Alice Arvel's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The books had taught Alice more than grain prices. Between ledger lines, she had studied dates. Her father meant to marry her off to the crown. So he threw her a masquerade for her seventeenth birthday, a year before her coming of age. Alice knew the trap. In her last life, this exact night had delivered her to the men who would ruin her. She would not wait to be caught. Tonight she would strike first. She dressed in the silver-blue gown herself. The veil hid her white-blonde hair. The mask hid her eyes. She checked the tight bodice, the high slit, the long gloves, and smiled at the cold girl in the glass. In her memory, this was the night she met the prince. He had captured her in unexplained hatred, then her freedom, then her life. She would capture him first. One kiss to bind him, to seed his interest that would trap him instead of her. The ballroom glittered with masks and candlelight. Alice scanned the crowd through her mask. She found Lucy Baldwin at once. Impossible to miss, that red hair blazing above green silk, laughing too loud in her curling Wyndshore accent. Lucy always chased the crown. In the last life, Lucy had clung to the prince all night. So the man beside Lucy had to be him. Alice moved. Her heels clicked fast across the marble. She reached the tall figure at Lucy's side, seized his lapel, and turned him hard toward her. She rose on her toes and kissed him. The mouth was wrong. Too still. Too warm and rough. No jewels bit her palm, no rings, no silk. Her fingers gripped plain wool. She pulled back an inch and looked up. Dark eyes stared down at her. Almost red in the light. Light brown hair, a stern jaw, a build made by labor, not by court. Not the prince. Ronin. The man from the north. The man who did not know her yet. The man who, in another life, had loved her and then driven a blade into her. Alice's stomach dropped through the floor. Her whole body knew him before her mind agreed. The hate came first, then the horror. Ronin did not flinch. He held her gaze, steady and grim. His rough hand hovered near her arm, unsure. "Careful," he said. Just the one word. Low. Even. Lucy hissed. Her cat-green eyes went wide, then sharp. "Are you kidding me, Alice?” Alice let go as if the wool had burned her. She ran. Her veil streamed behind her. She shoved through startled dancers, out the far doors, onto the stone balcony. Her plan lay in ruins. Worse, she had laid her lips on the man she had sworn to destroy. She wanted to throw up as the fear trapped her in a cold terror—remembering how coldly, mercilessly he had killed her.