Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [115]
He went on speaking, but Madrigal stopped hearing. At his mention of her apartness, the reason for it came thundering back to her, having been momentarily forgotten in her shock. Thiago. She looked to the palace, up at the Warlord’s balcony. At this distance, the figures on it were only silhouettes, but they were silhouettes she knew: the Warlord, the hulking shape of Brimstone, and a gaggle of the ruler’s antlered wives. Thiago was not there.
Which could only mean he was down here. A thrill of fear shot through her from hooves to horns. “You don’t understand,” she said, pirouetting to scan the crowd. “There was a reason no one was dancing with me. I thought you were brave. I didn’t know you were mad—”
“What reason?” the angel asked, still near. Still too near.
“Trust me,” she said, urgent. “It isn’t safe for you. If you want to live, leave me.”
“I’ve come a long way to find you—”
“I’m spoken for,” she blurted, hating the words even before they were out.
This brought him up short. “Spoken for? Betrothed?”
Claimed, she thought, but she said, “As good as. Now go. If Thiago sees you—”
“Thiago?” The angel recoiled at the name. “You’re betrothed to the Wolf?”
And at the moment he pronounced those words—the Wolf—arms came around Madrigal’s waist from behind and she gasped.
In an instant, she saw what would happen. Thiago would discover the angel, and he wouldn’t just kill him, he would make a spectacle of it. A seraph spy at the Warlord’s ball—such a thing had never happened! He would be tortured. He would be made to wish that he had never lived. It all flashed through her, and horror rose like bile in her throat. When she heard, close to her ear, a giggle, the relief almost left her limp.
It wasn’t Thiago, but Chiro. “There you are,” said her sister. “We lost you in the crush!”
Madrigal’s blood made a roaring in her ears, and Chiro glanced from her to the stranger, whose heat suddenly felt to Madrigal like a beacon. “Hello,” Chiro said, peering with curiosity at the horse mask, through which Madrigal could still make out the orange burn of his tiger’s eyes.
It hit her anew that he had come in such thin disguise into the den of the enemy for her, and she felt a queer constriction in her chest. For two years she had reflected on Bullfinch as a momentary madness, though it hadn’t felt like madness then, and it didn’t now, to wish this seraph to live—and she did wish it. She pulled herself together and turned to Chiro. Nwella was right behind her.
“Some friends you are,” she chided them. “To dress me like this and then abandon me to the Serpentine. I might have been mauled.”
“We thought you were behind us,” said Nwella, breathless from dancing.
“I was,” said Madrigal. “Far behind you.” She had turned her back on the angel without a second glance. She began to casually herd her friends away from him, using the motion of the crowd to put space between them.
“Who was that?” Chiro asked.
“Who?” asked Madrigal.
“In the horse mask, dancing with you.”
“I wasn’t dancing with anyone. Or perhaps you didn’t notice: No one would dance with me. I am a pariah.”
Scoffing, “A pariah! Hardly. More like a princess.” Chiro threw a skeptical look back, and Madrigal was wild to know what she saw. Was the angel looking after them, or had some sense of self-preservation kicked in and made him disappear?
“Have you seen Thiago yet?” Nwella asked. “Or rather, has he seen you?”
“No—” Madrigal started to say, but then Chiro burst out with, “There he is!” and she went cold.
There he was.
He was unmistakable, with the hewn-off wolf head atop his own, his grotesque version of a mask. Its fangs curved over his brow, its muzzle drawn back in a snarl. His snow-white hair was brushed and arranged over his shoulders, his vest ivory satin—so much white, white upon white, framing his strong, handsome face, which was bronzed by the sun, making his pale eyes seem ghostly.
He hadn’t seen her yet. The crowd parted around him, not even the drunkest of the revelers failing to recognize him and make way. The