Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from young adult fantasy Midnight Strikes by Zeba Shahnaz, out from Delacorte Press on March 14th.
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.
“Have we met before, my lady?”
Well, now I know my dream-self gave him too much credit. “You promised me a dance weeks ago, Vuestra Alteza Real. At the Tarrazas ball.”
Jacinthe’s eyes gleam as she leans forward. She has never retained or passed on information that did not interest her, and nothing about me has ever been interesting. Until now. “Why, Anaïs, you didn’t tell us you had danced with the prince.”
“Because we didn’t.”
“Didn’t we?” Leo furrows his dark brows. He really doesn’t remember.
“No, señor. I’m certain.” I wish I’d forgotten about the dance card incident, too. But I am, apparently, getting very good at not forgetting the things I should. “I believe that means you’re in my debt.”
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Midnight Strikes
Paloma gasps. Jacinthe stands back, considering me more carefully than she ever has.
For his part, Leo smiles again, and it looks just like the one in my dreams, quick as lightning and just as dazzling. “We can’t have that, can we.”
For a second I think, We really, really can’t. Because if this is happening again, even in this form, then… then what if the rest of the dream wasn’t a dream? What if it really was a vision? What if—
This can’t be right. This isn’t happening.
But I don’t have time to panic. I don’t even have time to think. My hand is deliciously pliable in Leo’s as he guides me to the dance floor. The whispers around the ballroom that I dreamed up earlier this afternoon echo now: Who is that? Who told her red is her color? Doesn’t she look Proensan?
Partway through the sedate number, Leo makes a noncommittal noise in his throat. “You don’t seem to be enjoying this as much as you should.”
I suppose I don’t know how to. I have never been so naive and stupid and reckless before.
He continues. “Perhaps you now wish you’d called in your debt for something more than a dance.”
I almost freeze in his grip.
“What are you thinking about, Doña Anaïs?” His voice is low and almost sinuously silky in my ear. “A ballroom as bright as this is no place for dark secrets. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Obnoxious as he is, something about the sound of his voice triggers an avalanche of visions again. Fire and smoke and ash. The screams of the dying. The uncanny, gaping silences of the dead. And in the center of it all, Leo immovable before me. Somehow the only solid thing in the world.
I don’t understand how I can hold both versions of the ballroom in my head at once. The real and the fake. The now and the nightmare. This is not a balancing act that people are meant to survive with their sanity intact. And it is definitely not something I should be confessing to the prince. But the same overwhelming instinct that sent me running to his side from unknown intruders is building in me now. As if something terrible will happen if I don’t do something. If I don’t try to reach him, right here, right now.
“I had a vision. Of the Alcázar getting attacked. At midnight tonight. The ballroom collapsing. People dying.”
For the first time I’ve ever seen, Leo holds himself like an actual courtier. He schools himself into a determinedly diplomatic expression. “Have you had… visions… like this before?”
“Oh, God, no. No, but it was so… it was so real.” My voice cracks open, as if the memories have been written on my skin, my tongue, and I can’t hold them in any longer. “And then I woke up, and it was this afternoon somehow—”
“You woke up,” he repeats.
“Yes, technically, b-but I don’t think it was just a dream. I saw you wearing this exact coat. You remembered me. From the dance card incident. We danced here. You took me to Mirror Garden and… and then the ballroom went up in flames and people with rifles stormed in and killed the survivors. And I—I’m sorry, I just… have a horrible feeling about all of this. Whatever this even is.”
Leo’s burning eyes slide to me again. Only now, they seem terribly and piercingly blank.
I don’t know why I’m surprised.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
My mouth parts in an O of shock.
“I—I don’t know. I just… you asked what I was thinking about.” You beneath the burning arch. Your screams as the people you risked your life to save were murdered. Your choking gasps in my arms. “You said you wanted to know.”
“And you couldn’t bear to confess your delusions to people who actually know you.”
“Perhaps I hoped you could do something about them.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You would have to be pretty desperate,” he observes, “to think I could save you.”
The dance ends on a glorious chord. We break apart with the music, but do not applaud the orchestra with the other dancers. He’s staring at me as intently as I stare at him. I am suddenly very aware that we are in the middle of the dance floor, and half of the Ivarean court is watching us still. Waiting to see how this ends.
It has to end.
“It’s almost midnight,” says the prince.
What? Already?
The only thing I can do is try to salvage this second chance with the prince. The way Maman would push me to. The way Papa would expect me to. “Alteza, I must beg your forgiveness. I swear I didn’t mean to disturb your night with my delusions of doom.”
Even when banked, the embers of his gaze are deceptively warm on my skin. “Do you know, sometimes I think we’ve been doomed for a long time.”
Dread prickles in the pit of my stomach.
“Till next time, then, Doña Anaïs.”
I don’t know if he means the next function of the season, or something else. But he turns on his heel and abandons me as easily as he first swept me up.
The orchestra picks up speed and intensity for the next dance, and the whole of the Ivarean court forgets the unsettling episode they just witnessed. Gladly they throw themselves into the frenzy of the moment, breathless and sweat-slicked with exhilaration.
It’s not yet midnight, it’s not even morning, but I feel like no matter what happens in the next few seconds, everything is ending. For me. For my life. For the dreams I didn’t know I had but sense that I’ll never hold in my hands.
Soon, all too soon, come the bells.
The grandes burst into cheers directed at the raised dais. Just as they did in the vision, the Cardonas rise to meet the crushing vehemence of Ivarea’s celebrations. This time, Leo is with them.
I send up a prayer to any deity or saint or fairy that could be listening.
Please let me have lost my mind tonight. Please let me just have ruined my life, not ended it. Please let me be wrong.
Goosebumps erupt on my arms. They tingle so urgently that I feel my skin trying to rip off my bones.
Papa’s spell. The blessing. It’s trying to protect me from bodily harm, but—
Then come the explosions.
With them, the screaming.
Again.
Excerpted from Midnight Strikes, copyright © 2023 by Zeba Shahnaz.
