All of them, assembled beneath the grand chandeliers, while I remain an afterthought. The Rosenmahl family, whole and shining in its supposed dignity—except for Lieben, except for me.
The injustice gnaws at me, and my teeth grind against the meat, against my own bitterness.
But then—a jolt. Someone bumps against me from behind, sharp enough to snap me from my spiraling thoughts. My hand falters, and a glass of wine topples, purple liquid spilling across the white cloth. I curse under my breath as the purple stain spreads, seeping toward Melissa. She pushes her chair back too quickly, the legs screeching against the polished floor, though the sound drowns beneath the orchestra’s rise.
In her retreat, she collides with another. A man, his head balding, his posture stiff. His voice—low, apologetic—murmurs near my ear before I can even turn. I nod, though my brows knot. Melissa stumbles further, creating ripples as those behind her rise in turn. Confusion spreads.
The sight of one standing prompts another, and another. Like dominoes, half the hall begins to shift to its feet.
Misunderstandings spiral quickly in such places. Some believe it is the call to dance, others see their neighbors rise and follow instinctively, desperate not to appear out of place. Soon enough, couples drift toward the ball floor, hands finding hands, movements aligning to the rhythm of the singer’s divine cadence.
The transformation is swift. In the space of sixty heartbeats, the hall has changed shape entirely. Half of the guests now stand, men’s hands circling the waists of their wives, women’s hands sliding across the shoulders of their husbands.
I frown, staring into the reflection of the spilled wine. The liquid pools across the tablecloth, spreading in uneven veins, and in its shimmer, I catch the fractured image of the chandelier, glowing in a bluish hex.
My gaze follows upward until it lands upon her—the daughter of the man I am about to kill. My throat tightens, and I gulp, forcing down the memory that claws at me. The day I was infected by the spores of the Mushroom of Truth. The day I, in my naive weakness, confessed everything to her.
The words had spilled from my lips, unfiltered, unbidden, as if truth itself had demanded my tongue as its vessel. I had told her all. Strangely, that day had left me lighter, as though a burden had been peeled away, even if it should have destroyed me.
Now, as my thoughts shift from my family’s indifference to her, I feel something rare—relief. She is like me, the youngest child trapped in a web of expectations, smothered beneath the weight of her lineage. She must be like me. She has to be, enduring the same difficulties, bound to the same chains, plagued by the same thoughts.
No. She is not like me. She is orange-blooded—royale. She is born into privilege that insulates her from the cold my kind suffer. I only hope she shares my burdens, and that my earlier thoughts ring true. Because it makes what I am about to do bearable.
I will kill her father. I will kill the king of Zentria—the man who dared to take for himself the name of Queen Elisia, descendant of Elisia the First. At that thought, I nearly drown.
The weight presses against my lungs, crushing, but I catch my breath a heartbeat later. My arms fold to support my head as I sink into the chair, a frown etched deep into my face.
“Are you good?” Simon leans toward Melissa, his voice mockingly sympathetic, as though her small accident—spilling wine—were a jest that set the gala into motion. Nearly half the hall has risen to dance because of her.
With his broad frame and calloused, work-tainted hands, he bows theatrically, lowering one knee as if to ask for her hand in marriage rather than a dance. His hands stretch out—not just one, but both—toward her. She smiles, her face bright, completely forgetting the near disaster of her dress being drenched. She laughs.
“Let’s dance,” she says, and they disappear into the growing crowd, forgetting about me.