Page 12 of Bloodgrove

Elodie smiled. “The Capitol is not the only place where fashion is made.”

Will’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “How do you get such things here? I thought Bloodgrove had hardly any exchange with the world.”

“Goods are cheaper to bring in. People are more difficult. But I have my connections.”

He had asked himself the same question while sitting almost alone on the train: why did so few people travel between the two cities?

“The price is very high, and almost no one can pay it.” Elodie leafed through his sample books, clearly fascinated by the fabric collection. Her fingers traced over every page.

“But money is hardly a problem for many people, neither here nor in the Capitol.” His colleagues would descend on this city if they knew how outdated everything was. Bloodgrove was screaming for a transformation.

Elodie looked up with a lazy smile. “Money is not the price.”

“Then what is?” Will suspected the answer.

“Blood.” She said it lightly, as though it were not the most bizarre word to pass her lips. “Every last drop—or until you lose your mind.”

Will went still, his fingertips resting on the papers, his last anchor to reason and all things measurable. But who was he to doubt her? He, who had woven bone into floorboards in exchange for a piece of his soul?

“Because of magic.”

She nodded. “Curses.”

“The city is cursed.”

“You are only noticing that now?” Elodie tilted her head, sending cascades of black curls spilling over her arm.

“I suspected as much. Am I in danger?”

“Not yet. Do not leave the house. In here, I am the most dangerous thing you are likely to find.” She smiled innocently.

His gaze flicked to her eyes. There was a faint note beneath her otherwise easy voice, the slightest trace of tension. But her mask was flawless.

“Except for the moon.” He did not know why he said it. The dream had suddenly returned to him, though Elodie was probably speaking of the chains in the ballroom.

“Why the moon?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “You need only fear the blood moon—but as I said, so long as you do not leave the house…”

“Moon children.” Will smiled, hoping to coax a little more information from her. He stopped himself at the last second from laying a hand over his flat stomach.

Elodie laughed softly, and her ease surprised him. He truly had not imagined the mistress of the house like this. She was so… human. “You look rather like a moon child yourself. My mother used to tell us stories of creatures with hair as white as cobwebs, skin as white as bone, eyes as white as pearls, and teeth as white as the crescent moon.”

“No crescent-moon teeth.” His smile widened, revealing two rows of white but perfectly ordinary teeth.

“Good. Otherwise I would have to worry that you might seduce me into walking into the sea and drowning before I ever reached your kingdom on the moon.”

Will smiled, but lowered his eyes to his drawings, to all the designs he had made for the ballroom that now felt entirely wrong. “In our stories, blood and moonlight always go hand in hand. But tell me—what sort of dreams would you like your ballroom to hold?”

“You ask as though you were a magician who could conjure anything.” Elodie reached for the next sample book, and only then did he notice the discreet bandages around her forearms. He was ashamed he had overlooked them until now, when they seemed so plainly visible: beige against her cream-colored skin.

“No magician, I promise.”

“A pity.” She beamed at him, her grey eyes sparkling. “I need something magical. The parlor and the ballroom should enchant my guests; draw them in like moths to a flame. Remind them of everything they are missing beyond this city. And who knows? Perhaps something may even change.”

But Will was not so easily charmed. He knew noblewomen like her, women who wrapped themselves in the latest fashions and held a ball every season, fascinated by the wicked allure of magic but quick to recoil from its reality. So he remained silent and filed the information away for later.

Afterward, he walked through the rooms with her and discussed his ideas while the storm shook the house.

Chapter 7