Impervia made a noise that was somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “I always planned to live a long life, but I never expected to get old. If I had, maybe I would have managed to fall into adventure when I was young. Instead I end up an old spider tied to her own web.”

“Is that where you got your taste in bed play?” Jean-Claude asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That wasn’t an offer.”

“My apologies,” he said, and bowed his head over his hand.

“It wasn’t a rejection, either.” She slid off her chair and was hardly any taller sashaying toward him than she had been sitting down. She was a tiny woman, though by no means weak. She kept up a daily regimen that would have knackered someone half her age, and her bloodshadow could rip a man to pieces or reduce him to a soul smudge with barely a thought.

She stood before him arms crossed, one bronze leg peeking out from the slit in her skirt. “There’s elderroot in the green bottle,” she said. It was an aphrodisiac of notable potency. “If you’re sailing off for months, I get your undivided attention tonight.”

Now, that was an invitation.

CHAPTER

Four

The last time Isabelle had been in the Royal Agonesium for the Deranged it had been closed off and oppressive, covered in grime, dimly lit, and muted by cobwebs. Tonight it was bright, airy, and clean. L’impératrice had given the building and a large endowment to Isabelle’s friend Gretl, a superlative surgeon, to turn it into a medical school.

This royal endorsement had the effect of providing Gretl and her apprentice, Darcy, with more prospective students than she could reasonably handle. L’impératrice would be her first student, along with some clayborn students brought in on merit, and a cohort of Sanguinaires called the Succoring Shadows, who had dedicated themselves to using their bloodshadows for healing, not harm. Isabelle, having been on the receiving end of more shadowburns than she cared to remember, still cringed at the thought.

Tonight, the hall was packed with comtes and ducs, the sugar on top of the upper crust. Sanguinaires dressed all in white to flaunt their bloodshadows were interspersed with a few Seelenjägers, including a huge man with the aspect of a boar and a woman who seemed to be half badger. There were also several silver-eyed Glasswalkers, or at least their espejismos, reflections that they’d cast through a mirror from wherever their bodies currently waited. The foremost Aragothic dignitary, one Duque Mendoza, captured Isabelle on the way in to convey regrets from the Crown that her former betrothed, Príncipe Julio, would be unable to attend.