the cold silhouettes of dark trees surrounding her. Images that would follow in the back of her mind forever.
“But sometimes,” she continued, “it feels like he’s still everywhere around me, watching. Waiting for me to…”
“To go back to him?” A harsh noise erupted from the back of his throat. “When you win, you’ll have no time to look back.”
“And if I don’t?”
Ever since she’d arrived in Glorian, everything had always been a when. An eventually. Never if. Confidence came with armor. She wore it the night she left Hellfire House, the day she seized the audition, and every moment on stage after, never taking it off. To never doubt meant she had nothing to fear. There was only one option: win.
She couldn’t afford to give doubt a voice.
Didn’t mean it never whispered.
“Win now. The rest will come later,” Demarco stressed. “Focus on what you do best, better than anyone else in this competition, and things will fall into place. Whatever happens after, we’ll figure it out.” Her eyes widened slightly as his shut tight. “You. I meant you…”
“You said we.” Her pulse raced.
With a groan, he looked up at the ceiling. “Unless you were thinking of leaving me in the dust after this town.”
He said it half-jokingly, his smile unsure. As if, for once, he couldn’t get a solid read on what was to come after.
After.
It was difficult to imagine a clear after for herself, but she knew this much: the prospect of one without Demarco already filled her with loneliness. In Glorian, they’d become many things to each other, but the friend she found in him surprised her most of all. Whatever this was, she couldn’t see herself leaving the city without it.
“This…” Kallia swallowed, her hand gliding up his arm. “For now, this stays between us.”
Demarco tilted his head at her touch. “Embarrassed to be seen with me?”
It wasn’t too long ago she’d scoffed those exact words at him, and she gave his shoulder a playful shove. “It’s good like this, when it’s just you and me.”
“Trust me, so many others saw this coming way before we did. We’ve honestly got nothing to—”
“Please.” Her breath wavered. “Only until the show’s over. Letting this go public would make everything that much harder, and you know it.”
A brief frown creased his features. As if he didn’t entirely believe her. But it disappeared in a smile, and she wondered if she’d imagined it as he curled her knuckles to his lips. “All right, no one will know.” He kissed her inner wrist. “For now.”
“Does this mean you’ll be my partner again?” she asked, suddenly still. “Be on stage with me?”
He dropped her wrist between them. “I don’t have magic, though. Not in the way I should, I’m not—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” Her temper flared. “It doesn’t matter. You’re my partner, which means I can’t do this without you.”
And I don’t want to.
It was strange to no longer feel those thorns of lies, coursing through her with excuses. Freer, lighter. Even he appeared just as struck by it, though it was far from the first honest conversation they’d ever had. Just the first without those last walls. The tallest, most impenetrable ones that were never built to fall, but had done so anyway.
“What do you have in mind?”
Her face shifted from sweet to sly as she leaned forward, sliding his hand to her waist in a familiar position. “Just follow my lead.”
With a snap of her fingers, the instruments lifted from the cases they’d lain in for too long, and began to play.
45
The night of the ball loomed nearer every day, the final performance of the show not too far behind. Daron ought to feel more flustered at how little time was left, but he couldn’t afford to slow down. Neither of them could.
“Again,” he said at the end of the song, swiping the sweat off his neck, the dampness reaching down his spine. He would’ve taken his shirt off, but they’d barely gotten through the routine the last time he did. There would be no props for their final act, no rules except that the contestants deliver one hell of a performance.
Naturally, Kallia chose a dance.
A complicated collection of movements on the sort of stage no other would dare cross.
Even in his performance days, Daron had never pushed himself so hard to hit every move right, nor had he ever been so distracted. Behind the doors of the Ranza Estate, even more so when they were in public. Everyone