" If one approaches you without my permission, I will freeze the wine in their stomachs."
"They smell like Auntie Genevieve, Papa," Seraphina whispered back, wrinkling her nose. "Too much lavender. It hides the stinking smell."
Kaelus's lips twitched with a dark, fiercely proud smirk.
They proceeded down the grand staircase, an impenetrable island of black ice cutting through a sea of glittering silk.
Suddenly, a massive flourish of blaring, golden trumpets echoed from the far end of the ballroom, demanding absolute attention.
"His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Valerius the Fourth!" the herald bellowed.
The crowd immediately parted, dropping into deep, sweeping bows and curtsies.
At the far end of the hall, standing on a raised dais beneath a canopy of spun gold, the Emperor appeared.
He was young, perhaps in his early thirties, and possessed the kind of striking, golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty that bards wrote nauseatingly repetitive songs about.
