Glitter (Glitter Duology #1)(9)
Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I blink twice. “Danica Grayson,” I mutter under my breath, and my court profile flashes in my periphery, illuminating the monofilament display of my Lens. From the local feed it pulls my picture, rank—or lack thereof—and residence.
Queen’s Bedchamber, Palace of Versailles.
Damnation! I slap my hand against the wall, but as it happens to be a marble panel, I succeed only in hurting myself. When was the change made? Before the assembly? Could I have been better prepared for this? Of course I had no reason to examine my own profile—no one does. Still, I curse myself for letting the Royal Asshole surprise me.
I almost blink to dim the Lens, then pause. “Angela Grayson. Location.”
Angela Grayson, Salon de Diane, my Lens reports, illustrating the information with a glowing red dot on a tiny isometric projection of the palace.
Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. Fitting. My mother is nothing if not mercenary. She didn’t follow me from the balcony, then. I blink the image away and turn down the long hallway that will lead me to the apartment that is apparently no longer my home.
After my father inherited his place at court and we moved into the palace almost four years ago, my mother started treating me more like a tool for her raging social ambition than a daughter.
But two months ago she truly became my enemy.
There was nothing outwardly special about that night, no sign that my world was about to explode. I was sneaking food after a soirée, for myself and Molli, who was sleeping over. It’s a bit difficult to truly indulge when laced into a tight corset, so Molli and I made a frequent habit of filching leftovers from the larder.
Breaking into the kitchens is a rudimentary hack. In addition, I’d discovered a ten-meter stretch of hallway near the kitchens that M.A.R.I.E.’s camera-eyes simply don’t see. It was a juicy tidbit that made me wish I had something truly naughty to get up to in that blackout spot.
As I approached the unmonitored stretch following my kitchen raid—my hands holding a delicate china plate heavy with decadent leftovers—I heard an odd shuffling. I double-blinked, checking the map on my Lens.
It told me there was no one there.
Odd. Even though the cameras have missed this little spot, the building’s security grid should have picked up active identifiers. Suppressing your identifiers is a complex bit of hacking I hadn’t yet managed. Lord Aaron claimed he could do it, sometimes, and had promised to teach me.
I padded closer to the corner in my satin slippers, and stifled a sigh of exasperation when I heard a low, telling moan accompanied by a rather…rhythmic scuffling. Lovely. I’d stumbled upon some sort of secret hookup between not one but two coders better than myself.
Awkward.
I looked down at my plate, trying to decide which would be more efficient: hacking back into the kitchen and returning the way I had come—and chancing that I’d be spotted by security—or waiting for these two to finish and then continuing on my way.
I hadn’t yet made my decision when the loud sounds I’d already been trying to ignore changed in a way that made the back of my neck prickle. I felt abruptly cold and slid to the edge of the wall for a peek around the corner.
The King!
In my shock, I almost let loose a curse. No wonder the security field was blank; for his own safety, the King can’t be tracked by anyone except perhaps his bodyguards. I found myself frozen in place by an avalanche of half-formed questions and competing impulses—the unwilling voyeur of an amorous tryst in a darkened hallway. And the sound…
More than anything else, it was that sound that glued my feet to the floor, forbidding me to flee. It was a gagging sound, I think, but the most desperate and distorted gagging I’d ever heard. And then I realized that, amid the flurry of limbs, the stereotypical shoving aside of clothing in the usual places, the King’s hands—both of them—were around the woman’s neck. Squeezing. Tight. Even as he…as they…oh lord. I’d heard of this sort of thing, but seeing it was entirely—
A crash assaulted my ears, and only when the King’s arms jerked and his head turned toward me did I realize that the noise was my plate shattering on the marble tile, food spattering my hem.
We stood there, eyes locked, for what felt like a very long time.
Then the King came rather suddenly to himself and released the woman, hustling to yank his breeches back into place as her slight frame slumped to the ground.
She wasn’t making that horrible sound anymore.
My brain screamed at me to run—this was the King—but that girl. I had to help. I couldn’t leave her after that sound. My feet moved forward of their own accord, crunching on the broken china. One piece jabbed through my slipper, stinging my instep, but I hardly registered the sensation.
I approached the fallen figure, staring, detached, as though she were…not a woman at all. Something else: an elaborate tableau one of the artists at court might stage for our amusement, perhaps. She was lying on her back in a shimmering satin nightgown with a wide décolletage that had slid to the side, leaving one shoulder tantalizingly bare. She wasn’t staff, as I’d expected from such a lurid encounter, but a lady of the court, though I didn’t recognize her. Her curly red hair must have been coiffed to perfection for the ball, but now it tangled like tentacles around her face. Her arms were splayed—one rested by her side, the other arched up near her head.