Grace and Fury (Grace and Fury #1)(5)

This book was home to her, more than the palazzo and its fine furnishings could ever be.

She couldn’t bear to leave it behind. Surely no one would miss a small book of stories. It slipped down the front of her dress so quickly, so easily, she could almost convince herself it had been the book’s desire, not her own. She hurried into the corridor, arms crossed protectively over her chest.

She was nearly back to the gallery when two men rounded the corner right in front of her.

The Heir and his brother.

Nomi bowed her head and waited for them to pass, arms tightening over the hidden book.

“—should be up to me, not the magistrates,” the Heir was saying, anger edging his words. He stopped speaking when he saw her.

Nomi should have curtsied. She should have kept her head down, like any other handmaiden. But she was caught off guard, unprepared, and without meaning to, she met his gaze.

The Heir’s eyes were deep brown and held a silent intensity. He stared at her as if he could puzzle out her history, her secret hopes, everything. With one look, he laid her bare.

Cheeks burning, she finally tore her gaze away.

“Who are you?” Malachi demanded.

“Nomi Tessaro,” she murmured.

“And what exactly are you doing here, Nomi Tessaro?” The Heir’s voice filled with suspicion.

Nomi bowed her head. “I’m—I’m a handmaiden. I was just…” Her voice petered out. She couldn’t remember what she was supposed to have been doing. The book burned through her skin.

“Come on, Malachi, we’re late,” Asa said, running an impatient hand through his hair. His black suit shadowed Malachi’s white one, down to the gold embroidery, but there was something more relaxed, almost untidy about him.

Malachi ignored his brother and stepped closer to Nomi, his muscled frame trapping her against the wall. “You were just what?”

The attempt at intimidation had the opposite effect. Nomi bristled, a familiar, instinctive fury momentarily squashing her panic.

Her spine straightened. She lifted her chin and faced the Heir’s steely gaze with one of her own. Defiance radiated from her in waves. “I was using the lavatory,” she said clearly. “It’s just there,” she added, nodding toward the other end of the hall, “if you need to go.”

Asa snorted, but the Heir did not look amused. His cheeks flushed an angry red.

Horror rose, bitter at the back of Nomi’s throat. She dropped her gaze. Serina had asked her to behave. And she couldn’t, not even for ten minutes. The audacity of what she’d just said… the expression the Heir had no doubt seen in her eyes.…

“You may go,” Malachi said at last, but it sounded more like a sentence than a reprieve.

Nomi scurried into the gallery as the men continued on their way, her heart beating a panicked rhythm. The sharp edges of the book she’d stolen dug into her skin.

She hurried to the corner where she’d left her bag, and slipped the book in among her things. She was almost certain the Heir hadn’t seen it. But her impertinence had been damning enough.

The rest of the evening she waited, eyes pinned to the open doorway, wondering when her world would end.





THREE



SERINA


SERINA’S FIRST BALL was almost exactly as she’d imagined. The long, gleaming ballroom teemed with movement, the prospective Graces as glittering and colorful as a school of fish. The mirrored walls and endless gold filigree caught the light of a dozen crystal chandeliers. Musicians sat in a corner by a wall of arches leading to the terrace, their fingers flitting so fast across their instruments Serina couldn’t follow them.

It was a far cry from her cramped living room, where an instructor had taught her to dance with Renzo as her partner. They’d had no music—only the dogged beat of the instructor clapping his hands.

Here, the sparkling music curled and spun, and Serina twirled and smiled in the arms of the Superior’s finely dressed dignitaries, thrilled to be at the center of the glamour, one of the glittering, colorful fish.

But there was a flaw in the fairy tale. The Heir didn’t appear.

When the musicians took a short break, Serina slipped into a corner to catch her breath. The strain of her corset against her lungs had become suffocating. As she rested, she scanned the ballroom. It wasn’t hard to pick out the Superior’s Graces. Unlike the prospects, they moved as if they wholly belonged, taking the attention in stride. Several posed on tall, circular platforms, draped in shining purple satin, raised up—literally—as the epitome of female perfection. Serina stared at them, awed by the control it took to stand so perfectly still.

She had been groomed for this, her training beginning before she was old enough to truly understand a Grace’s role. From the moment she first danced across the dusty floor with Renzo, the weight of expectation was upon her shoulders. Even then she knew that being chosen would change her family’s fortune, that it was the highest honor for any girl in Viridia, that it would allow her mother—nearly blind from years of squinting over her sewing in the factory—to finally stop working. That it would allow her brother to someday afford a bride.

Most important, she could keep headstrong Nomi by her side. Nomi was smart, too smart: too challenging of authority and the rules. Where Nomi was a dreamer, Serina was a realist, and she would do everything in her power to keep it that way—protecting Nomi’s fiery spirit and her safety at the same time. Nothing scared Serina more than the thought that her sister might someday take too great a risk, and be caught.