The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(74)

“Do you want to drink?” Sid glanced at me over the rim of her glass, which was raised to her lips.

“People are flying,” I said in wonder.

“Are they really? Or have we taken a drug that alters our perception? Maybe we have already sipped from the elixir, and it has changed us, and we believe the glasses to be completely full.”

I eyed my pink-filled glass with mistrust. I tipped a little of it out. It flowed upward, where dancers had begun to find partners.

Sid said, “I suppose you don’t want to risk a repeat of the pleasure dust incident.”

“Definitely not.”

A man with icy-blue hair in braids floated past us. His hair had changed, but I instantly recognized him.

“That man,” I said to Sid. “He tasted my blood in the night market. He acted so strangely afterward.”

“He did what to you?”

I drank the glass to its bottom.

“Nirrim, wait.”

But I was already floating up toward the ceiling and its swirling dancers.





43


I FELT SICK WITH VERTIGO when I glanced below my dangling feet, Sid growing smaller below. I saw her hurriedly drink from her glass and knew she wouldn’t be far behind, and then I had to stop looking, because as I neared the ceiling my body turned, my dance slippers pulled toward the ceiling, my head toward the ground where I had been standing with Sid.

The world reversed itself. I was upside down, but everything looked right side up, so I no longer felt upside down.

“This is boring,” said the blue-haired man who had tasted my blood. “I must tell my brother so.”

“I need to ask you something,” I said.

“The flying was fun. But this ballroom is blah. I didn’t come here to feel normal.”

“Do you remember me?”

He squinted at me. “Did I bed you? Was it on Illim Beach where we flew kites until they tangled together and everyone slept in an enormous magic sand castle with little crabbies that pinched our feet until we squeaked but it also felt good?”

“No. When you met me, I was disguised as a Middling.”

“Slumming it, were you?” He grinned. “I see, I see.” But his eyes were still vacant. He didn’t know me, and probably wouldn’t remember me tomorrow morning.

“I asked whether you knew where I could find Lady Sidarine.”

His gaze went over my shoulder. His eyes widened. “That is some good magic. You made her appear! Is she an illusion, or the real thing? May I try your elixir? I want to make people come to me, too. This party is already so old! It needs more floating.”

Sid was just gaining her feet beside me.

“You do know the right people to have a good time,” he said conspiratorially to me. “The foreign lord-lady from the country no one knows! She can stay awake for days. Eat pleasure dust until dawn. Always sweet-talking her way into the sheets. Her list of conquests! As long as my arm!”

“He’s exaggerating,” Sid said to me.

“Did you see her fight with Lord Tibrin? She pulled a knife on him.”

“Dagger,” Sid corrected.

“She killed him dead.”

“A mere scratch,” said Sid. “He’s fine.”

“They say she’s cousin to the Herrani king.”

“That’s not true,” Sid said to me. “This is all gossip.”

“Including the bits about your conquests?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose there are seeds of truth to any rumor.” She saw my face and said, “I’m joking! Mostly. I like pleasing women. What is so wrong with that?”

I turned back to the man, who was excitedly wrapping a blue braid around one finger. “You met me in the night market in the Middling quarter,” I said. “I was dressed as a Middling. For fun. For a break from being so bored and so High.”

He nodded understandingly.

I said, “You tasted my blood.”

“Oh.” He released the braid. It unspun from his fingers. “That was not fun. Not fun at all. Why did you do that to me?” Tears welled in his eyes.

“You did it to me. You insisted. You said you would help me if I gave you three drops of blood.”

“My brother told me it was my own fault. He is on the Council, you know. He always warns me to never taste strange blood. But he thought it wouldn’t do anything to me.”

“Why not?” I said. “What did it do to you?”

“Because you were Middling. But you are actually High! That shouldn’t work either. Oh, this is so confusing.”

Sid said, “You’re not answering her questions.”

“Don’t glare at me. I can fight, too, you know. I was trained with a sword, on my family estate outside the city, where the sugarcane grows. I would cut the cane down with my little sword like so, and like so, and all the other High-Kith boys trembled at my grace, and the Un-Kith in the field couldn’t even look at me, I was like a tiny god.”

“But what did the blood do?” I said. “You acted so strangely afterward, like you were made of stone.”

“It made me remember,” he said.

“Remember what?” Sid asked.

“I will not tell you, rude boy. It was my memory. But I had forgotten it, until this one’s dirty blood ruined everything. I did not want to remember it. She made me remember it.” He sank to the floor, crying into his hands. “Oh, where is my brother? Why can’t councilmen come to parties? This is a horrible party. I have no more dust and the floating was too short and you mean ones are making me sad and I have no way of getting dow-ow-n.” His last word ended on a sob.