Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 Read Free

excellent to see you up and about,” the cognate said briskly as she squeezed my hand in turn. “I wanted to call on you before, but Dorian banished me to the labs as soon as you were awake.”
    There was something familiar about her, the pretty round face and the mass of curls....
    “You were there,” I blurted. “When I—I changed. You were there, and you took me away.”
    Hattie’s smile broadened, and her agnate patted her arm with the kind of affection one would show to an excited pet. “You remembered,” she said. “I hope Perry Connor didn’t frighten you too much.”
    I shook my head. There had been too much pain for there to be any room for fear.
    “Well, enjoy your introduction.” She gazed adoringly up into Jean’s face. “I certainly loved mine.”
    “I expect cocktails and baccarat at your New Year’s party,” Jean said to Dorian over her head. “You know what I think about parties with neither gambling nor mixed drinks.” He frowned at a tray of champagne as a waiter passed by.
    “I’m sure that can be arranged,” Dorian said.
    They turned and left, the parade of greetings continued, each accompanied by varying degrees of enthusiasm or hostility. At times, I couldn’t even tell whether their congratulations were meant with sarcasm or sincerity.
    Nearly a quarter of the agnates had a cognate in tow. Some of these had the vacant look of Isabella. Others were silent but looked on with intelligent eyes. A few—a very few—spoke to one or both of us, but they all seemed uniformly, almost disturbingly content. I couldn’t help but wonder how old they all were—and whether that contentment came of themselves or was a happiness imposed by their agnates.
    It was like a bizarre kind of slideshow, a presentation of all my possible futures. My head swam, my stomach roiling. My hand on Dorian’s arm began to cramp with the force that I was clinging to him, and my other hand shook when I extended it to be briefly pressed by yet another dazzling agnate. The night had hardly begun, but all I could do was to look forward desperately to the end.
    But even when it did, I would be no less trapped, because I feared the futures themselves, not just the presentations of them, because one of them would be mine....
    Servants circulated with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. I took a flute of wine and drank it too quickly, snatching up a second when a waiter came near again and downing it just as fast. Under the sound of the orchestra, the drone of hundreds of conversations echoed through the room.
    As Dorian exchanged earnest observations with an older agnatic woman, two children came tumbling up the carpet between the adults, a serious-looking boy with a much younger girl. They stopped short as they realized that I stood in their way.
    I stared, my attention pulled from Dorian’s conversation. I hadn’t noticed any children in the crowd before, the press of adult bodies too great to see smaller ones between them. Somehow, their presence made the gathering more real—and yet more fantastically bizarre.
    Both children were astonishingly beautiful. The boy noticed my attention and smirked ingratiatingly under a shock of brown hair, his smile perfectly tuned with complete self-awareness as to its effect. He had his own tail suit, down to the white tie and the wingtip shoes, and he already carried traces of the shadowy authority of the adults and turned its full force on me.
    The little girl’s velvet skirt stood out like a perfect bell around her, so stiff with petticoats that it rustled with every motion. Her black hair hung in perfect ringlets under a bright purple tiara. Staring at me suspiciously, she rattled the dozen or so plastic beaded necklaces that she wore around her neck, but even that childlike motion was peculiarly, inappropriately elegant.
    “We’re going to climb that statue,” she announced, her tone edged with the contemptuous certainty that I would not dare to cross her.
    “Come