunt and headed off muttering about idiots and sycophants.
When Lillian turned back to Demetre he seemed to have regained some of his composure because the handkerchief was gone and his shoulders were square. Wryly Demetre said with a wave of his hand at the door that had been knocked further ajar, “Shall we? We can’t let the others have all the fun.”
Lillian rolled her eyes and moved.
“Wait!” commanded Demetre with a snap of his fingers. “Shoes, dear.”
She did as he asked as she swept past him and into the mysterious room as requested, impatient to see what the others had found. She was no fool and although the musician was sick…that didn’t necessarily mean his malady had originated in the room past the outstretched door. He could have ended up as he was in a variety of ways and she wouldn’t be who she was if she didn’t at least investigate the room beyond.
When she did however, Lillian wasn’t expecting to see what she saw. But she now knew why she’d taken off her shoes. The entire floor was caked in a fine white dust that would be hard to explain away to a discerning eye. Besides that the room was nearly devoid of furniture and barely visible with only the moonlight to guide their questing eyes.
In the center of the room was a long rectangular table.
Atop it was tomes and documents, gold and jewels, upturned canisters spilling mounds of particles onto the white tablecloth, and a simple cauldron boiling over with ooze.
It was quite…unusual.
But what drew her to the table’s side, more than the eclectic mix of objects it possessed, was the strange aura of magic surrounding it.
Even she, not a trained mage in her own right, could sense it. Taste it on her tongue. It was like old cardamom spice mixed with the dangerous musk of heady intoxication. It was alluring. It was decadent.
As she stopped hesitantly in front of the table, in an unwilling trance, Lillian lifted her bejeweled arm and reached out to touch the table. Like an out-of-body experience, she watched another of their group manage to touch the contents before she did. A single gold coin.
The woman froze and fell at Lillian’s feet, the same look of stupor written on her face as had been on the musician’s at the door.
That woke Lillian out of her nightmarish dream fairly quickly.
Whispers erupted as half the group gathered around the fallen woman and the other half continued to stare at the table as if they remained entranced.
Keeping a wary eye on her comrades, Lillian took the chance to touch the woman. Her flesh was ice-cold. Like death.
Her magic was another thing entirely.
It was alive with the soul of a dragon. Lillian gasped aloud harshly and wrenched her hand back. She could feel the presence as surely as she could have touched her own magic.
One thing she was sure of now. The dragon was more than just an envoy. Much more. But Lillian knew as she stared back at the table with its treasure trove of secrets, locked by magic and by malice, that she wasn’t the person to uncover those secrets. Not today. Maybe not ever.
“That is a job for someone with far more experience than I,” Lillian Weathervane said in a decisively light voice. She was trying to make a joke of it. The others stared around at each other even more unsure than she was.
One person even reached forward to touch the edge of the glowing manuscript. Lillian hissed through her teeth with impatience and slapped his curious fingers away.
The signature was too dark for any of them, especially if the person tempted to try to overcome it was foolish enough not to heed the warnings of not one but two fallen individuals before him.
“These secrets are not for you either, Andre,” she said in a steely tone. “Not if you want to wake up tomorrow and greet a new day.”
He looked at her. He looked back at the table’s contents. They were tempting. But apparently not enough to risk being incapacitated by them. He backed away from the table with a muttered curse.
And it was as if a spell was broken because the four others stirred around the table and they too looked at it with unease as they hurriedly rearranged their clothing so that the sheer dresses and cloth tunics closed tighter around their owners…almost like a flimsy shield.
Stirring herself Lillian Weathervane decided they all needed to get back to the festivities before someone found them here. They hadn’t touched the table. Its wards were still locked. Even their shoes were clean. No one who saw them at the ball would know they had stumbled into here. And if the dragon knew they’d been in there…well, he had even less incentive than they did to speak up.
So she snapped at one of them, “Gather her up.”
The rest she shooed out of the room with careful motions of her hands, like a mother hen herding chicks away from danger. The glittered and bejeweled nobles were only too happy to follow her commands now that their de facto leader had indicated a strategic retreat was imperative. No one lost face if everyone was doing it.
When she was the last one out the door, Lillian Weathervane paused with her hand on the golden knob. But she didn’t turn around to view what even her gaiety-filled mind thought of as a dark trap waiting to snap closed around her neck. Instead she fixed her trademark smile on her face. Adjusted the emeralds in her ears. Knelt down to put the one-of-a-kind creations that she carried under her arm onto the floor and slide her soft feet into the soft caress of the perfect pair of heels.
All was right with her world as she closed that door with a firm tug and clicked back into the ballroom. This night had promised that if nothing else…the court wasn’t going to be boring any longer.
And that was all Lillian Weathervane wanted.
Some entertainment. She hadn’t bought these atrociously expensive heels for nothing after all.
If you’ve read Sworn To Secrecy: Courtlight #4, the mysterious dragon we meet here in Lillian In Heels might be familiar to you. I hope you enjoyed his entrance to court. He promises to be a very deceptive partner for Lillian and the entire Weathervane family to tangle with in future times.
We’d love to see you on social media. Show your #ShatterAnEmpire pride!
Terah Edun
TWITTER
INSTAGRAM
YOUTUBE
NEWSLETTER
About the Author
Terah Edun is the New York Times bestselling author of the Courtlight, Crown Service, and Algardis series, set in the eponymous Algardis Universe. Her books boast exhilarating adventures, breathless romance, and incredible fantasy for readers of all ages. You can visit her online at www.terahedun.com.
Contact info:
@tedunwrites
TerahEdunAuthor
www.terahedun.com