CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Luna rubbed her palms on her trousers. She had only managed to slip in a few hours of restless slumber in her room at the Singing Sword, a stately lodge in Axaris’s trade district, before the first rays of morning light had awoken her.

To say that she was nervous would be a severe understatement. The milky-green jade illusionstone Eadric had bought her was already spotted with her fingerprints, smudged and slippery with sweat no matter how many times she wiped it off.

Fairfest Eve was tonight.

When they had arrived in Aldville on their way back to the capital, Eadric had sent a message ahead for the Elites at the palace. Thankfully, no wyverns attacked them this time. Once they reached the outskirts of Axaris, they found a pair of Elites waiting for them—Alicia and Silas. They left their horses—along with their belongings and most of their weapons—in the care of Alicia’s uncle, who owned a small equine veterinary practice nearby. The practice was busy enough that no one would question the sudden appearance of five horses, but small enough that hardly anyone would notice anyway. Afterward, the Elite pair departed with careful instructions from their captain and the promise that the rest of the Elites would be ready at hand in case the plan went awry.

Asterin had flagged hansom cabs to take the rest of them into the city, but they ended up walking the last few blocks because the trade district streets grew too crowded for the cabs to pass. Jostling through throngs of Fairfest celebrators, they finally made it to the Singing Sword. Since there was no chance that anyone would recognize him, Harry had taken Asterin’s money and paid for a one-night stay. The rest of them kept their hoods up until they made it safely to the Diamond Suite on the top floor, which consisted of a large common room and several bedrooms and bathrooms. Despite the title it boasted, there wasn’t anything particularly luxurious about it, but they at least had the entire floor to themselves.

They had gone to bed early. Luna wondered if anyone else had slept as poorly as she. By late afternoon, they would leave for the palace. But first, she needed to completely disguise and transform the faces of four of her friends. Although both Asterin and Quinlan wielded a little bit of illusionary magic, being omnifinitied, neither were powerful enough in that affinity for their illusions to hold for longer than a few minutes, so the responsibility weighed solely on Luna’s shoulders.

Luna had tested her abilities nonstop since they had left the Aswiyre Forest. She’d changed the wallpaper in her room seven times already, and it never faded until she commanded it to.

Now, her friends crowded around her in the common room, cornflowers blooming across the walls at their backs and melting into robins pecking at berries. Everyone except Eadric, who stood guard by the fire-exit door, had draped themselves over various pieces of mismatched furniture or on the floor, just like they used to back at Harry’s cottage. The only thing missing was the crackle of the hearth.

“We’re ready when you are,” said Asterin.

Luna rolled the illusionstone in her fingers, calmed by its smoothness, and gave the princess the firmest nod she could muster. “Who’s first?”

Quinlan stood. “I’ll go,” he volunteered. “I’m not as recognizable as Asterin or Orion. Experiment, make mistakes.”

Luna nodded gratefully and beckoned him closer. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and brought the illusionstone to Quinlan’s face, one hand grasping his jaw, leaning in so close that she could count each of his eyelashes.

Focus.

That was what Quinlan always said to Asterin. Not in a thousand years had Luna thought that all those weeks of lurking on the fringes of their training sessions, hanging just out of sight from the garden or by the barn, would ever be of use to her. And even though Luna had believed her magic would always be painfully weak, she had still observed.

She would be eternally thankful for the knowledge she now possessed.

Luna drew a drop of magic from the deep gorge that had cracked open inside of her, letting it slowly well out of her fingertips and onto Quinlan’s skin.

The prince exhaled, breath featherlight on her face. “Keep me pretty,” he joked.

“No promises,” said Luna, and then began to mold.

It reminded her of carving a sculpture. Years of working on busts made this almost easy—and she suddenly wondered if her love of sculpting had, in fact, been a manifestation caused by the suppression of her powers.

First, Luna softened Quinlan’s bone structure—lowering the arch of his brow, weakening his chin and smoothing away the sharpness of his jawline. It was slow work. She proceeded with extreme caution, only daring to let tiny drops of magic leak out at a time. She feared loss of control—she had no idea what might happen.

His hair came next. She dug her fingers into his scalp. To her alarm, the strands briefly flashed canary yellow, but no one commented or even stirred. They watched intently as each of Quinlan’s locks gradually lightened, dark brown graying to ash. She took a step back and circled him—an artist, inspecting her completed masterpiece. Finally, she deemed her work satisfactory and gave him a nod of approval.

The others stared at Quinlan and Luna clasped her hands behind her back, waiting anxiously for their verdict.

Quinlan’s eyes still gleamed indigo, and she hadn’t altered his height, but his chest was broader and his shoulders rounder. His face, of course, was unrecognizable.

Asterin’s lips parted in amazement. “Garringsford has no idea what she’s got coming for her.”

Luna flushed at the praise, unable to keep the smile off her face as she took in her friends’ expressions of awe. She tossed the illusionstone up and down in her palm casually, her magic bubbling beneath her skin. “So … who’s next?”

Orion rubbed his palms together. “Me. Could you give me a tattoo? I’ve always wanted one.”

While she worked on Orion, the others began discussing contingency plans.

Asterin stood from her seat and began pacing. “After we expose Garringsford in front of the royals—”

“Hold on,” Orion interrupted, jaw shifting beneath Luna’s fingers. “How are we going to do that, exactly? Why would any of them believe us?”

“In order to borrow dark magic from King Eoin,” said Harry, “you must pay a price. King Eoin demands two things: one half of your life and whatever you hold dearest. Those who wield dark magic are granted something like temporary immortality. Once that immortality expires, they can continue to pay for dark magic by halving their lives again and again. This creates a sort of inescapable paradox. As the years pass and they absorb more and more shadow magic in place of their dwindling life, their appearance becomes increasingly grotesque and disfigured—more monster than human—but shadow magic can conceal that. So, if we lift the concealment in front of all the guests, there would be no question of her crime. Her fate would be sealed.”

Luna shivered. “So we reveal her in front of all the royals at the ball. But how?”

“That,” Eadric said, patting a distinct bulge in his chest pocket, “will be up to me.”

Three hours later, Luna stood in a room of strangers. Orion sported a new haircut, jet black and cropped close to his skull. He stood even shorter but stockier, a cleft in his chin and a fearsome scowl etched between his brows. At his insistence, Luna inked a tattoo of a serpent onto his neck, a symbol of his allegiance to his temporary new kingdom, its head curled beneath his earlobe, a ruby tongue flicking the cartilage of his ear. The rest of the reptile disappeared beneath the collar of the elegant black getup that Laurel, the wily Elite who Eadric had described as “the only person in the world capable of stealing the boots off your feet,” had delivered just that morning. Both Asterin and Quinlan were clad in identical outfits, and with Orion, the trio matched perfectly.

Rose had been tricky—the ball would be her public debut as Queen of Eradore, so her appearance had to be kept as true as possible, since whatever face the guests saw would be the face they recalled on future occasions. Luckily, because Rose had taken such care to keep her face hidden from the Axarian court, it was unlikely that anyone would recognize her at all, save the Elites. All the same, Luna managed to project a layer of illusion over her face, so that her features blurred slightly unless examined at close range. Just in case, Luna thought.

She helped Rose into the ball gown that Laurel had snuck right out of Asterin’s closet back at the palace. The Queen of Eradore did a slow, admiring twirl, the streaks of gleaming silver beads and jewels on the bodice cascading all the way down the skirts to the floor like fallen stars. “It’s gorgeous.”

“I know that dress,” Asterin said. “It was too big around the bust.”

“But it fits Rose perfectly,” Luna said. So perfectly—so queenly, that it took her breath away.

Rose laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m wearing my combat suit underneath it.”

Luna couldn’t help but smile as she hung Rose’s cloak around her shoulders, transforming the black fabric and crimson underside to a deep plum and trimming it with gold. Lastly came Asterin’s tiara. Luna replaced the rubies with sapphires and adorned it with flourishes of white diamond.

Once the preparations for Rose’s outfit were finished, Eadric helped Luna fold the dress back into the box. Afterward, he hefted it into his arms and went downstairs to send it off with Laurel, who would deliver it to their next destination—the lavish Grand Hotel. A royal carriage that would take them to the palace was scheduled to collect them at six in the evening.

Finally, there was Asterin. Luna spent nearly two hours altering her best friend. She widened the cut of her jaw and forehead, dipping the bow of her mouth, stretched the crease of her eyelids and the arch of her brows. She bleached the ebony from Asterin’s hair and began layering in a faded brown from root to tip. In the likely event of combat, Luna decided that the more Asterin’s opponents underestimated her, the better, so she made the princess’s frame willowy, delicate. She looked breakable, even though the muscles and strength were still there, hidden beneath the surface of the illusions.

“Do you want to take a break?” asked Quinlan when Luna took a moment to roll the tension from her shoulders. “We’ve still got more than enough time.”

Luna ignored him and asked Asterin, “Any preference for eye color?” Even now, despite the rest of the disguise, those emerald irises belonged unmistakably to the Princess of Axaria.

“Whatever is easiest for you,” responded Asterin.

Luna’s jaw clenched. “Right.” As she began to work, she tried to forget the way her stomach had twisted at Asterin’s comment. Whatever is easiest for me? She could do better than that. So much was at stake here. Maybe she couldn’t call lightning or summon waterfalls, but she could help in her own way. The least she could do was try, do whatever was best for everyone—not easiest.

Lips pursed, she pressed the pads of her thumbs into the outer corners of Asterin’s eyes. Slowly, the bright green neutralized, stripped to a glassy, clear hue. Luna injected spurts of muddy brown, struggling to control the tiny amounts of magic she allowed to escape, perfecting the little details until the muscles in her shoulders throbbed in pain.

Her fingers trembled as she put on the finishing touches—a spray of freckles across Asterin’s cheeks, a handful of scars across her brow, neck, and arms. Another tattoo, reminiscent of Orion’s.

When at last she withdrew, the room had fallen silent. Luna had a feeling that even if Queen Priscilla stared at the girl before them for days on end, she would never guess her true identity.

Quinlan appeared at Luna’s side, holding out a glass of water. “Drink, Luna,” he murmured.

She felt sore just raising it to her lips. When she returned the glass, Quinlan’s eyes lingered on her trembling fingers before flicking back up to meet her stubborn gaze.

She tucked her hands behind her back. “I’m fine.”

“Sure,” he replied.

Luna collapsed into the armchair that Quinlan had vacated, sighing loudly in satisfaction to cover the true extent of her exhaustion. Much to her relief, the first part of the plan had been executed successfully.

A wild grin rose to her face. For once, she felt useful. For once, she had actually made a difference.

Over by the fire exit, Eadric reached inside his jacket, pulling out a little pocket watch. “Two hours to rest,” he said, focusing on anywhere and everywhere but Luna.

Her next swallow was like a mouthful of ash. She understood his worry, she really did. But she wasn’t a porcelain doll, for the love of the Immortals! Who was he to treat her as if she were made of glass? If Quinlan had shown up, battered and bloody, she doubted Eadric would spare him a second glance. And yet, here she was, with an infinitesimal tremor in her hand, and Eadric couldn’t even look her in the eye.

Luna took a deep breath, fighting down the rising resentment. She refused to hold it against him. I’m just tired, that’s all, she thought. Throat tight, she drew her knees up to her chest and stared blankly through the window by Harry’s head.

Bruised purple and gray clouds threatened the sky over the city, but it was the palace atop the mountain shining in the distance that drew her gaze. Clouds smothered the topmost turrets, but the palace only seemed to stand brighter against the soot-stained horizon, a beacon of light resisting the inevitable darkness.

Thunder rumbled off into the distance, promising an oncoming storm.

Let it come, Luna thought. She was ready to taste the rain.