Eight days later, Kyla was sitting out on her terrace, breathing in a fresh breeze and waiting rather impatiently for when she could go on her walk.

She’d been walking every afternoon, and each day Hall had shown up to meet her. They’d laughed and walked and talked about all kinds of things—from Coalition politics to her childhood—and each morning she woke up looking forward to seeing him again.

She knew it was wrong. She knew she’d been lucky so far that Patrice hadn’t chosen Hall for her weekly partner. She knew their friendship or acquaintance or whatever this was couldn’t last. But she couldn’t seem to stay inside when the afternoons came around. She’d been scared at first, but her interest had overcome her fear. This was the first time in ages she’d actually been excited about anything.

She was going to hold onto it as long as she could.

There was still another hour before she could expect him to be out, so she closed her eyes and tried to relax, tried not to feel jittery, tried not to wonder what they would talk about today.

Or whether he would touch her.

He hadn’t. Not since she’d jerked away from him when he’d tried to put his hand on her back. She didn’t know why he hadn’t. Maybe he thought she really didn’t want his touch.

There was a lot she didn’t know about him.

No matter how much she told herself he was a smuggler—and may be hiding other secrets and so she really couldn’t trust him—it still felt like he was telling her the truth. She was usually good at reading people. She wouldn’t be so mistaken about Hall.

She was mulling over the endless questions when a voice from behind her surprised her. “I hope you don’t have a headache.”

Kyla turned and smiled at her sister, despite the slightly impatient tone of her voice. “No. I don’t. Just enjoying the breeze.”

“It’s a little chilly,” Patrice replied with a frown, pulling her velvet shawl up around her shoulders as she came out and sat down beside Kyla. “I wish they’d keep it summer longer.”

“They have to work different seasons into the climate or most of our plants would never grow right. Besides, I love it when it finally gets cooler.”

“You would. You’ve always been contrary in all things.” Patrice was smiling slightly as she said the words, so they didn’t come off as a complete insult.

“No argument here.”

“You’re coming to the masquerade tonight, aren’t you?”

Kyla rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure. You know I hate big parties like that.”

“I know. But you need to be there. I’ve planned a special surprise.”

“What surprise?” Kyla’s voice cracked slightly, as she was hit with a shiver of worry. Patrice looked too pleased with herself. That was never a good sign.

“You have to wait and see.”

“Please don’t do anything foolish.”

“What would be foolish?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Following any of the old royal traditions, making too big a deal about being Empress. There could be Coalition eyes watching, you know—especially if everyone is wearing masks.”

Patrice waved a dismissive hand. “They’re not going to care about a party.”

“Yes, they will—if they think you’re flouting their authority. Patrice, I’m serious. Even Tor mentioned that—”

“Yes, I’ve seen you choosing Commander Tor for your partner several times now,” Patrice interrupted, her expression clearing into a characteristic teasing smile. “Is there something I should know?”

“No. Tor is my friend, and I can sit with him at Court without him expecting anything to happen. But he knows the Coalition, and even he said you should be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“No, you’re not. You never take advice. You’re just like Mother and Grandmother. But just because we could get away with certain things fifty years ago doesn’t mean we can get away with him now. Please, Patrice, don’t do anything dangerous. Promise me.”

Patrice laughed and leaned over to kiss Kyla’s cheek. “I promise, silly. Don’t worry. And you should come tonight. It’s going to be fun. I’m even going to let the Potentials mingle in disguise.”

Kyla couldn’t help but straighten her spine at this piece of news. “Really? That’s not like you.”

“I know.” Patrice’s lovely pink mouth pursed mischievously, showing her dimple. “I’ve never been inclined to share. But I thought it would be fun tonight, to let them mingle with the masses and give other women a taste of what they can never have.”

Kyla felt kind of sick at these words. She knew her sister was ostensibly teasing, but there was a reality underlying the words that couldn’t be denied. Her sister had always been slightly selfish, slightly possessive, very territorial. She’d been raised that way. It wasn’t even her fault.

But Hall belonged to Patrice. He’d declared himself so, whether or not he meant it, whether or not he had an underlying purpose.

Any time Kyla spent with Hall was a taste of what she could never have.

She sighed and told herself to be reasonable—that she’d known this truth all along.

“You must come tonight,” Patrice added. “I thought you’d been in a good mood for a couple of weeks, but now you’re looking a little depressed. A party will do you good.”

“I’ll think about it.” Kyla was having even more doubts now about attending, knowing Hall would be in the ballroom with a mask on.

“No, you’re not going to think about it. You’re going to promise me right now that you’ll come. I’m your sister and I need your support.”

Kyla shook her head. “You don’t need anyone’s support.”

“Of course I do. Everything is more fun if you’re around.” Patrice’s eyes were wide and genuine, and Kyla was sure she meant them. They might not be close, but they were family, and that meant something to both of them.

Kyla smiled and said, “Okay. I’ll come tonight.”

“You promise.”

“I promise.”

Patrice clapped her hands. “Wonderful! I’ll send you my dresser to figure out something for you to wear. You can work with her all afternoon.”

“I don’t want to work with her—”

“Of course you must. You can’t go to the masquerade in one of your normal outfits. Everyone will know who you are.”

“But not all afternoon—”

“It will take as long as it takes.”

Kyla sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she may have to miss her walk with Hall this afternoon. Maybe she could finish with the dresser quickly—although that had never happened in all the time she’d known the fussy woman.

Patrice was grinning. “I’ll send her down in an hour or so, as soon as she finishes with me. We’ve mostly already decided what I’m going to wear anyway. Oh, it’s going to be a fabulous night. No one will ever forget it.”

Those words didn’t excite Kyla. They worried her.

After all, unforgettable nights weren’t always good.

***

Several hours later, Kyla was walking into the ballroom, wearing an emerald green silk gown and a feathered mask.

The music and dancing had already begun—as had any number of erotic activities taking place on the sidelines of the room.

She stood still, gazing around and trying to recognize people she knew—one in particular—but it was harder than expected. Everyone wore mostly full masks that covered their faces down to their mouths—some even went lower—and it wasn’t always easy to recognize someone’s body in the swirl of lush fabrics and heady motion.

It was dizzying—wild in a way she’d never really liked.

She’d been stupid to promise her sister she’d attend. She didn’t want to be here. She’d already missed her walk with Hall today, and now she had to be here, in a flurry of scent and color and sound. She hoped she wasn’t getting a migraine.

She moved along the wall, looking for somewhere fairly quiet to stand where she wouldn’t be confronted with gyrating bodies. It was a hopeless cause, though, so she finally just stopped with her back to the wall when she could find a little clear space.

Beside her a woman was leaning against the wall with a man kneeling in front of her, his head beneath her skirt. She was flushed and moaning, and she smiled at Kyla beneath her mask. “Would you like to join us?”

Kyla smiled back and murmured her decline, feeling a familiar sick feeling at being surrounded by so much sex. She didn’t want to do it with one person—she definitely didn’t want to do it with two.

She sighed and pressed her back against the wall, closing her eyes and trying to will her mind away from this room. She wondered how long she had to stay to keep her promise to Patrice.

Her sister evidently had a surprise for tonight. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be something too stupid.

“I was wondering if you would come,” a low voice murmured, just at her ear.

Her eyes flew open and she gasped in surprise. She knew Hall’s voice, although the sight of the gray velvet mask with pointed ears that made it look like a wolf was very unnerving so close to her face.

“Where were you this afternoon?” he asked, turning her body so she was facing him.

“This is a masquerade. I don’t know who you are. You must have the wrong person,” she said, feeling the strangest desire to play for a minute—maybe because he sounded so entitled, so possessive.

“You know exactly who I am, and I don’t have the wrong person.” He reached up and stroked her hair, which she’d pulled back into a sleek bun. “You think I don’t recognize your hair—or your body.” His eyes lowered behind the mask and took in her clingy gown with its low neckline. “You are unmistakable.”

She tried not to shiver as her body reacted to his presence, his warm gaze. “You shouldn’t be talking to me.”

“I’m allowed tonight. We’re allowed to mingle.”

“Until she calls you back.”

“She hasn’t done so yet.” His voice changed as he added, “I missed you this afternoon. I kept waiting but you never showed up.”

She let out a breath, feeling a swell of pleasure that he sounded like he meant it. “My sister sent her dresser down to work with me on my outfit. It took hours.”

“Why didn’t you say no?”

“It’s not worth the fuss. It’s easier to just go along with things.”

“Maybe. But then you don’t get what you want.”

He sounded different with her tonight than he had for the last week on their walks. Lately, he’d talked to her pleasantly, almost gently—but right now he sounded more forceful, even though the volume of his words never raised.

It was unnerving—as unnerving as everything else about him.

“Maybe I wanted a sexy dress for tonight.”

“It is a sexy dress,” he murmured, “but I know you’d rather have walked with me.”

“Don’t be smug. My days don’t revolve around you, you know.”

“Don’t they? I’m disappointed.”

She smiled at the teasing note in his voice, but then swallowed hard as reality hit her suddenly. “Hall, we shouldn’t do this. It’s futile.”

“What is?” He moved again, so his body was trapping hers against the wall.

She wished she could see his whole face. She wanted to know what he was feeling right now. “You know what I’m talking about. You’re only here for a little while, and you’re a Potential. No matter what happens, you’ll be leaving soon.”

“And what’s your point?”

“So there’s no use in us being…being…”

He tilted his head down toward hers. “Being what?”

She gulped again. “Being friends, or whatever.”

“I think whatever is a better descriptor of us. We’re not just friends.”

She couldn’t even catch her breath now, much less try to form any words. She stared at him, meeting his eyes through their masks, and she shuddered as his face drew near to hers.

He reached up to angle her head so that he could brush her lips with his.

A surge of pleasure overwhelmed her at the first touch, and she gasped against his mouth.

Evidently encouraged by her response, he curved one of his hands around the back of her head and kissed her more deeply.

She slipped out her tongue to meet his and arched against him, supported mostly by the wall. He made a throaty sound and opened his mouth even more, causing her to do the same.

She’d never felt like this before—not once in her life. Her whole body throbbed with pleasure, with need, and with something even more powerful. She clutched at his jacket, seeing swirls of wild color behind her closed eyelids.

“Fuck, Kyla,” Hall muttered, finally breaking the kiss, but only to kiss an intoxicating line along her jaw and then down her throat. “I’ve wanted to do this from the first evening I saw you.”

She moaned as he tongued her pulse point. “Then why didn’t you?”

“You said you didn’t like sex.”

“I…I don’t….I mean, I didn’t…” She couldn’t make her mind work. She could barely keep standing up. Her skin all over was flushed with heat.

“You wouldn’t want to do this with a stranger,” he mumbled, still kissing her neck as his hands started to move over her body. “You had to get to know me first.”

“Oh.” She gasped when he fondled her breast through the silk of her gown, teasing the nipple deliciously. “True.”

“So now that you do, I can finally touch you the way I’ve been dying to.” His body was tight, tense, hard. He pressed himself against her.

He was aroused. She could feel it against her belly. She rubbed herself against him.

He grunted as one of his hands slid up to the nape of her neck. He rubbed her there, the way he had the first day they’d met, when she’d had a migraine.

In addition to all the physical sensations, she suddenly felt something else. That inner tug she’d felt from him a few times before when he touched her.

This time, it flooded her body with even more pleasure, and she cried out helplessly, completely overwhelmed with the feelings. It was like there was suddenly a channel opened from her being to his, and she was drowning in him—his pleasure as well as hers, his emotions as well as hers.

And all of the building tension suddenly released inside her—in a wave that nearly knocked her off her feet. She shook against him, a throbbing beginning in her pussy and radiating out through her entire body.

“Oh, fuck!” he burst out, suddenly freezing with his mouth against her neck, his body pressed against hers. “Fuck, Kyla, I’ve never…never…” He was gasping and shuddering slightly. She’d never seen him so out of control.

“You’ve never what?” she asked hoarsely, when her mind was clear enough to think again. Her knees were buckling, so she held herself up by clinging to his shoulders.

He was still panting desperately, and his face was flushed when he finally raised it. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”

Her blurred eyes were finally starting to clear. She blinked a few times. “Did I just…just come?”

“I think so.” He cleared his throat and stroked her hot cheek with his knuckles. “It was…breathtaking.”

“I didn’t think it was possible without, uh, certain stimulation. What did you do?” She was thinking better now as a sated relaxation washed over her.

Something strange had happened. Something that wasn’t normal. She wasn’t so under his spell that she couldn’t recognize that much.

“I kissed you.”

“I know that, but you did something else. Like you’d done it to me before.” She could finally stand alone, so she pushed him away from her enough to straighten up. “Tell me what you did.”

“Kyla, it’s nothing.” He must have gotten himself under control too, and his face had sobered under his mask. “I didn’t mean to…nothing happened.”

“Don’t lie to me. Tell me.”

Instead of the deep pleasure from moments ago—and the deeper connection she felt to him—she was suddenly cold, suspicious.

There was something about him that wasn’t natural, and that meant it was dangerous.

Even to her.

He’d said that once people got to know him, they believed him to be dangerous.

This was why.

This was precisely why.

“Kyla, please.” He reached out for her, but then he pulled his hand away in an awkward jerk.

Before she could say anything else, the musicians in the corner of the ballroom suddenly burst out in a fanfare. The shift in mood and sound was so startling that everyone turned to look, including Hall and Kyla.

Kyla’s heart sank even more as she saw her sister walk from where she’d been dancing in the middle of the floor to the throne at the front of the room, a purple carpet spreading out before her as she walked, unrolled by two courtiers.

“Oh, no,” Kyla whispered, staring at her sister and recognizing the beginnings of a traditional ceremony.

A ceremony of the Empress.

It was foolish, but as long as Patrice didn’t give the traditional speech, it shouldn’t be the end of the world.

“What’s wrong?” Hall murmured in her ear.

Kyla shook her head slightly. She wanted to confide in him, but there wasn’t time, and she couldn’t trust him right now anyway, now that she knew for sure he was hiding something—something other than being a smuggler.

The Court Director called out for several of the most important lords and ladies to take their places, and then he called for the Potentials to come.

Patrice had warned Kyla she might do something like that—let the Potentials mingle, only to pull them away, show all the other women that they could never really have them.

That meant Hall.

“You need to go,” Kyla whispered, when Hall didn’t move, even though all the other Potentials were making their way through the crowds to the front of the room.

He shook his head.

“You have to,” she hissed. “You’ll be kicked out of the palace if you don’t. Go.” She gave him a little shove, and he started to walk, although he looked back over his shoulder at her.

Kyla made a face at him, which he may or may not have recognized beneath her mask. But he reluctantly went to take his place with the other Potentials on the far left of the throne.

Kyla held her breath as she waited for the royal court to take its traditional place around the throne.

This wasn’t smart—at all. It was one of the ceremonies that had been done away with when the Coalition came into power. But hopefully it wouldn’t last long and Patrice wouldn’t pair it with any words.

Someone moved so he was standing beside Kyla. “She shouldn’t be doing this,” a familiar male voice said.

Tor. She recognized his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and his voice. “I know. I told her.”

“She doesn’t know who is in this room. She doesn’t know where their loyalties lie.”

“I know.” Kyla’s voice cracked slightly. “She won’t listen.”

“Her pride and silliness are going to bring down five-hundred years of a royal family.”

“It may be okay,” Kyla said, starting to tremble in fear at the somber note in Tor’s voice. “As long as she doesn’t….”

She trailed off when four drumbeats sounded and Patrice started to speak.

“Four hundred and ninety-six years ago, the first Empress of Evalon took the throne.”

Murmurs of reaction spilled out among the crowds, and Kyla swallowed over a rising nausea. She turned her head and hid her face briefly against Tor’s shoulder. “Oh, no.”

Patrice went on, in words that had been said for hundreds of years at royal celebrations. “Her home world and its four surrounding planets had been destroyed by a cruel, invading force, and the brave survivors all gathered here. She built this world and declared it to be beautiful. Having survived hell, she declared this world to be paradise, with pleasure to be its only end. She declared herself Empress of the Five Destroyed Worlds. Beauty is in our nature, and pleasure is in our blood. Enjoy it now, once again—as we have for four-hundred and ninety-six years. Your Empress commands it.”

“Stupid,” Tor was muttering under his breath. “Stupid, stupid.”

Kyla hung onto his arm for support. “Is it really that bad?”

“Bad?” His eyes widened behind his plain black mask. “It’s insanity. Someone will report this to a Coalition official. Someone will have to. It’s outright defiance.”

“Maybe everyone will be so hungover from the drunken orgies that they won’t remember.” Kyla looked around, where the ballroom had exploded into excitement and renewed energy, as the musicians began to play again.

Tor shook his head. “We can hope.”

He didn’t sound hopeful, and Kyla drooped against him. Her eyes flew over to the group of Potentials and landed unerringly on Hall.

He seemed to be watching her. She could tell even across the wild room. She had no idea what he might be thinking.

Clearing Hall from her mind, she focused back on what was more important. “She thinks it’s just a game. She’s never experienced the Coalition for real. Neither have I, for that matter.”

“You don’t want to. Believe me.” He reached down and tilted her head up. “Their authority isn’t a game to them. They’ve arrested people for far less and sent them to die in prison planets. It’s not a pretty end.”

“I know.” She swallowed again and shook herself off. “I’ll talk to her again tomorrow. We won’t let her do it again.”

“It might already be too late.”

Kyla didn’t answer. She had no idea what to say. She was terrified, almost dizzy from it. But Patrice had done foolish things in the past, and so far no one had ever reported it. The members of the Court were to be trusted completely, and the tourists had too good a time here to want the vacation spot to be threatened in any way.

Chances were no one would report this—despite what Tor had warned.

She suddenly felt exhausted, and she couldn’t stay in the room anymore. She said goodnight to Tor and then made her way out.

Hall couldn’t follow her this time. He was trapped among the rest of the Potentials, required to do the pleasure of Lady Patrice.

She couldn’t believe what had happened with him earlier. She’d never felt so much pleasure in her life. But she couldn’t trust it—just like she couldn’t trust Hall.

And so she forced her mind away from tempting avenues of thought and instead set herself to find a way to convince Patrice not to be so stupid again.