The Imperial Palace didn’t invite guests.
It devoured them.
Elena Vance stepped through the gilded double doors of the Grand Ballroom and felt dozens of pairs of eyes fixating on her like a school of piranha sensing blood in the water.
She had dressed well enough for this meeting, in deep emerald velvet that left nothing to be desired.
A high collar, severe lines, no jewelry save for her mother’s ivory comb and a single signet ring on her right hand.
The look of a banker attending a funeral, of someone who came to demand, rather than to give.
Her shadow was swallowed by Kael’s imposing silhouette behind her.
He wore the livery of a free retainer, black on black, save for the absence of any house crest.
Three days of practicing with a serving tray had gone into this meeting.
Not a guard.
A servant.
Inconspicuous.
The ballroom was huge, with chandeliers the size of carriages, tapestries that could have predated the empire, and a polished floor that reflected the undergarments of noblewomen walking in stately circles around the room.
But it was the people in this room that Elena was more interested in.
Dukes and duchesses in their finest house colors, generals in their medals, merchant princes in ill-fitting velvets, and archbishops in white and gold, calculating the worth of every donation not yet given.
Elena moved through the ballroom with the precision of a knife through hot butter.
She did not pause to greet anyone, did not curtsey, but walked to the edge of the ballroom, found a pillar shadowed enough for Kael to hide in, and paused.
The ballroom’s seating chart was a subtle hierarchy, with the Emperor’s table on a dais at the front, seating twenty.
Behind them, rings of importance, all the way down to the very back and the edge of the ballroom, where the children’s table was located.
It was a long table, near the servants’ entrance.
Elena spotted the familiar shock of white-blond hair at the end of the children’s table, closest to the servants’ entrance.
The young man sat hunched, his chair turned almost entirely to the wall, as if even the other misfits at this end of the table considered him unworthy of a view on the proceedings.
He was twenty-one, but he could have passed for twenty.
Thin, almost painfully so, with pallid skin and dark honey-colored hair that swept across his forehead in lazy clusters, framing a face that suggested he hadn’t seen a valet in months.
His suit was hand-me-down imperial livery, two sizes too big, the cuffs frayed where it dragged across his knuckles.
He was eating.
Not the food, which lay mostly untouched on the plate.
Small, dark pieces of bread that he tore off and chewed with the mechanical precision of a man on autopilot, his vacant, violet eyes staring into the middle distance.
Elena observed him for twenty minutes.
During which time, three servants “accidentally” spilled wine near his table, a minor baroness walked by and loudly “commented” on the “bastard stench” wafting from his direction, and a group of academy students, one of whom was Cassius Ashford, with his left arm in a sling, pointed and laughed at him from the second ring of the ballroom.
Lucien Asmodeus didn’t react.
Elena saw something others didn’t.
The way his eyes tracked the movements of the servants; the way his fingers twitched at the sound of certain names; the calculating way he placed his chair against the wall, not to hide himself, but to have an eye on the whole room.
He wasn’t hiding.
He was observing.
Gathering information.
Elena couldn’t tell what kind.
But she knew something else.
She could see how hungry he was.
Elena walked up to the children’s table, and the conversation around Lucien’s end of the table stopped.
A disgraced baron, a fallen merchant, a foreign dignitary who had invested in the wrong succession candidate, and the seventh prince, whose illegitimacy had left him with nothing but scornful whispers at courtly functions, stared at her in shocked silence.
“Lady Vance,” one of them said, “the one with the demon guard.” “Not a demon,” Elena said smoothly, without breaking eye contact, “just a good investment.” She paused near Lucien’s table, ignoring the stares.
The young man didn’t look up from his bread, tearing another strip from the stale loaf and chewing it slowly.
He made no remark on the intrusion, not even as Elena pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the table.
“That bread is stale,” Elena said.
Lucien’s jaw paused, then he looked up.
For the first time since Elena had arrived at his table, his eyes weren’t vacant.
They were focused, calculating, a dark violet that made her think of a cold winter twilight.
“It is what we have, Lady Vance,” he gave a tight smile.
“We cannot invest in fresh loaves.” The sarcastic remark was full of a bitter edge, accentuated by the expectant look in his eyes that Elena had encountered a thousand times in her lifetime.
The look of someone who is expected to invest, but doesn’t have anything to invest with.
Elena took a seat across from the young man and fixed her gaze on him.
“I would like to make you an offer for a business partnership,” she said.
It was the most out-of-character thing to say in the middle of this hushed ballroom, but apparently, the villainess could not restrain herself.
All eyes were on the Trash Prince as he received this unexpected proposition from one of the most powerful people in the nation.
“A partnership?” Lucien almost laughed out loud, but somehow restrained himself.
“With me?
The bastard prince?
The trash?
The boy who eats bread at the children’s table while his brothers play chess on the topic of who gets to inherit the empire?” His eyes finally met hers, and for the first time since Elena had arrived, Lucien saw something in her that was not empty despair.
He saw the calculating gaze of a businessman, cold and unfeeling, who weighed every potential asset on a chopping block.
“Are you mocking me, Lady Vance?
Because if you are, I would be in favor of ending this conversation promptly.
I have bread to eat.” “I am not mocking you,” Elena replied, reaching into her sleeve and withdrawing a card.
Except for the fact that it was a business card and not a calling card, and it had taken an hour of her afternoon to design and another hour to print in the Academy’s printer with Kael’s help, it was a lovely card.
It read: VANCE PORTFOLIO HOLDINGS Investing in Undervalued Assets Inquiries Welcome Elena tossed the card onto the table in front of Lucien.
The young man frowned.
“What is this?” “An offer,” Elena said.
“An offer?” “It is not a marriage proposal, an alliance, or a thank you for allowing me to live.
It is an offer of partnership.
I am offering you my resources, patronage, and training in exchange for your…” Elena paused as Lucien stared at the card in his hands.
“Investment,” Elena finished.
“Investment in what?” Elena did not answer immediately.
Instead, she examined the look in Lucien’s eyes and saw that he understood what she was saying.
A slow, tight smile formed on her lips as she replied, “Your potential.
You are an S-class, dressed in rags and pretending to be garbage for twenty-one years while watching these people here,” she gestured vaguely at the ballroom, “calculate what would be the best way to reinvest their principal.
Because that is all you are to them, isn’t it?
The principal.
The investment.
The thing that needs to be reinvested to make more profit.
But if someone offered to give you the leverage needed to make that investment,” her smile widened, “you could completely revamp their portfolio, couldn’t you?
That is what I think.
I think that no one has ever looked at you and seen anything more than garbage.
Because garbage is something that gets thrown away, isn’t it?” Something like a sob tore from Lucien’s throat.
His knuckles whitened around the edges of the business card.
“You are insane,” he said.
“Am I?” Elena asked as she stood.
“Come to the east gate of the Academy tomorrow at midnight if you want to know for sure.
Tell your friends not to follow you, or they will have a lot more than bread to swallow.” Elena turned and stalked out of the ballroom, leaving the Trash Prince frozen at the table with the business card still in his shaking hands.
Behind her, the Trash Prince stared, fixated on what she left on the table, the words smudged in his vision.
Everything was clear for the first time in weeks.
The emptiness in his chest swelled out into something more, something bigger: a hope, a determination.
Something wet dripped down his cheek.
[TICK: State dinner attended.
Asset #2 identified.
Offer extended.
Children’s table politics observed.]