Lucian Nightshade had attended this ball for two hundred years, and tonight he needed a stranger. The curse in his blood demanded cruelty from him, and cruelty had made him famous. Every woman in the ballroom already knew the stories. Every woman except one would be the same. He watched the doors from the balcony and waited for a face that had not yet learned to fear him. Below, the Moonlit Masquerade Palace filled with the town's oldest families. Candles burned in iron sconces. Masked dancers moved in slow circles beneath a chandelier the size of a carriage. A woman in a red gown passed near the stairs, saw Lucian, and steered her daughter the other way. He had expected that. He had counted on it, once. Now it tightened something in his chest. "You look like a man hunting." Xavier stepped beside him, jacket half-buttoned, boots scuffed against the marble. His younger brother never dressed for these things. He never had to. "Every girl in this room has been warned about you since she could walk. You know that." "I know." "Then stop." Xavier's voice dropped. "Whatever you're planning. She isn't a cure, Lucian. She's a person. And she's already lost one year of her life to you." Lucian did not answer. He had wiped her memory to protect her from what he was. He had written it down afterward on a torn page and hidden the page in his desk, because he needed one honest record of himself somewhere in the world. Xavier remembered everything Elena did not. That was the price of having a brother who loved the same girl and could not say so. The doors opened. Elena Salvatore walked in alone. She wore black boots under a dark gown, a choker at her throat, no mask. She looked at the chandelier the way someone looks at a sky they have never seen. She did not look at Lucian. She did not know to. He went down the stairs. Halfway across the floor, a older man caught Elena's sleeve and spoke close to her ear. Lucian saw the name shape on the man's lips. His own. He saw Elena's polite nod. He waited for her face to close. Instead she laughed. She actually laughed, and shook her head, and stepped away from the warning as if it were a coat that did not fit. She turned, saw Lucian for what she believed was the first time, and tilted her head. "You're the one they keep telling me to avoid," she said. "Yes." "Why?" "They have reasons." "Are the reasons true?" He held out his hand. "Dance with me and decide." She took it. Across the ballroom, Xavier set down his glass and walked out. Lucian felt the door close behind his brother like a lock turning. The rumors had failed to scare her. Now there was no one left to stop him from ruining her again.

Elena's hand settled into Lucian's, and the curse lunged. It rose up his arm like a hot wire. His grip tightened before he could stop it. She did not notice. She stepped into the frame of the dance and smiled up at him, waiting for him to lead. He led. One turn, two. The music covered the sound of his own breath going wrong. Under his ribs, the curse pushed against his teeth and told him what to say to break her. He had used those words a hundred times. They were already forming. He had maybe an hour. Less. When the curse won, it always won completely, and the woman in his arms always paid. He steered Elena toward the edge of the floor. "There's air on the balcony," he said. "Come." "You're shaking," she said, curious, not afraid. "Are you sick?" "Yes." He pulled her through the tall doors before she could answer. Cold night hit his face. He let go of her hand and stepped back until stone met his spine. Xavier was already there. His brother stood at the rail with his jacket still half-buttoned, boots planted like he had been waiting for this exact failure. He did not look surprised. He looked tired. "I told you," Xavier said. He crossed to Lucian and grabbed his wrist hard. "Look at your hand. Look." Lucian looked. His fingers were locked into a shape that was not his. "Give her something," Xavier said, low. "Now. Before you speak again." Lucian reached inside his coat. He carried the old locket for exactly this, and had never used it. The heart-shaped case was warm from his chest. He held it out to Elena on a flat palm. "Take this," he said. Each word cost him. "Wear it. Do not take it off tonight." Elena looked at the locket, then at his face. "Why?" "Because I asked." She hesitated. Xavier said, quiet, "Please." That did it. She lifted the chain over her head and let the locket fall against her collarbone. The pull in Lucian's chest broke. Not gone. Dulled, like a shout heard through a wall. His fingers unlocked. He could breathe around the words again. "Go inside," he told her. "Find the older woman in the red gown. Stay near her until the carriages come." "You're not going to explain any of this," Elena said. "No." She studied him a moment longer. Then she went. The doors closed behind her. Xavier let go of Lucian's wrist. "That thing won't hold past sunrise." "I know." "She'll come looking for you tomorrow. She's like that." "I know." Lucian pressed his palm flat to the cold rail. The curse was still there, quieter, waiting. He had bought one night. He had spent the only shield he owned to buy it. "Then we start hunting the cure at first light," Xavier said. "Because you just used your last stall."

Lucian stepped back inside the ballroom with the taste of cold air still in his mouth. The locket had bought him a night. He meant to spend the rest of it out of sight. He cut along the wall toward a servant's door and never reached it. A hand closed on his elbow. White hair, purple eyes, a smile he had learned to hate months ago. "Lucian," said Kieran Thornfall. "You walked past me twice. Rude." Lucian tried to pull free. The fae prince tightened his grip and leaned close enough for the guests nearby to notice. "I've been drinking," Kieran said, pleasant. "Ask me what I've been telling people. Ask me which girl in the red gown I stopped on the stairs. The one with the locket. I told her a story about you. She listened." Lucian's stomach dropped. "You didn't." "Not yet. But I will. Unless we talk." Lucian smiled for the room. He steered Kieran through the side arch and out across the lawn, one hand locked on the back of his neck. He aimed for the pavilion at the end of the garden path. Lanterns hung from its arches. Vines climbed the posts. It was far enough from the music. He did not see Elena at the tall window as he passed. She saw him. She watched him drag a beautiful stranger by the collar into the dark, and her hand rose to the locket at her throat. She did not know what she felt. Disappointment, first. Then something sharper. She followed as far as the terrace and stopped there, hidden behind a column, watching. Inside the pavilion, Lucian shoved Kieran against a post. "Say what you want." "An apology," Kieran said. "On your knees. In writing. I want the last year of my life back, Lucian. You took it for sport." "I can't give you that." "Then I'll take the girl instead." Lucian moved fast. He pressed his palm flat against Kieran's forehead. He had done this to Elena once. He knew the shape of it. He pushed, and felt the fae's memory soften like wet paper under his hand. Names first. Then the ball. Then Lucian's face. Kieran's purple eyes went glassy. His mouth opened around a word he no longer owned. Lucian let go. Kieran slid down the post and sat on the pavilion floor, blinking at his own hands. "Go home," Lucian said. "You came to the wrong ball." He turned and saw Xavier at the pavilion steps. His brother's jaw was set. He had watched all of it. He did not look shocked. He looked sick of him. "That's twice this month," Xavier said. "You said you'd stop." "He was going to tell her." "So you keep her by breaking someone else's head open." Behind Xavier, on the terrace, a red gown moved back into the light. Elena had seen enough. She turned and went inside without looking back.

Xavier grabbed Lucian's sleeve at the pavilion steps. "She saw. She'll run. And you can't burn this thing off your back alone before the sun comes up." "Then help me," Lucian said. "I've been helping you. She's the one who has to stay." Lucian looked toward the terrace. The red gown was already gone. He knew what his brother meant. The locket at her throat was buying him hours, not a cure. The curse needed a witness who chose to stay anyway. That was the old shape of it. He had read it in their mother's book when he was fifteen and laughed. He found Elena in the coat room off the main hall. She had her jacket half on and her hand on the door. "Don't touch me," she said, without turning. "I won't." He stopped six feet back. "I did it to you too. A month ago. In the garden behind this place. You wore boots with a hole in the left toe and you told me your sister's name and I took all of it." She turned. Her blue eyes were wet and steady. "Why are you telling me now?" "Because if I lie again the thing inside me wins at sunrise." He pulled his sleeve back. The skin along his forearm had gone gray in a spreading map. "The locket is slowing it. It isn't stopping it. Xavier says the only thing that stops it is someone who knows what I am and doesn't leave." "That's a trap." "It is. I'm asking anyway." She looked at the door. She looked at his arm. She touched the locket at her collarbone and he watched her weigh three years of stranger's warnings against one honest sentence. "Give me the rest," she said. "All of it. Every name. Every girl. The fae in the pavilion. Say it out loud." He said it. It took a long time. Xavier stood in the doorway with his arms crossed and did not help him soften any of it. When Lucian finished, the gray on his arm had crept past his elbow and stopped. Elena did not touch him. She sat down on the bench against the wall and folded her hands in her lap. "I'm not forgiving you," she said. "I'm staying in the room. That's different." "I know." "When the sun comes up, I decide again." "I know." Xavier let out a breath he had been holding since the pavilion. He shut the coat room door behind him and put his back against it. Outside, the band started a slow song for the last hour of the ball. Lucian sat on the floor across from Elena, close enough to see her face, far enough that she could stand and go. The gray on his arm did not spread. It also did not fade. Dawn was still coming. She had not promised him anything past it.