Her ladies followed as Elisabeth left her rooms and made her way through quiet nighttime hallways to the soiree, held in another ballroom on the opposite side of the palace from the formal party. Maxi’s festivities were in full swing, and there was something soothing about the chaos—all hookah smoke and Champagne giggles and people talking with their hands. Short skirts, experimental fashions, women with secrets in the arch of an eyebrow, men with questions in the turn of a lip. There were men in sailor suits manning the door with their midriffs showing. A man in a full beard and yellow ball gown swept through the center of the room.

And no one was staring at Elisabeth.

The freedom of it was intoxicating. She felt like dancing on a table. With no one telling her what to do, no one explaining another rule. In fact, no one here was behaving as if they were at court at all. No bowing. No formalities. Maxi had released an entire room of people from court’s invisible, ever-tightening bonds.

The room was full of tapestries depicting scenes from Paris, London, the Alps. Between them, pearl-colored statues of nude women reached to the heavens or stared into space. It was a very Maxi place to hold a party. It said something about him, about the depths behind his rakish grins, the sharp wit. It wasn’t just a party. It was a portal to another world. To Maxi’s internal world, perhaps.

As Elisabeth moved through the room, soaking it in, she felt she understood him in a new way.

“We should go back,” one of her ladies-in-waiting said, hesitant, from behind her. But another spotted a famous pianist, and Elisabeth was delighted when they scattered toward him, still near her but no longer attentive. She leaned over the piano and let the music—so much more exciting than anything she’d heard before—wash over her. How alive she felt here, how much more herself against a backdrop of experimental music instead of a waltz.

Then, in her ear, a familiar voice, the tickle of hot breath on her neck. “Are you having fun?”

Maxi. It was shocking how well he fit there, how the room lit him up from the inside, how the shadows added depth to his eyes, definition to his jaw. He was handsome, she realized. She’d not noticed before. The moonlight, the lantern light, his casual necklace made of shells, the shocking expanse of chest—this was Maxi truly unbuttoned, unperforming, for the first time since she’d met him.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t invite that creepy priest.”