Light strangled out of the pavilion as the vines encased it. A new, weird yellow light sputtered to life on the ceiling, and Azalea gasped as hundreds of candles flickered above her, pressed against the casement of the dome, all melted shapeless and creating eerie shadows.
Azalea whipped about sharply.
“Open it up, Keeper,” she snarled. “Enough of your stupid games.”
“What a shame,” said Keeper, still at the side of the ballroom, smiling lazily, “that you don’t care to dance. I’ve planned such a magnificent ball!”
Dancers burst through the pavilion’s thorn-shrouded lattice, sweeping tight circles with their partners. A gust of air whirled over Azalea, and the dancers swirled past her in a twist of colors, chiffons and satins brushing her own black, shabby skirts. She bit back a scream.
The dancers were masked with ornate, gilded animal heads. A golden-furred jackal, and his lady, with feathers and a gold beak. Masks with eyeholes rimmed in gems and embroidery clung to the dancers’ faces. This was a masked ball, something Azalea had only heard of. In her imagination they had been more innocent; gentlemen dressed as hussars and ladies with white, glittery masks attached to a stick. Not this chaotic meshing of gilded beasts and opulent monsters.
In a garish whorl of colors and ribbons, the dancers settled into two long rows, packed so tightly their skirts bunched at odd angles. At the end of their aisle stood Keeper, straight and at ease. The candlelight seemed to make him darker, no highlights or shading over his black form. A twist of a smile graced his lips.
“Welcome, my lady,” he said, “to the D’Eathe court. Do you like it?”
Azalea glanced back at the entrance. She wondered if she could somehow push her way through the vines.
“I ask you again.” Keeper’s voice was cold. “May I have the honor of this dance?”
“Snap your own head off,” said Azalea.
Keeper gave a smart bow.
“I’ll assume that is a no, thank you,” he said. “Still, I would advise you not to take this dance without a partner to lead you. It could be, ah…precarious.”
Keeper clapped his hands together, twice, and the masked ladies flicked their fans open in unison. Azalea stepped back.
“Don’t haste away, my lady,” he said. “There is a guest I have invited whom I am sure you do not want to miss.”
The music began. The sweet music-box orchestra had been replaced with a symphony starved on scraps of minor key. A chorus of sickly violins grew to a forte, and the dancers stepped smartly together.
Azalea turned to the entrance, and was blocked. A bear, cat, and wolf stepped in front of her, turning about in the dance. Ladies whipped their fans out, their hands clasped with their gentleman beasts. Azalea stepped out of the way, narrowly missing a collision with a lynx, who pushed just past her. There was no room—the moment one couple moved, the next pair stepped in, ladies’ skirts pressed together, squashed.
It’s only magic, Azalea thought, trying to reassure herself. Not real. She pushed her way through the lynx and the wolf. The couple turned sharply, and Azalea was thwacked across the face by the gentleman’s hand.
She hit the marble floor, face stinging, before she realized what had happened. Cringing, she yanked her hand away before it was chasséd with a buckled shoe. That had felt plenty real. The dancers were not going to stop for her.
Azalea scrambled to her feet, drowning in the skirts, before the couples stepped together and turned, hard, into a promenade. Every lady whipped a fan out, broke apart from her partner, and fluttered the fans against their feathered gold-and-black masked faces.
In a blur, they snapped their arms out. Azalea stumbled backward to avoid a hand gripping an ice pink fan. She overstepped, and her arm brushed against the fan’s edge of the next lady. At first she felt nothing, then saw that blood had dripped onto the crush of gold skirts. She grasped her arm and craned her neck. The fan had sliced her sleeve, and a little deeper.
Azalea pressed her hand against the cut and glanced up to see Keeper at the far end of the dance floor, black figure cut against the garish reds and golds. He was smiling at her.
Dancers turned about and crossed arms. In the exchange, Keeper disappeared. Azalea swallowed, her mouth dry, and stepped into position with them, keeping with the ebb and flow. She mouthed the steps, reminding her feet to stay attentive, keeping in time with the quadrille-waltz hybrid, and tried to work her way to the entrance. The heavy metallic taste of fear coated her throat and weighed her down. Her limbs shook, but her fear pushed her onward into the steps.
Azalea turned into the next dance set, and stopped.
A figure wearing a plain dress stood still among the gaudy, glinting sworls of dancers. Azalea caught the pale face, the dimples, the slightly mussed auburn hair, and her knees nearly gave way.
Dashing back around, pushing skirts away from her, Azalea craned to see the figure. A closed fan smacked her across the face, but she didn’t even feel it. Through the gaps of moving dancers, Azalea saw the woman again, and her heart leaped into her throat.
Her dress was light blue, worn and mended, but clean. A jet brooch was pinned to her collar. Azalea had to blink, hard.
The dancers turned with their partners, hands pressed against hands, then, all at once, stepped back into two rows. A hesitation step; the longest Azalea had ever witnessed. Feathers bobbed as though underwater, and skirts settled even slower. Azalea was again at the end of the aisle they made, and, at the other end—
Mother.