Glitter (Glitter Duology #1)(89)
“Is there a need for those?” I say, stepping forward, then halting when a thick arm snakes out in front of me.
“Just searching him, too, Your Grace. More likely to be him than you, if you get my meaning.”
He laughs, but the sound dies away under my withering glare at his insulting assumption.
“If you both hold still, this’ll be over before you know it.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” I say wryly. I glare at the man but hold stock-still as his hands range very tremulously over my form. I keep a careful eye on Saber, who’s patted down roughly, his breeches nearly torn when they turn his pockets out. Even without a warning from me, however, he’s not fighting. I hate that he knows better.
They dump his messenger bag on the floor but hardly look at the contents once they prove to be run-of-the-mill. Thank goodness I had the foresight to carry all of the illegal vials myself.
My valise is similarly emptied, though it’s poured out gently onto a nearby table. I have to stifle a hysterical giggle when the three pots of Glitter are examined and set aside. The guard searching me apologizes before zipping open my pannier pockets and reaching carefully into them. I’m not worried. It was Saber’s idea to line the seam of the pockets with Velcro, and unless this guard feels some odd need to press quite hard on the bottom of my shallow pockets, he’ll never discover they lead to a much vaster space.
He doesn’t push, and I let my breath out slowly, silently, tasting victory.
Until a voice sounds from my right. “Sir, I’ve got something.”
I turn, my eyes wide with horror as I realize, immediately, what they’ve found. The torn-open envelope of patches is held aloft in the guard’s hand, and I can see a hint of frustration etched across Saber’s face. The guard holding the tablet takes the envelope, removes a patch, and lays it on his tablet, where a red line scans it. I hold my breath. After a few seconds it beeps, and the guard looks confused and does it again. When the tablet beeps a second time, the guard purses his lips, then looks up and says, “Arrest him. Take him downstairs.”
Saber turns to look at me, and for just a moment, before he hides it, I see fear in his eyes. Damn that envelope! Damn my father for needing it! But there’s nothing I can do as the guards pull him to the still-open lift, and, frozen in terror, I watch as the doors close between us.
A soft chuckle pulls me from my terrible thoughts, and I turn just in time to see Lady Cyn cover her Glittery lips with one gloved hand—as though to belatedly stifle the sound—then disappear around the corner.
I FIGHT THE urge to run after her and slap her across her too-pretty face. Perhaps with the back of my hand, which bears two sharp rings. But Lady Cyn isn’t the actual problem. She’s simply desperate. She’s about to lose the only dream she’s ever truly held in her entire life; after that awful moment in the Hall of Mirrors, I should have expected one last, desperate act of malice from her.
Still…
A tip, the guard said. No one would search the future Queen on a simple suggestion from an adolescent lady of the court. No, even if Lady Cyn was the betrayer, the order would have to come from the King himself. I tipped my hand when I allowed him to see how much I needed Saber. When Lady Cyn ratted out her own supplier to her lover, she must have hoped the King would see me for what I really am—and throw me over, just days before the wedding.
Foolish whore. All she did was hand His Majesty a reason to separate me from the one person he thought I might sneak away with, leaving her path clear.
I spin from wherever Lady Cyn is headed and aim for the King’s public rooms instead. He’ll be there, likely surrounded by a dozen cronies, forcing me to face him very much in the court’s eye if I want to confront him at all. Sure enough, I find him in the Salon d’Apollon enjoying apéritifs with what looks like half the governing board. It’s strange to see him there with a group of powerful men, each no less than fifteen years his senior. I see for the first time just how hard he must work to hide his youth from them. But there’s no room in my heart for sympathy today.
“My liege,” I say with a calm smile.
“My love,” he replies, raising his glass jovially.
My insides explode, like the crystal diffuser I threw against Marie-Antoinette’s wall, but I don’t let myself betray so much as a flicker of my eyelashes. I simply stand, arms in careful ballerina arcs, fingertips touching in front of my skirts, with my head tilted slightly to the side in a pose of anticipation.
The men’s eyes keep darting to me, and I can feel the tension around us rise as I stand, so obviously wanting His Highness’ attention; His Highness so clearly ignoring me.
Finally he can avoid it no longer. “Do you require something, darling?”
That I don’t lash out at his false show of affection in this crucial moment is possibly the greatest victory a dance instructor has ever won.
“A brief word, Justin?” I ask, lowering my eyelids and bobbing the shallowest of curtsies as I commit the grievous sin of addressing him by his first name in front of his much-older toadies.
“A word and a kiss, perhaps?” he says, challenge glimmering in his eyes alongside anger.
Silently, I offer him not my mouth, nor my cheek, but raise my gloved hand.
The men around him burst into laughter, and though he shoots me a swift glare, His Majesty joins them.