Chapter 52

Vivienne took her hand off his arm before I reached the bottom.

She did it beautifully. She lifted her white glove from his sleeve as though she had only been keeping it warm for someone, and stepped back a single pace into the crowd, and smiled up at me with her sapphire eyes. It was a lovely smile. It cost her nothing at all; she had a drawer full of them.

“Luna,” she said. “How well you look.”

I came down the last six steps on my own. Caspian was still standing where he had stopped, under the chandelier, and the whole hall waited to see which of us would move first.

Then he held out his arm.

I looked at it. Black cloth. On the side of his first finger, a grey thread of ink that no valet had ever scrubbed out.

I took it. Not because I forgave him. Luna stands at the King’s side at the Sapphire Ball—Lyra had told me so in January—and I had come down those stairs to stand there. Where I put my hand was the custom’s business. What it meant was mine