self-important mules and parading peacocks. All these proud airs, these marauding vanities, self-interested snakes tucked behind placid chins. They’re so used to their safe, fabricated lives padded thick with old money. They have no idea what life is truly like. They would not survive a single day alone on the streets of Russia. I doubt they’d survive a day on the streets of this polite country. I tilt my head, feigning interest in the insipid chattering of the penguins before me, even as I glance past their shoulders, scanning the crowd discreetly.
The one person that needs to be here. She’s not fucking here.
She’s been avoiding me all week, a bend to my plans. She can’t suffer if she’s not around to watch the show. Did she manage to get out of coming here tonight?
No, Edgar would have ensured she come. I casually mentioned that I hadn’t seen her all week and suggested that perhaps his wife did not like me. Then to twist the knife, I implicitly stated to Edgar that I’d be most disrespected if she didn’t attend. I saw the way Edgar’s eyes widened, I heard the way he rushed to assure me that Alena would be here.
I sense eyes on me, the hairs rise on my arms the way they do when I know she’s watching.
She’s here. Where? I scan the crowd.
Something tugs my gaze up the red-carpeted stairs to the figure at the top.
I cannot breathe.
I thought I knew what beauty was.
I was wrong.
I stop hearing what the man next to me is saying. I can’t hear anything except for my own heart beating in my ears and the soft strains of the violins as they start to sing a slow song.
She is a vision in a scarlet silk halter-neck gown that shimmers like firelight, swirling around her legs. Her hair is wild and haloed around her beautiful head, just the way I remember it. My eyes lock onto hers. I don’t see them widen—I am too far away for that—rather I sense they do. I sense the gasp that parts her lips. I can almost hear it in my ears. For this moment—the first moment in five years—I feel no rage. It falls away like the rest of this ballroom, as if it never was. That hateful beast, my constant companion for five long eternities, has been silenced. I can see straight into her, her dreamer’s heart, her hopeful soul.
She begins to walk down the grand marble staircase that curls like a horn shell from the second floor to the ballroom floor. I see flashes of her slim leg peeking out through a slit of her dress. Underneath my feet, the earth moves. I find myself walking towards her, drawn to her, the insignificant crowd parting around me. She reaches the bottom of the stairs. I am almost to her. Her eyes call to me, those eyes that always remind me of leaves as the season turns to autumn. I feel something inside me…turning.
Someone cuts in front of me, blocking my view of her. Our eye contact is broken, whatever spell I was under shatters. Edgar. Edgar is the one who steps between us. Now he’s telling her to dance with him. Not asking. Telling her, as if he is entitled to it.
Thunder rolls across my heart again. The hatred wakes from its temporary slumber as he puts his hand on her. As he pulls her in close. Over his shoulder, she catches my eye. There is something like disappointment, like sorrow in them, before she is swept away.
The bastard’s done it again.
My hands clench at my sides, my shoulders tense around my ears. I have to work to keep my breathing stable.
“Dimitri!” a sweet voice calls. “There you are.” At once Emily is by my side, her presence feeling like a thorn, the sharp guilt as she gazes up at me with such longing. I can sense the deep, aching loneliness in her. I can see how it gnaws at her, stripping her down to her desperate bones. I hate it. Perhaps because it feels too…familiar. I slap the guilt aside. Emily and I are using each other. Even if she doesn’t realise it herself.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Emily says, almost shyly.
I track Alena by her wild hair as she’s dragged around the dance floor by that graceless oaf. At every turn, her eyes latch onto mine, a prey watching her predator.
“Dance with me,” I command. Before Emily can say yes, or