Page 59 of Beyond Those Gilded Walls

My stomach sank and I tore my gaze from Tallon, searching for Zaharya instead, only to find that she was searching for me. Through the veil, her hand waved me over to where she stood behind one of the tables, pressing herself against the wall. The mood in the ballroom shifted as the doors opened and closed again.

I tucked in beside her, but from this vantage point, we could not see the stage or who had joined Prince Eadric. Tallon was still pressed against the wall, but his shoulders had tensed up, making them look even more broad. My fingers twitched, wanting to reach out—for what, I didn’t know—but I felt vulnerable here in this ballroom waiting for whatever news was so grim it was distressing even Tallon.

The feeling throughout the ballroom reminded me a bit of the tension that had filled the room when Prince Eadric had been about to punish me for jostling him, but somehow, tonight the fear was even thicker. Something had happened, and the sinking feeling in my stomach spoke of nothing good.

Zaharya's fingers found mine, twining together and squeezing. She kept her face towards the stage but held on to my hand. Despite our tepid relationship, I was grateful for the support. Though perhaps it was helping her as much as it helped me.

Someone in the crowd gasped closer to the stage. Exchanging looks, Zaharya and I shared a nod, and then she was pulling me through the crowd to stand along the wall in an attempt to see better what was happening.

Prince Eadric was on the stage, his hand wrapped in a head of copper hair belonging to someone kneeling before him. Zaharya subtly strained her neck, rising on her toes, but settled back down, shaking her head minutely. She couldn’t see who it was either. My stomach churned, bile sour on my tongue, but I was grateful it was not ash and smoke that coated the inside of my mouth. This person was alive, at least.

“Someone,” his voice boomed, echoing over the polished walls and floors, despite the bodies and fabric. “Someone has stolen from me. Someone has decided they would rather be outthere, at the mercy of fate, rather than in here, safe and cared for.”

Our hands tightened around each other’s in the same heartbeat. I didn’t know why Zaharya’s clenched, but my own was fear and anger. Outrage.

“See who has betrayed us!” The crowd shuffled forward and parted just so, and I saw the face of the woman Prince Eadric was holding.

It was Talyssa.

Zaharya’s hand grasped mine so tightly I felt the bones shifting. The prince said something else, but ringing filled my ears, the room hollowed out, and all I could see was Talyssa’s face, with an expression there I was intimately familiar with. Failure. Shame.

“Well, do enlighten us. Why did you want to leave us, my dear?” Prince Eadric asked. “What gave you the right to try to steal silver and gold from my palace? From the home I welcomed you into?”

She kept her gaze straight ahead, but I saw her jaw clench. In that moment, something in me wished I had pushed past both our walls and reached out to her more. Perhaps if it had been both of us working together, we could have made a difference. If the prince had caught me that night instead of Tallon, I had no doubt that I would have been in her place now.

Eadric scoffed loud enough to carry over the throng of bodies, and he pushed her to the floor. Zaharya stepped in front of me just as my body lurched forward. “No,” she hissed. “You’ll just get yourself killed with her.”

“Tallon, if you will.” Prince Eadric motioned for Tallon to join them on the stage.

I watched as slowly, his eyes flicked directly to me and then shuttered, flat gray even from across the room, and he sauntered to the prince’s side. There was nothing ofthe Tallon I knew in there; every bit of him was Prince Eadric’s puppet.

“Let this be a reminder to all of you of who is in control here.” He nodded at Tallon. “Kill her.”

My stomach dropped to my feet, and now it was my turn to squeeze Zaharya’s hand. The crowd exploded into murmurs, but no one seemed particularly surprised, not even Zaharya.

“What is he doing?” I asked under my breath, leaning in as close as I dared. Tallon would kill Talyssa, I had no doubt of that. He would do anything the prince asked of him, and despite the roiling in my soul, perhaps I needed to see this more than anyone.

Cold brushed up against my leg, and for half a moment, I would have sworn I felt weight pressing against me in the same shape.

Tallon replied to the prince, bowing deeply. I was frozen in place as he raised his hand and waved it towards Talyssa. The movement was sharp, and my eyes could only track the marks that lined from his forearms as they lifted from his skin and undulated, growing into a writhing mass of black.

Exactly as mine had done.

The mass enshrouded Talyssa, concealing her from view only for a moment before retreating into Tallon’s skin. Our eyes met across the room, and there was a brief glimmer of life in his eyes, a flash ofsomethingthat broke through the mask.

The room was still for a heartbeat, and then as if it had fallen over like the shroud we wore each night, Talyssa began to bleed.

Blood poured from her nose, then her ears, mouth, eyes.

My face felt hot and I knew my breathing was more like panting now, but I couldn’t stop it. My eyes were fixed on Talyssa, and the phantom taste of blood filled my mouth, the cloying thickness of it in the back of my throat choking off what breath I could manage. I was no longer only in the ballroom, but back on my own deathbed. Each choked gasp Talyssa let out mirrored my own, and my hand clawed at my throat, trying to clear the blood that was not there.

Zaharya let go of my hand to wrap her arms around my waist, pulling me tightly to her and turning me away from the stage. I felt Tallon’s eyes on my back but buried my face into Zaharya’s veil as I tried desperately tobreathe.

“It will be over soon,” she murmured, fighting her hold. “Hold yourself together just a while longer.”

Zaharya’s warm body against my own and Sylviana’s cold form against my leg were the only things that kept me tethered to the reality in front of me. My heart was pounding loudly, drowning out any more words uttered by Prince Eadric. My mind darted between the image of Talyssa’s body on the stage and Tallon standing above her, his hands in his pockets and his face a picture of boredom.

Prince Eadric clapped and the flinch that followed tore through my entire body, jerking me away from Zaharya. He said something, his voice booming through the ballroom, but the words did not register in my mind. The image of Talyssa’s blood pouring from her body held dominion there, giving room for nothing else.

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