“It’d be better to show him—”
We both froze when a knock came on the door.
“Just a second,” I called as Jack bolted for the window.
“I’ll get to the service door outside,” he whispered. “Hide the books. I’ll see you at the ball. Please.”
“Just go!” He was out the window before I could finish the words.
I glanced frantically around and finally shoved the stack of books under the bed. I opened the door, heart knocking against my ribs.
Luc stood on the other side, garment bag in hand. “Hello, cherie.” He bent to kiss both my cheeks. “I got your message and brought your dress for the ball.”
He handed it to me, and I unzipped the top of the bag to find the Prada dress, with a winged, glittering silver mask resting over its hanger. I’d forgotten they’d said the ball was a masquerade. “They saved the dress for me, after all that?”
Luc smiled vaguely, and only then did I notice he was still in the same clothes as last night, hair flattened, eyes dark. I set the garment bag on the bed. “Everything okay?”
He shook his head. “There was another attack last night. Colette LeGrand and Liam Blackstone’s limousine was caught in a collision on the way here from the airport.”
I gasped out loud.
“Colette made it.” Luc’s voice hitched. “Liam didn’t.”
“What?” I sat down hard on the bed. The Order had killed Liam Blackstone? I pictured his easy laugh, him patting Luc on the back as they talked about soccer, and Luc’s shy smile. The last movie I’d seen him in, where he’d played a vampire, with comically bad white makeup.
“Luc,” I choked. “I am so sorry.”
Luc nodded curtly, but his chin wobbled. I got up and wrapped my arms around him. He hesitated, then hugged me back hard, burying his face in my neck.
After a minute, I felt him take a deep breath, and he pulled away. “I’m headed to the hospital to see Colette. I’ll be back to escort you to the ball.”
I looked up sharply. “The ball’s still happening, when there was an attack last night?”
Luc pursed his lips. “We can’t give in to their scare tactics. That’s what terrorists want. The show must go on, cherie, just with extra security. And though Colette is part of our family, we’re hosting the ball, so I will have to be there, too.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll see you this evening.”
I nodded and shut the door behind him, then sat back on the bed. I unzipped the garment bag and touched the dress with one finger, transported back to when I thought the glamour of this world was the most extraordinary part about it.
I couldn’t believe Liam Blackstone was dead.
I couldn’t believe Jack and I were considering giving the people who killed him license to kill someone else.
I couldn’t believe that we were at the end of Mr. Emerson’s clues and still had no idea what they meant, and that we were running out of time to save his life. Would my going to the ball really do anything?
I rubbed my eyes. On top of everything, my contacts were killing me after wearing them for this long; I just wanted to take them out and sleep. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t worth the risk of someone seeing my eye color. This one tiny thing sent me over the edge, and frustrated tears built up in the back of my throat.
I swallowed them down. Crying wouldn’t help my itching eyes, and it definitely wouldn’t help Mr. Emerson. I took a deep breath, put contact drops in each eye, and curled up on the bed next to the Prada dress, where I fell into a restless sleep.
CHAPTER 30
Even though Luc was a Dauphin, we’d waited in a security line and gone through a metal detector to get inside. Now our packed elevator shuddered to a stop, and the doors slid open.
“Alors, time for a ball,” Luc said, but he sounded even less excited about it than I was. His eyes were still haunted, dark smudges standing out against his pale skin.
When I’d woken up, my head a little clearer after a couple hours of sleep, I’d realized Jack was right. The two of us had done all we could, and it wasn’t enough. We had to tell Stellan everything, just in case. Mr. Emerson’s life depended on it.
Plus, it would distract me from the fact that there was still no sign of my mom.
I adjusted the silver mask over my face, happy for the anonymity.
“Have I told you how breathtaking you look, cherie?” Luc spun me out to arm’s length, and my dress swished around my feet. “This silk drapes fabulously on you.”
Despite everything, the dress had taken my breath away when I changed into it, just like it had at Prada. I remembered what I’d been thinking then, too. How different I looked. Like maybe the person wearing this dress could find what she was missing.
I reached for my locket and found the pretty silver teardrop necklace the store had sent instead. My locket was broken, tucked into my bag, in my room. I wished I’d put it back on. I didn’t feel free anymore without it. I felt naked.
“Thanks,” I said tightly. “It’s—”
We stepped out of the elevator and into the ballroom, and the view stole the words from my mouth. Chandeliers and dancing candlelight gave the space a darkly romantic glow, and streamers hung from the ceiling like it was raining gold. Adding to the illusion, the crisscrossing metal beams outside were lit as well, like we were floating hundreds of feet in the air in a luminescent web. I supposed that was almost true. The ball was on the third level of the Eiffel Tower.
“It’s a gorgeous dress,” I finished. That much was true. The dress was beautiful. The ball was beautiful. I was in Paris, inside the Eiffel Tower, wearing Prada. I still couldn’t believe that.
A group of people stopped Luc, and for the next ten minutes, he chatted and introduced me as the distant cousin I was supposed to be, and it all felt incredibly inappropriate when someone had died last night. There was a damper over the festivities—laughs weren’t as loud as they could be, and everyone offered Luc their condolences—but they certainly weren’t acting like their family and friends were recent casualties of an ongoing war. Maybe the Circle has been through so much that a little spilled blood no longer meant much to them. Or maybe, like Luc said, they just had to keep up appearances.
If I thought about that too much, I’d go crazy. So instead, I searched faces. I quickly found a downside to the anonymity of the masks. Even if I knew exactly what he looked like, there was no way I could find my father. And dark hair and purple eyes by themselves weren’t enough to tell anything at all.