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‘What do we have against them?’ Joan knew that the Hunts and the Olivers had been enemies for millennia, but she’d never heard a reason why.
‘They’re slimy, sneering snakes who pretend they’re loyal to the Court,’ Ruth said. ‘But they’re only loyal to themselves.’
‘The origins of the alliances and enmities are all forgotten,’ Jamie said. ‘There are only myths about them now.’
‘Who’s allied with who?’ Joan asked.
‘You don’t know the rhyme?’ Tom said. He chanted softly into the night: ‘The phoenix and the hound. The mermaid and the starling. Dragon makes vows with the desert and undying. Griffins’ faith is found with the white horse, never yielding. Nightingale is bound with the elm tree, always shielding.’
Jamie elaborated: ‘Lius are allied with Hathaways. Olivers with Mtawalis. Portellis with Alis and Nowaks. Griffiths with Patels. Nightingales with Argents.’
‘The Hunts don’t have allies?’ Joan asked. She vaguely remembered Aaron taunting Ruth about that last time.
‘Who needs allies?’ Ruth shrugged. ‘It’s all just boring meetings and politics and compromising with each other.’
‘Yeah. Can’t stand those meetings where we compromise with each other,’ Tom said so mildly that Joan almost missed the grin he shot at Jamie. Jamie shook his head slightly, but his neck reddened in the darkness, and he bit at his own smile.
‘The enmities shift around more, depending on the time period,’ Jamie said to Joan. ‘The only real lasting ones are the Olivers and Hunts. Nowaks and Nightingales. Griffiths and Argents.’
Tom craned his neck ahead. They could all hear the party now, in the distance: raised laughter and sweet stringed music. Bright light glinted through the leaves. ‘What would actually happen if a Hunt got caught in an Oliver house?’ he mused.
Ruth grimaced. ‘Best not get caught.’ She’d gone with blue lipstick tonight, to match her butterfly mask, and her mouth was a clear downturned arch.
Joan had had the Hunt power as a child—the ability to hide objects in thin air. It had faded, though, and a new power of unmaking had emerged in its place—a power that Gran had warned Joan never to reveal to anyone, not even Ruth. A power that had turned out to be forbidden.
Until Nick had asked about it on the boat, Joan had only spoken about it with Aaron.
I’m not a Hunt, am I? she’d said to Aaron. They’d been in the corridor of his mother’s safe house. The sun had been setting, throwing golden light over his beautiful face. It was a question she hadn’t even been able to ask herself. Because for monsters, power was family and family was power, and Joan didn’t have the Hunt power anymore.
In a human sense, they’re your family, Aaron had said. You love them and they love you.
But in a monster sense, they weren’t, and Aaron had known it from the night they’d met—from the moment he’d been close enough to see the colour of her eyes.
Rare among Olivers, he had the true Oliver power—he could do more than differentiate monsters from humans; he could differentiate family from family. And on the day his own power had been ratified, he’d been given a special instruction by the Court: He’d been told to kill anyone with a power like Joan’s.
He should have killed her the night they’d met—as his father had tried to do. Failing that, he should have turned her in to the Court. Instead, he’d kept her safe from the other Olivers and from the Court itself. He’d protected her.
What am I? Joan had asked Aaron. Why did she have a power outside of the twelve families?
I don’t know, he’d said. He’d looked at her with an intensity that had stolen Joan’s breath. All I know is that if you undo the massacre, you can’t ever meet me. You can’t ever trust me. I won’t remember what you mean to me.
Joan touched her mask now, checking that it was tight on her face. Ahead of them, the trees were finally clearing, revealing the great conservatory and the gardens—and the Oliver masquerade.
‘Wow,’ Ruth said grudgingly.
‘It’s stunning,’ Jamie said.
The bright light they’d glimpsed through the leaves was the glowing dome of the conservatory, connected to the house via a gilded glass passage. The gardens before it were classically formal: strolling paths crafted from low hedges. It was all fairy-lit, with ghost-white splashes of late-blooming dahlias.
But it was the masquerade itself that had Joan’s attention. The Olivers were as beautiful, and as dangerous, as she’d remembered. Her gaze jumped from one guest to another. Over there, a woman in a wedding-like dress with a long train; when she turned, her mask was a skull in the same shade of white. And over there, a man with raven hair and an imposing brass mask, elaborate with filigree and with no eye slots. And here, a woman whose golden mask rose above her head in a radiant corona; her dress was crafted from gilded feathers. Footmen wove among them, bearing trays of champagne.
They made their way down the lawn. Ruth took a visible deep breath as they reached the entrance of the formal garden: an elaborate sculpted hedge that formed an arch overhead. ‘We’re really doing this?’ she whispered. ‘We’re really walking into the lion’s den?’ She sounded nervous now that they were here. Not even Gran would have dared enter an Oliver occasion uninvited.
Joan was scared too. The last time she’d been in a place full of Olivers, Edmund had entertained himself by having her fight for her life. She’d had a knife, and his brother Lucien had had a sword. Joan touched her side unthinkingly. The fight hadn’t happened in this timeline, but she still half expected to find a scar where the stab wound had been. If Nick hadn’t stopped the fight, she’d have died that night.
As they entered the garden, Joan looked around for Aaron’s familiar silhouette. The space was disturbingly maze-like; the hedge walls ranged from waist to neck high.
‘Let’s hope he’s not wearing one of these huge masks,’ Tom murmured as they passed a man in a horned helmet that covered his eyes and hair.
