Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White Read Free Book Online

than I’d have imagined possible. I look triumphantly at Finn, who is trying his hardest not to see me. Fine then. “So nice to meet you all. I think I should prefer a dance. Lord Ackerly, ladies.” I bob my head at them and turn on my heel.
    A shadow looms behind mine and I turn, expecting Finn to have followed me, a sharp word already on the tip of my tongue. I frown, confused. He hasn’t moved, but in some trick of the light from so many electric torches, his shadow stretches farther than the women’s, mingling with my own. He looks down as though he notices it, too, and his face is as white as a ghost.
    Ghost-faced spirit cursers. It’s a nasty phrase in Melenese, filled with hissing noises. Mama spanked me the one time I used it in front of her. That’s what Kelen always called them. Kelen, whom I should be laughing with right now instead of pretending at finery I despise.
    Ghost-faced spirit cursers. I hold the words on my tongue, relishing their feel as I march into the crowd, determined to stay the entire evening so that Finn sees me dancing and enjoying myself and knows he hasn’t won. Whatever his game is with the strangeness in the hotel, then the dress and the invitation, I have not gotten this far to be beaten by simple humiliation.
    Sweeping my filmy shawl over one shoulder, I smile as though I am the queen Ma’ati said I looked like. And, to my surprise, it works.
    First one man, then another, then another, asks me to dance. I am twirled and curtsied around the length and width of the room. Mama would be so proud to see the lessons I threw fits about attending paying off so well. I laugh and make charming remarks. Why yes , I do love tropical flowers, why no , not everyone from Melei is as fair of skin as I am and in fact I envy them their darker shade, why yes , I am here to further my studies.
    My partners are all charmed by my “exotic beauty.” I do not feel exotic. I feel strange and small and false, but I smile and smile and smile.
    This building is a wonder. Not even the cold night can get through the glass, fogged with steam. Everything glows in a bright haze of progress, and I think I understand why Albion assumes it does the rest of the world a favor by installing itself and its standards wherever it lands. If they can bring the hot, green glory of Melei here, why can they not bring the rigid structure and social “progress” of Albion there?
    One man, in his late teens with ginger hair and clever eyes, asks me to dance several times. I can tell he is pleased with his own deviance, happy to be the focal point of the room when I am on his arm. I don’t like being used that way, but he is pleasant and a good conversationalist.
    “And how do you find the school?” he asks.
    “Well, seeing as it’s always in the same location, it’s never very difficult to find.”
    He laughs, delighted, and I can’t help but really smile. “Are all women from your island this charming?”
    “Far more so, sir. That’s why they sent me here. I was a blight on the whole village.”
    “I cannot imagine you being a blight on anything.”
    Another man, this one older but indistinguishable from the last three with his well-trimmed mustache and slick-combed hair, taps my shoulder to cut in. I would rather turn them both down—I am out of breath and near dizzy from the heat and the spinning.
    “If I may?” the older gentleman asks. My ginger-haired suitor looks disappointed and oddly worried. But he nods.
    The new man smiles at me and I have the briefest impression of sharp teeth and sharper eyes, though when I shake my head to clear it his teeth are perfectly normal and there’s nothing remarkable about his face.
    “I’m afraid I have to steal her away now,” a soft voice says next to me. I turn to find a woman I’ve never met, young and fair with reddish curls, her dress shimmering silver. “My brother, Ernest, has been monopolizing her. He can be quite selfish that way. If you’ll excuse us,