The ballroom of the Althorn Estate was a gilded cage of crystal and false laughter.
Two hundred candles burned in the chandeliers overhead, dripping wax onto the marble floors where silk shoes stepped carefully to avoid the puddles. The wine flowed from silver fountains. The roast boar turned on spits that required two men to operate. The music was a thin, polite strain of strings that no one listened to because everyone was too busy assessing who stood near the throne dais and who had been relegated to the shadows near the servants' corridors.
In the shadows, four men stood together.
