Music filled the ballroom like perfume-sweet, elegant, and heavy enough to suffocate. The Prince's hand rested at Lady Josephine's waist, their waltz the crown of the evening. Yet his gaze was elsewhere.
Across the shining floor, beyond the swirl of blue silk and candlelight, the girl in the blue mask had turned toward the door. She moved quickly, as if the walls themselves might swallow her if she lingered.
"Your Highness?" Josephine asked, smiling up at him.
But he had already stopped dancing. The music faltered around them as the heir to the throne stepped back, his expression unreadable. Every head turned. Whispers bloomed like ivy along the marble walls.
"Edward?" the Queen said sharply from her chair, but he did not hear her. He was already walking—no, running—across the ballroom floor.
The King's face hardened. "Continue the music," he commanded. "My son is… indisposed."
Violins stuttered, then swelled again, masking the murmurs. To smooth the awkwardness, the King himself rose and invited a startled duchess to dance. A viscount, seizing the moment, approached Josephine with a deep bow. Her heart ached, but she accepted, her perfect smile concealing the sudden hollow in her chest.
Lily did not look back. She moved through the crowd like a ghost, her heart beating so loudly she thought it might betray her. Every door looked the same. The palace's corridors were a maze of marble and gold, endless and echoing. She needed air.
The scent of roses drew her toward a side passage, where a glass door stood half-open to the night. She slipped through it into the gardens.
Outside, the cool wind kissed her skin. The moon hung high, bright enough to paint every hedge and fountain in silver. White roses glowed against the darkness, their petals trembling with dew. It was a dream made of light—and yet Lily could not breathe.
Behind her, she heard footsteps.
"Wait," a voice called.
She turned. The Prince stood beneath the archway, his breath quick, his golden mask askew. He looked both magnificent and terrible in the pale light, a figure carved of power and something darker.
"Your Highness," she managed, her voice barely a whisper. "You should return to the ball."
"I could not," he said softly, stepping closer. "Not when you were leaving."
Lily backed away, her fingers tightening around her skirt. "You mistake me for another, sir. I am no one—"
"On the contrary," he interrupted, his eyes fixed on her. "You are the only one."
She shook her head. "Please. Let me go."
But he was already too near. The garden was silent but for the rustle of leaves and the faint, distant hum of the orchestra.
"Why hide?" he murmured. "You walk into my mother's ball, dressed like a dream, and expect to vanish?"
"I had no right to be there," she said. "I should never have come."
For a heartbeat, he seemed to soften. "And yet you did. Tell me your name."
When she did not answer, his smile faltered. "Tell me," he repeated.
Still, silence. The breeze stirred her hair, carrying the scent of lilac between them.
Lily turned to run, but he caught her wrist—not roughly, but with the certainty of a man who had never been denied anything in his life.
The world tilted. The laughter and music from the ballroom seemed impossibly far away.
"Please," she whispered again, her voice cracking. "You don't understand."
The moon shone brighter, cruelly illuminating everything: the prince's shadow, her trembling hands, the roses bending beneath the wind.
He released her then, but the damage was done—the illusion of safety gone.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, though the words sounded strange in his mouth. "I didn't mean to frighten you."
Lily stared at him, her chest rising and falling. "Then let me go."
For a long moment, he only looked at her. The mask hid half his face, but not the conflict in his eyes. He was a man torn between desire and the realization of his own power.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was softer. "You have my word, I will not follow."
She took a step back, then another. Her heel caught on the edge of the path, and she stumbled, catching herself against the stone edge of a fountain. Her mask loosened, falling into the water with a faint splash.
The Prince froze.
In the moonlight, her face was bare—pale as snow, luminous as glass, framed by hair so fair it shimmered. Her eyes, blue and frightened, met his.
Something shifted between them—something Lily could not name. Awe, sorrow, regret.
He reached out as if to touch her cheek, but stopped. His hand trembled. "Forgive me," he said again, voice thick. "I should not have come."
And then he turned away, walking back toward the palace with quick, uneven strides.
Lily stood in the silence he left behind. Her knees gave way, and she sank to the ground beside the fountain. The roses swayed gently, their perfume too sweet.
She pressed a hand to her lips, trembling. The night that had begun with music and dreams had turned hollow. Whatever innocence she had carried into that ballroom was gone, stolen not by an act but by the weight of what might have been.
From the palace, she could still hear the orchestra. The music was bright, full of laughter and life. She wondered if anyone had noticed her absence—or his.
The mask drifted in the fountain, its blue silk darkening in the water. Lily watched it until the ripples stilled, her reflection staring back at her: a girl neither maid nor lady, caught forever between two worlds.
A single tear fell, striking the water.
She rose at last, gathering her skirts, and slipped away into the shadowed garden paths. The night closed around her, carrying her secret with it.
Inside, the Queen sat in her high-backed chair, her fan motionless. The King's laughter filled the room as he danced, the courtiers pretending not to have seen his son's abrupt departure. Only Josephine's eyes, wide and glistening, searched the crowd for the man who had left her mid-step.
"Where has he gone?" she whispered to her partner, the Viscount.
"His Highness?" The man shrugged lightly. "Who can say? Perhaps some matter of state."
But Josephine knew better. She smiled for the sake of propriety, though her heart tightened with a premonition she could not name.
When the dance ended, the Prince had not returned. The Queen leaned toward the King, murmuring something that made his jaw tighten. Yet even she—composed, calculating—felt unease coil within her. She had seen the direction of her son's gaze before he fled.
It was not Josephine he had been looking at.
Outside, the moon climbed higher. The garden was still, save for the soft sound of footsteps fading into the night. Lily walked without direction, guided only by the need to escape—escape the palace, the music, the man who could ruin her with a word.
She would not remember how she reached the street, only that when she did, the cobblestones gleamed like silver tears beneath her feet. Her coat was gone, her hair unpinned, her heart a hollow ache.
She did not know that behind her, a figure stood at the garden's edge, watching as she vanished into the fog.
The Prince's face was pale in the moonlight, his mask hanging loosely in one hand. He looked toward the fountain where her mask still floated, then toward the path where she had disappeared.
For the first time in his charmed life, the Crown Prince of Aldenbury felt the sting of guilt.
That night would never be spoken of again, yet it would echo through every corridor of the palace, and through Lily James's life, for years to come. The roses in the royal garden would bloom each spring, redder than before, as if they remembered.
And in the silence between heartbeats, London itself would begin to whisper—not of the girl in blue, but of the secret that would one day reach the throne.