A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Three

Three

That Night

“One drink, then we leave.” Caris pulled her hood over her head, which was perhaps the single most conspicuous thing she could have done. It was already a masquerade. The princess’s additional secrecy was overkill.

Ophir laughed. “I’m not going anywhere until we’ve had ten.”

It was a beautiful night, mixed between late spring’s fresh air and early summer’s warmth. Every woman’s arms were bare, their dresses scooping daringly to expose their backs or plunging to reveal the curves of breasts. Caris was the only one on the estate wearing a hooded cloak, and it was drawing more than a few stares. They hadn’t even entered the estate and they were already making a spectacle of themselves from the moonlit grass of the lawn.

“It’s too hot for that cloak. You’re already sweating.” Tiny beads of moisture dotted the older sister’s forehead. Ophir clucked her tongue disapprovingly.

“I’m sweating because I’m nervous. And it’s still spring.”

“It feels like summer. That hood of yours is like announcing to the entire party that you’re a poorly disguised princess. Relax.”

Caris dropped her voice to a hiss. “How am I supposed to relax?”

Ophir unclasped her sister’s cloak and draped it over her arm. “Can you at least try to have fun? It’ll be great once we get a few drinks in you. I promise.”

The night hummed with festive energy. It was the nerves of prospective socialites, the perfumes of women and the burn of the bright stars overhead. Ophir grinned as she buzzed with the night’s animation. “I’ll return this to you after you’ve had your first five.”

“ One .” Caris extended her hand uselessly to grab her cloak.

“Three, and that’s my final offer. Besides, are you really so selfish that you’d deprive the people of seeing how lovely you look in this dress?”

Caris frowned down at her blush-rose gown.

Caris looked like springtime personified. She’d braided tiny peach flowers into her hair. Half of her golden locks created a crown of elaborate plaits while the other half cascaded down her back. Her mask began in the braided crown of her hair, covering half of her face with a pearly veil of gauzy material. It didn’t hinder her sight but hid her features just enough to keep others from recognizing her. She was golds and pearls and pinks stitched into the loveliness of a blossom that had come to life. While Caris was the picture of virginal elegance, Ophir had opted for drama.

Ophir couldn’t go anywhere without making an entrance, and this party would be no exception. While most of the women filtering into the estate had opted for the colors of spring, she had selected a plunging black gown. The elaborate black lace of her mask matched her black-painted lips and the lace gloves that wound their way up to her elbow. Ophir had admired herself in the mirror for an hour before the party, loving that she looked far more like a dark enchantress than a princess.

She left her toffee hair completely down, though she had swept it dramatically to one side. The sisters did not look like they had dressed to attend the same party. They didn’t even look like the sort of women who would affiliate with one another, let alone be from the same family.

“Are you ready?” Ophir asked.

“Not at all,” Caris grumbled miserably.

With the socialites who entered the manor seemed to be in elaborate assortments of masks, a dark-haired man with a simple, single black band around his eyes was leaning against the door, scanning the crowd. Ophir eyed the marvelous tailoring of the black tunic that clung to his chest and shoulders, the tick of his jaw, the golden tan beneath the mask, contrasted against the sallow pinks peeking through so many others. She wondered if it was too early in the night to start thinking of conquests, because if he was willing, she was game. His attire was refreshingly tasteful compared to the gaudy suits and attires of the others in attendance, and she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. A woman in violet brushed her hand against his chest and attempted to lure him into conversation, but he made a polite, dismissive gesture before shaking her off. The youngest princess had been watching the exchange with amusement when he caught her looking. She blushed and averted her gaze, but when she looked back, the man was gone.

Ophir grabbed Caris’s hand and shuffled them in with an entering bevy of young women, all with elaborate updos, masks, and gorgeous gowns for the occasion.

The occasion, of course, was that the weather was nice and they were wealthy. It was occasion enough if you were bored and had money to burn. Ophir had been blessed that, as the younger sibling, she’d had very little responsibility fall on her shoulders. While Caris had dutifully studied the politics and sat through her lessons and done all of the right and proper things a monarch must do, Ophir had dabbled in a variety of very un-princess-like behaviors. She’d taken more than a few lovers, escaped the castle walls to watch a necromancer summon the dead in the middle of the night, and had once disappeared for three days as she’d joined a troupe under a false identity so that she might run off to experience the life of a circus before her guard had found her and dragged her home.

King Eero and Queen Darya of Farehold were good, gentle, intelligent people, and Ophir knew that, though they tried to understand their youngest child, they weren’t quite sure where they’d gone wrong. It wasn’t unusual for fae to have experimental years. As the years wore on, one might have a few dalliances or dabble in paths, but the sisters were still within their first century of life. Caris was just shy of her seventy-fifth birthday, and Ophir—an infant by fae standards—had just blown out the candles on her fifty-first cake.

She loved the flavor of chaos far too much to step into the calm, duty-filled path expected of a princess. This party would be another in a long line of things that she wanted to do, perhaps solely because she wasn’t supposed to.

August and Harland were going to kill her for this, of course.

August had been Caris’s personal bodyguard for the past sixty years. August was in his seventh century of life, and though fae were supposed to be ageless, the stress Ophir put him under etched the years on his face. It was fitting, as he both looked and acted the part of a father figure. While Caris did have a spectacular talent for patience, empathy, and wisdom, her fae power was the gift of memory. She could recount anything she heard, read, learned, or saw with perfect replication, making her an excellent student and a brilliant scholar. While this impressed her tutors and reaffirmed to everyone that she would be the best suited for the throne—armed with all of the laws, consequences, politics, genealogies, and information a monarch might need—her gifts were not particularly useful when it came to defense. She was agile, sharp of hearing, and long of life as were all fae, but her physical safety had been August’s responsibility for a long time.

This meant in no uncertain terms that August had spent sixty years detesting Ophir.

The tender, compassionate Caris would never willingly go anywhere without his protection. She was courteous and mindful of both the laws of the kingdoms and the well-being of those around her. Caris’s empathy had always extended to August and his duties. As her tawdry younger sister, on the other hand, Ophir had made a reputation for herself by abducting Caris and slipping past the guards whenever she got the chance. She made his life so much harder than it needed to be.

She almost felt bad about it.

Almost.

Harland—a chestnut-haired fae with a face meant for smiling—was one in a long line of guards who had come and gone into Ophir’s life, as most of them had quit, been fired, or vanished under mysterious circumstances. Harland had only lasted as long as he had because he absorbed Ophir’s chaos with good humor. She’d made it her mission to seduce him the moment she laid eyes on him, if only for the challenge.

If he could outlast her resistance of convention and appreciate her subversions of tradition, perhaps he was the best suited to guard her.

When she endangered Caris’s life, however, the guards were not so understanding.

The guards called Ophir a wildfire—every bit as destructive as she was powerful. Her elder sister was as vulnerable as she was important to the future of the continent of Gyrradin. If Ophir was the flame, Caris was the flower.

She thought of the exasperated expression Harland would offer coupled with the furious reprimand that would undoubtedly follow from August and decided if they were going to get in trouble anyway, she might as well make the most of their night.

All Ophir had to do was to say that she was going with or without her, and Caris felt the protective impulse to accompany her little sister.

Ophir fancied herself a strong, capable woman. She feared nothing and answered to no one. She could save herself and her sister through sheer cockiness and confident smiles if she put her mind to it. At least, that was what she’d believed.

But they were not wolves.

They were lambs amidst lions at the lord’s estate.