The Violinist

You don't show Isolde the note.

You mean to. You get back to Vesper House twenty minutes before sunset with the envelope in your jacket, and you stand outside the east wing doors while the light dies in the windows, rehearsing what to say. Then the doors open and the house wakes up around you like a held breath released, and Isolde isn't there. Bram tells you she's gone down to the city on business.

So you go looking for the only person who's been kind to you.

Aurelian is in the library, reading by the fire, a pot of tea at his elbow. He looks up and smiles like you're an old friend.

"You found a fake," he says. "Jonah told me. The Duchesne letter. I've walked past that case for fifty years." He sighs. "I'm getting old."

"You're four hundred."

"Exactly my point." He pours you a cup. "What's wrong? You have the face of someone with a question they're afraid of."

You sit. "Who was Florian?"

The teapot pauses for just a second in his hand. Then he sets it down very gently.

"Who told you that name?"

"Does it matter?"

Aurelian takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. When he speaks again, he sounds tired.

"Florian Hartwell. A violinist. He played in a quartet at a party here in the spring of 1959, and the Queen couldn't take her eyes off him. Within a month Florian was her Favorite. Twenty-six years old. Laughing all the time. The handsomest mortal this court has ever seen, and courtly with it; half the house was in love with him. He used to practice in the bell tower because he said the acoustics made him sound like an angel." He smiles faintly. "He did sound like an angel."

"What happened to him?"

"He fell." He looks into the fire. "October 1961. From the tower. The window up there is very old and the railing was rotten. He was found in the courtyard at dawn. The Queen was asleep. She couldn't have reached him even if she'd known."

"An accident."

"That was the finding." His voice is careful. "Isolde had the bell taken down and melted. She hasn't let anyone into that tower since. And she has never, in sixty-five years, spoken Florian's name aloud in my hearing." He puts his glasses back on and fixes you with a gentle look. "I'd advise you not to be the first to make her."

The salon starts at ten.

Jonah sends up a suit: black, tailored, sharp at the shoulders, silver thread at the cuffs. It fits like it was cut for you. You look in the bathroom mirror, the only mirror in the suite, and think you look like someone who belongs in a house like this. Then you think of who's going to be looking at you, and you stop feeling so sure.

The salon is in a long drawing room lit only by candles. A string quartet plays in the corner. Mortal musicians, you realize, with the slightly glassy calm of people who've been asked not to notice anything. Court members drift in clusters, glasses of something dark in their hands. Waiters in white jackets carry silver trays. Some of the glasses hold wine. Some hold something thicker.

Conversations stop when you walk in. Then start again, lower.

You make it four steps before Aveline finds you.

"There it is," she says. Red again. Different dress, same mouth. "The Favorite. Do you know what's funny, darling? I asked around today. Nobody has the faintest idea where you came from."

"Halden," you say. "Born and raised."

"How lovely. How local." A little crowd is gathering, the way crowds do at a court when blood is in the water. Aveline raises her voice just enough to carry. "Tell us what you do, Ethan. Besides shouting at my uncle in auction houses."

"I look at things very closely," you say. "And tell people what they really are."

A few low laughs. Aveline's eyes narrow.

"Then look at me," she says, stepping closer, "and tell me what I am."

"Jealous," you say.

The laughter this time is louder. Aveline's face doesn't move, but the temperature of the room does.

"Careful," she breathes. "That ring keeps you safe from my teeth. It doesn't keep you safe from everything."

"Aveline."

The voice is quiet and comes from right behind you. The little crowd parts like water around a stone.

Isolde is wearing black tonight. Black silk, black rose at her throat, hair down for the first time, a dark river over one shoulder. A waiter behind her stops dead with his tray. Two courtiers by the fire forget mid-sentence what they were saying. Even here, in a room full of immortals who've had centuries to get used to her, she still does that to people. She doesn't look at Aveline. She looks at you.

"The quartet is playing a waltz," she says. "Do you dance?"

"Badly."

"Good. Then they'll all be watching your feet instead of my face."

She holds out her hand.

The whole room is watching. Every immortal in it. You put your hand in hers. It's cool, not cold, and much stronger than it looks, and she leads you to the center of the floor while the quartet, without being told, starts the waltz over from the beginning.

She's right. You dance badly. She dances well enough for both of you, her hand firm on your back, steering you through the turns like a ship through a harbor she knows by heart.

"Where were you?" you ask.

"Explaining to Lysander why sending mortals to beat my Favorite in an alley was the worst decision of his long life." Her mouth curves. "He agreed with me in the end."

"Is he alive?"

"Disappointed, but alive." She turns you. "You were brave, with Aveline."

"I was stupid."

"Frequently the same thing at court." Her grey eyes study you. "You look well in black, Ethan."

You almost miss a step. "Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation. I'll let you know when I start paying compliments. You'll notice. It'll be very rare and everyone will gossip about it."

They're gossiping now. You can feel it, the weight of a hundred eyes, the low murmur under the music. The Queen doesn't dance. You can tell from their faces. The Queen hasn't danced in a very long time.

"Why are you doing this?" you ask quietly.

"Because they need to see that you're mine." The words land like a hand on the back of your neck. "Under my protection," she adds, a beat late. "Visibly. Unmistakably."

The waltz slows. She draws you closer for the final turn, close enough that you can smell her, cold roses and rain, close enough that her lips are almost at your ear.

You think she's going to say something about the dance. Something dry, something about your feet.

Instead she says, very softly, so softly no one else could possibly hear:

"When the waiter brings you a glass, don't drink the wine."