The main hallway led out into a grand ballroom. Although grand really wasn’t the right word for the enormous space, which served as the junction for the three wings of the mansion. It featured a golden parquet floor, tiled here and there with marble, granite, and sheets of hammered bronze. Chandeliers dangled from the ceiling.

Some glowed with rubies and diamonds. Others burned with garnets and topaz. A staircase that was several hundred feet wide lay at the opposite end of the ballroom, its pristine scarlet carpet stretching up to the second floor and beyond.

More than three hundred of Mab Monroe’s closest business associates talked and laughed and drank on the ballroom floor, their clusters and cliques not even coming close to filling the massive space. They reminded me of dolls that might populate a child’s playhouse.

Pretty and polished with fake smiles that stretched their painted, plastic faces to the breaking point. But I looked beyond the elegant veneer of the people and furnishings.

Despite the rich sophistication on display, I noticed other things, things that weren’t as nice as they appeared at first glance.

Like the giants circulating throughout the ballroom.

Given the platters of champagne, caviar, and quail’s eggs they supported on their enormous hands, you might have thought them nothing more than waiters. But I knew what they were really here for—crowd control, in case folks got stupid and drunk enough to start turning on each other. I imagined Mab Monroe wouldn’t cotton to a couple of tipsy elementals deciding to stage a magical duel in her ballroom.

That’s how elementals usually fought, by flinging their raw magic at each other, until one person succumbed to the other’s power. When two elementals clashed, the inevitable loser could suffer everything from catching Fire, to getting encased in Ice, to having her heart turned to Stone, or even being flayed alive by the very Air she breathed. Depending, of course, on the type of elemental she was fighting. And this wasn’t even counting all the other folks who had talents for things like metal, water, and electricity.

Overall, elementals’ duels were a quick, nasty, painful way to die, which is why I never engaged in them. Killing the other person first was what mattered to me. Not old-fashioned, outdated, useless concepts like honor and duels. Codes of conduct were for overconfident fools.

Five, ten, twenty… I count almost thirty giants in all, more than enough to control even the unruliest crowd.

None of them were carrying weapons, but then again, they didn’t need to. One good blow from a giant’s fist would break almost anything—especially alcohol-soaked jaws and egos.