The Cursed Deal ✓

Chapter 45

The crowd had clustered around them enough that Faine didn't feel as opposed to talking to the man she was dancing with. Though she attempted to memorize faces and recognize where her allies were in comparison to her enemies, she was too aware of the fact that she was vulnerable in a room surrounded by those that despised mortals with every breath.

Their presence alone required a bow and the mortals that did not give it lost their heads one way or the other. Never at that moment, but when they didn't return home hours later—everyone knew. Faine knew. Ilian could end up the same if she wasn't careful. It was risky to bring a mortal along as she had, but if no one constituted their plan, the night would pass without incident.

"You're too jumpy," Ilian whispered in her ear. "Quit scanning the room so much or someone might realize that something is wrong."

Faine looked into his face, and though he spoke, she didn't recognize the way he looked at her. When all emotions vanished, when Ilian couldn't feel anymore, it was so obvious to see that he carried life within his eyes and beauty in his smile. The banquet ripped everything away and left him with a bland expression that matched the servants.

"I'm looking for Saskia. She's around here somewhere, she may arrive at any minute," Faine defended. In a casual sway, she moved Ilian in the opposite direction to give herself full attention on the open doors allowing the chilled night air inside. So the guests didn't suffocate within from the heat of too many bodies in one room. "You're not supposed to talk at all, by the way. If you've forgotten."

Her voice was low enough that Ilian strained to hear her; he dropped his head low against the side of her face and closed as much distance as he could between them without overcoming Faine entirely. To anyone else, the whispers exchanged between were nothing of interest, not with the dull look in Ilian's eyes. Word had spread by now, Ilian was underneath a geas. No one was looking at them anymore.

A slave in his own right, but carried higher than the unlucky forced to crawl.

"I have not forgotten." Ilian's warm breath grazed the pointed tip of her ear. "But no one is paying us any attention. If they were, I'd be dead by now."

Faine scoffed. "Don't say that."

Maybe it was the wine or the lack of food she'd ingested over the past day, but her stomach churned with uncertainty. In missions like these, she was always confident when Kaspar was at her side, for they protected each other. That night, in the great hall of a palace, she was with Ilian instead and it didn't make her feel all that confident.

Ilian was not weak, he hadn't shown that since the first day they met. But he was mortal. A truth Faine kept coming back to despite knowing he was more than what the immortal world labeled him as.

"You look as if you're waiting for a lover to walk in those doors," he purred. "Yet you're dancing with me." A small glimmer of amusement in his eyes, a brightening like a failed flame, disappeared before Faine could grasp it.

"To be fair, there may be some of them here tonight. Past...lovers. Yet I don't remember all their faces."

"Is that so? Must you be so notorious as to not remember those you've bed?"

Faine couldn't help her smile. "They blur together eventually, Ilian. After one hundred years, it's impossible to remember everyone," she said.

The music changed to a slower tune involving more of the sadistic rhythm of the violin. More couples flocked to the dance floor and wrapped their arms around each other, pressing their foreheads together to the point of their noses brushing. Faine didn't want to get that close, didn't deem it necessary.