Midnight Strikes - Hardcover

Shahnaz, Zeba

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593567552 ISBN 13: 9780593567555

Verlag: Delacorte Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

In this explosive fantasy debut, a provincial girl must work with an infuriatingly handsome prince to escape a nightmarish curse that forces them to relive the same night over and over.

"The time-loop fantasy you never knew you needed, where the fairytale ball is bloody and Cinderella is the Final Girl."—Gina Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Violet Made of Thorns

Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.

The last thing Anaïs sees is fire, smoke, chaos . . . and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.

Not even when it happens again. And again. And again.

If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, Anaïs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court's gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It's up to Anaïs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zeba Shahnaz writes fantasy full of political intrigue, twisted romance, and a healthy dose of existential angst. A proud Pakistani American, she translated her love of storytelling into a graduate degree analyzing national identity, culture, and cinema in South Asia. She grew up in New Jersey, which she has yet to fully escape (though not because of a time loop). Midnight Strikes is her debut novel.

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I


Chapter One


One night. You just have to survive here one more night.

Unfortunately, for a Proensan nobody in the royal court of Ivarea, that’s easier said than done.

Tonight is the crown jewel of the social season, the most important party the provinces of Ivarea have ever seen: the celebration of four centuries of the Cardona dynasty’s reign. The Anniversary Ball is the opportunity my family has been waiting for ever since our people were first conquered by the Ivareans--the reason my parents dragged me seven hundred miles across the sea and over land to the capital. If they can defy the odds and arrange my marriage into a prominent courtly house, our family will be launched to the highest tier of Ivarean elite society. To a position of respect and power that our people, the Proensans, have not had since the Cardona conquest. This is a prize more than worth the cost of my future.

Or so I’m told.

Eight weeks ago, when I was first shoved through the grand double doors of the palace for my debut, I thought that the rigors of this historically grueling season would get easier to endure with time. I used to hope that each dazzling ball, each refined tea party, each perfunctory dance, would feel a little less like a living nightmare, because each one meant that the season was coming that much closer to an end. I hoped that each moment was bringing me that much closer to home.

But it never got easier. It never will get easier in a royal court that looks down on Proensans just because we’re Proensans, regardless of our titles or lands or wealth. And now that I’ve finally made it to the Anniversary Ball, I’m not at all sure I’ll make it out intact.

Tonight, I throw myself into the centers of gravity within the grand ballroom of the Alcazar Real de Marenca as earnestly as any of the hundreds of grandes from every corner of the kingdom also in attendance. Beneath shimmering chandeliers that float across the elaborately painted ceiling, ladies in voluminous gowns clash with lovers and enemies alike from behind fluttering fans, and gentlemen bearing ceremonial swords that have been passed down through storied bloodlines for centuries shout gaily to their fellows in privilege and glory. Each and every one of them is desperate to emerge at dawn with something--or someone--they didn’t have before, but then again, so am I. So I smile at them like I’m deranged and flirt with them until I feel sick. When the dancing begins in earnest, I even manage to snag a minuet with young Don Fernando Pelaez, who is everything I’m supposed to want in a future husband: well-connected, wealthy, a real Ivarean. He smiles at me as we take our places on the dance floor, which my foolish heart takes as a good sign.

Maybe this one will be different. Maybe this one will finally put me out of my misery. Maybe this one will look at me and not find me wanting.

“You look absolutely enchanting tonight, Dona Anais.”

Fernando twirls me by the arm, and the satin skirts of my gown flare out with me. My mother designed it to match the depths of my red opal locket, with gold and garnet beading down the bodice and a blood-red brocade underskirt. Contrary to what some of the grandes who dominate the capital might assume, I’m no stranger to overwrought ensembles, but I have never hated one more than this--less because of what it looks like, and more because of what it means for my family’s future. What that future will demand of me.

“And by the saints,” Fernando adds with a quicksilver grin that matches his celestially spangled waistcoat, “you’re a surprisingly great dancer.”

My lacquered lashes flutter as we trade steps like feints in a duel. “Why is that so surprising, Don Fernando?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t think you Proensans paid attention to dance crazes here in the capital.”

I bite down a grimace. To people like Fernando, who hail from the central heartland of the Ivarean peninsula in the province of Castara, us Proensans are not real Ivareans, not even two hundred years after we were absorbed into this kingdom. People on the peninsula see us as barely domesticated country bumpkins whose inclusion in elite Ivarean society makes for an amusing trifle at best and a bewildering insult to their culture and people at worst.

“What is it you think we do, then?” I challenge my partner lightly. “Lie around our farms all day and do nothing?”

Fernando leans down toward me, silvering the very air around us. “Well, I was going to say that you are too busy lying with your livestock, but I must admit, I like your version better.”

If he wasn’t forcing me around the dance floor, I would stumble and fall. The whole of the royal court could run me over without a second glance at the girl lost in the spill of satin below their feet. But we’re still dancing, face to incredulous face, and he seems wholly unmoved.

“Let me assure you, Don Fernando. My people do not lie with animals.” I offer him a rigor mortis smile. “Like pigs.”

Fernando waits for me to break character, to invite him to laugh with me, but I stare him down and do not yield. His grin disappears. Without its warmth for cover, his expression turns imperiously, pointedly blank.

I know that look. I know it better than the freckles on my face.

“Barbarians, the lot of you.”

From each cardinal direction, the Alcazar’s four clock towers begin to strike eleven. Even they cannot drown out my pulse as it thunders in my head. Fernando takes the opportunity to let me go and melts back into the crowd as easily as if the minuet didn’t happen at all. As if none of it mattered.

Because for him, it didn’t.

Ever since I was old enough to understand my family’s position, I haven’t asked for true love or even a grand romance--the stuff of poems and ballads, the relationships that nights like these are supposed to inspire. In my more optimistic moments, I imagined finding someone who could understand the pressures I bear and possibly share their burden. Someone who wouldn’t make me long too much for Massilie, my backwater hometown on the northern coast of Proensa, once I left it behind for a life on the peninsula.

But after the season began, what kept me going was the small, wild, stupid hope that I might manage to find someone here who sees me as worthy of respect. And every night, the grandes and courtiers who my parents nudge me toward wring that hope out of my heart. I thought that after eight weeks of failure, one more wouldn’t hurt.

I was wrong. It always hurts.

Around the ballroom, the royal court rejoices in the sound of the bells. After all, the night is just beginning, and it is yet full of possibilities untold, of destinies unmet.

At least, that’s what my mother believes.

She swans over moments after Fernando abandons me, positively beaming in her dove-gray taffeta gown. “The future duke of Varillo! How wonderful, Anais. Your father and I are thrilled!” From farther along down the ballroom, where he stands on the fringes of a group of rather grave-looking Galvaise grandes, my father inclines his head vaguely in our direction. “You must make sure to dance with the Pelaez boy again before the night is out.”

She’s feeding off this chaos, and here I am, getting quietly devoured by it. “I wouldn’t start planning the wedding just yet.”

Briefly taken aback, Maman drops her smile, revealing the contours of her cheekbones. The gesture lends her a strange, almost...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Delacorte Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593567552
• ISBN 13: 9780593567555
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland