Page 21 of Only in Moonlight
I’d been stuck in Valen’s chateau for three days. Three days of practicing how low to curtsy to different noble ranks. Three days of rehearsing stories about our fake love affair. Three days of Valen refusing to tell me a damned thing.
Who was the person he’d chased through the trees outside? Did they know about our scheme to steal the Selenian Jewel? What was our plan for the theft? The layout of the ballroom? The timeline for our getaway? Don’t ask me, because I didn’t have a clue.
I wanted to strangle him in his sleep. Too bad he still shackled me to the bed every night—the luxurious, sublime, impossibly soft bed. And the dresses I wore? So smooth and light that it felt like clothing myself in air. Every chair in the chateau was as soft as a cloud. Every room smelled fresh, the air somehow justthe right temperature. I’d never thought anything could be this perfectly comfortable.
And I couldn’t even properly enjoy it. How could I relax when my mother was agonizing over whether I was still alive? And no luxury could make me forget Valen would betray me the moment he got the jewel. (Except maybe that amazing Camembert cheese from dinner last night. That could almost make me forget my own name.)
I’d spent days preparing for a heist before. Hell, I’d prowled around the Moonlit Court for a week gathering information before I made my move on Tullus. But three days of etiquette practice with Valen felt like three days of banging my head against a boulder. And the dance lessons…
“I need to see someone doing it properly,” I said after the second hour.
I’d tripped over him, bumped into him, and stepped on his feet at least twenty times. (And ten of them were actually accidents.) I’d felt like a lumbering cow trying to keep pace with a stallion.
Valen pinched the bridge of his nose but didn’t argue, which showed how completely hopeless I’d been. Then he strode from the room without a word. Had he given up?
But he returned a moment later, Nin trailing behind him.
“—show her a dance,” he was saying. “Do you know the Blue Rose?”
Nin giggled like a young girl. “Sir Valen, I haven’t danced since Ermo passed away.”
Valen held out a hand. “Please try.”
Nin glanced at me uncertainly, like I was going to claw out her eyes for laying a finger on my man.
You can have him,I thought.Really. Take him away.
“Please,” I said aloud. “I learn best by watching.”
She took his hand, and he waited for another fit of giggles to pass. He stepped forward, and she took a step a split-second later. Three more steps, and they turned, him spinning her…
And her next step landed on his foot.
She leaped back, hands rushing to her mouth. “Sir Valen, I’m so sorry.”
“I can do that,” I said brightly.
Valen ignored me, assuring Nin that she hadn’t hurt him. (I’d stomped on his foot much harder, and he’d barely twitched.) After he ushered her from the room, he let out a defeated sigh.
“We’ll go out tonight,” he said. “There’s bound to be a dance we can watch.”
“Or we can skip the dance lessons,” I replied. “We just won’t dance at the ball.”
“Everyone dances at the ball. If we didn’t, it would—”
“—draw attention. Yeah, yeah.”
I understood that he wanted to blend into the background. He was attending the ball under his own name and wanted to keep his cushy position in the Court after swiping the jewel. He couldn’t afford to draw suspicion, or he’d end up in the same dungeons he was threatening me with. But something just didn’t seem right…
“What about after the ball?” I asked suddenly.
We were eating lunch, fish in a sauce of fresh herbs that Nin said was Valen’s favorite. I figured she was trying to make up for stepping on his foot.
He put down his glass of water and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Won’t everyone think it’s suspicious when I go back to Earth right after the ball?”
“Of course. That’s why we need to maintain the charade for at least a month afterwards before faking an argument and going our separate ways.”
