CHAPTER TWO: THE FAREWELL BANQUET (2)

The banquet hall was a cathedral of gloom with better catering.

Long tables of black glass, candelabras dripping what I hoped was wax, Shadowkin nobles arrayed like a funeral attendance that had been forced to dress up for Easter. At the head of it all, on a dais that was less a seat and more a pronouncement, sat Kaelen Thorne.

He was wearing black on black on black, because subtlety had filed for a restraining order against this man years ago. His crown was the kind of thing that looked like it had been welded from frozen lightning. When he lifted his goblet, the whole hall went quiet the way an audience goes quiet before the guillotine drops.

And then I saw him. The caterer.

He was human — unmistakably, gloriously human, the first non-shadow person I’d seen since crossing the border. Mid-thirties, crisp white jacket, a name tag that read LEO — EVENT STAFF, and a smile so practiced it had its own fan club. He was rolling a cart of wine like a man who’d accidentally wandered into a Goth wedding and decided to monetize it.

Our eyes met for half a second.

Something in his face did a complicated little calculation. He glanced at Kaelen. He glanced at me. He glanced at the two goblets he was holding, then at my hand, which was drifting toward the poisoned vial in my sleeve.

His eyebrows did a sad, knowing little dance.

He mouthed, very clearly: two idiots.

Then he winked, and glided off to pour wine like he hadn’t just announced my entire soul out loud.

I decided, on principle, to dislike him intensely.

He drifted past my chair between courses, pouring water with the reverence of an altar boy and the eyes of a man counting everything in the room. “Wine, princess?” he murmured, just loud enough for me. “On the house. Literally. I still haven’t been paid for this gig.”

“Gig?” I said, sweetly. “I thought you were catering.”

“I am catering.” He filled my glass. “Catering is ninety percent canapés and ten percent listening to rich people lie to each other. I do the ten percent for free. It’s the only honest work I’ve ever had.” He leaned in, just slightly. “Between us, princess — and I charge for between us, but I’ll make an exception because I’m moved — you two have the most expensive stare I’ve ever brokered. And I’ve brokered a lot of stares.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.” He straightened up, beaming. “Enjoy the soup. It’s famous. Nobody knows why.”

Then he was gone, off to the next table, and I was left holding a water glass and the deeply unsettling feeling that a human stranger had just read my love life faster than I could read a menu.

The banquet was a museum of bad decisions.

Shadowkin food, for the record, is an experience. The first course arrived as something on a plate that had clearly once had feelings. I ate it. Revenge burns calories. Across the table, Ian watched me chew with the open suspicion of a man who believed every bite was a tactical maneuver. Possibly he was right.

The moment I’d been waiting for came after the third course, when the drum rolled and the herald announced the king’s toast.

“To peace,” Kaelen said, and his voice traveled the hall like a knife under silk, “between our peoples. May it outlast us all.”

The hall rose. This was it. My window. I’d prepared for ninety seconds of chaos, a cup of wine pre-poisoned by my own hand, slipped into his goblet during the pour. I’d practiced the swap a hundred times on the train. Slow smile. Clink. Pull back. Watch.

I reached for the bottle.

And my hand trembled.

Not fear. Not nerves. This. It came up through the bond like a tidal wave — his heartbeat, slow and steady, synced to mine, and underneath it the wall of his self, three hundred years of controlled ice, and for one vicious, humiliating instant I felt him feel me right back. The bond flared. My fingers locked. The vial slipped.

Kaelen’s hand closed around my wrist.

The whole hall saw it.

He didn’t yank. He didn’t growl. He just closed his long, cold fingers around my wrist, right where my pulse was doing something it should be embarrassed about, and smiled — a public, icy, gracious smile that turned every noble’s head.

“Princess,” he said, loud enough for the front row, “you’re trembling. Allow me.”

He took the goblet I’d been reaching for. The one I’d meant for him. The one, I now realized with a slow, icy lurch in my gut, that was not the goblet I’d poisoned.

He lifted it. He looked at me over the rim. His eyes — dark amethyst, bruise-silk — held mine for one beat too long.

And he drank.

The hall erupted. Cheers. The king, drinking the Light princess’s cup. The king, pressing the Light princess’s wrist. The king, publicly, scandalously, forcing the enemy emissary to stand before him while he took her toast into his own mouth. Every Shadowkin noble within fifty feet was already composing their memoirs.

I read it exactly as he intended me to read it: theater. Humiliation. The monster, grandstanding, bending his prisoner to the floor of his hall to remind everyone who owned her.