"True friends stab you in the front." -Oscar Wilde
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London, 1903
Lucie couldn't say that she hated the balls thrown at the Institute every now and then. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, after all. She could find joy in dressing up in her finest gown and letting her mother do her hair. It made her look older, more mature. But she hated the amount of people she didn't know that were suddenly surrounding her, drinking from glasses and talking like their lives depended on it.
She was suddenly very glad that her soon-to-be parabatai, Cordelia, had arrived yesterday and was going to be here any moment. Her brother had just left her company to see if he could find Matthew, who had been missing since the ball began. Lucie had already shared a dance with a boy from a neighboring institute and was waltzing with her cousin, Thomas, when she saw Cordelia enter the ballroom. Thomas uttered a few more apologies for stepping on her feet and then parted ways at the end of the song.
Cordelia ran over to hug Lucie and lead her back to where her mother was standing.
"May I take Cordelia to meet the other girls?" Lucie asked Cordelia's mother. Sona looked pleased. "Of Course," It was, after all, what she had brought Cordelia here for.
Lucie whisked Cordelia away to where her cousins and their friends had gathered around the refreshments table, talking about dresses and mundane fashion. They all abruptly stopped talking when two boys walked into the room. Cordelia looked toward the far doors of the ballroom where James had just walked in with another boy.
James looks handsome as always, Cordelia thought. She heard another name whispered, Matthew Fairchild. Lucie had mentioned him in her letters from time to time. It was James' parabatai.
"They're just boys," Lucie groaned.
"James is your brother," said Catherine Townsend. "You cannot be objective, Lucie! He is gorgeous," Cordelia was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It seems she wasn't the only one infatuated with James.
"Matthew isn't bad-looking either," said Rosamund Wentworth. "But so scandalous."
Lucie quickly turned to look at her, head tilted with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She opened her mouth to say something when Catherine interrupted her. "Indeed. You must be careful of him, Miss Carstairs. He has a reputation." Lucie began to turn an angry shade of pink.
"You all might have better sense than to talk about him that way if you actually knew him," Lucie said, daring anyone to dispute her. Cordelia looked at her with wide eyes and Lucie quickly directed her attention to the ballroom floor.
"We should guess who James will ask to dance first," said a girl Cordelia didn't know. "Surely you, Rosamund; you are looking so lovely tonight. Who could resist you?"
"Ah, yes. Who will be graced by my brother's attentions?" Lucie drawled irritably. "When he was six, he threw up in his own shoe." All the girls pointedly ignored her. A moment later, Matthew approached the table. All the girls turned their attention to him. He bowed slightly to Lucie. "Might I have this dance?"
YOU ARE READING
«CYNIC»
Fiksi Penggemar"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." -Oscar Wilde Lucie Herondale wrote stories. It was her dream, to become an esteemed author one day. But she was also a shadowhunter. She still had much to learn, an...
