Chapter 29 #2
“I know,” he groans again. “It’s just…different than how I expected it to be.”
Marcella can relate—somewhat, at least.
A realization dawns on her then. “You anticipated this though, didn’t you? It’s the real reason you decided to cast an illusion for your mask. So you could change its appearance when necessary.”
He confirms the conjecture with the mix of guilt and mischief brimming in his eyes. He laughs, the sound so soft. “Don’t mistake me—I hoped to be wrong about needing to use it.”
Marcella shakes her head, a pointed smirk sweeping her lips. “Clever, clever boy.”
“I’m beginning to feel less clever by the minute,” he grumbles as a counterpoint.
He glances toward the ballroom floor and she takes the free moment to study Gray.
Truthfully, this conversation is perhaps the most boyish she has ever seen him behave.
She can’t recall a time where she’s ever heard him grumbling so petulantly.
It makes her wonder how often Lyra has seen this side of Gray—if it is a side of himself he usually only reveals to her.
How often he chooses to show it. What it means that he is allowing Marcella to see it.
Suddenly—distractingly—she realizes he still hasn’t pulled away from her, and their bodies are flirting with the possibility of touching.
His chest is no more than a hand’s length away from her, and at the thought, she remembers how right it had felt when she was roving her hand along the muscles composing that chest. Then—quite ignorantly, she can admit—her eyes flick to Gray’s hand, still cupped around an empty glass.
Her body remembers what that hand felt like formed around the curve of her hip next.
How electric his touch was to her senses.
She glances at his lips, that hungry curiosity to know how he would kiss her rushing through her once more. Would he be tender, similar to how he always speaks to her? Or would he be ravenous, desperate? Would he—
She clamps down on the line of thought, shaking her head forcefully against the path her mind has wandered to.
Goddess’s tears—what is wrong with her? Has she suddenly grown fond of masochism or something?
She desperately needs another drink. And to find a way to enjoy this party without Gray Nightenjoy by her side—even if that makes her the world’s shittiest date.
Which means…
She needs to find Kiran.
Having arrived at a decision she finally feels good about, she taps Gray’s chest—drawing his full attention back onto her—and makes to walk away. “Well, try not to join their ranks by the end of the night, yeah?”
She moves, yet he catches her hand, holding it in place against his chest while his own hand falls flat atop it. “Where are you going?”
“To get another drink.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” she responds too quickly. “I” —she clears her throat— “I can escort myself.”
Even through the illusion of his mask, she can see the disappointment in his eyes. He drops his voice to nothing more than a soft murmur. “Marcella…” He says it like a question and a plea. A demand and a request.
A thousand other words are wrapped around that one utterance. That one breathy spill of her name from his lips.
“Please, Gray,” she whispers back. “Don’t.”
He still holds her hand in place—his skin warm against hers—and their bodies remain so close, Marcella can feel the sensation of them being pressed together like a phantom touch, a beautiful mirage of that night at the inn.
He steps closer, swallowing that final sliver of space between them.
His eyes hold hers in a way that makes her knees feel weak.
Yet she does not allow herself to buckle—not even a little.
Instead, she lifts her chin to meet his gaze as he stares down at her with so much—something—coursing behind his eyes.
Gods, when he looks at her like that, she feels so confused. How can he look at her that way while also not wanting her? Not claiming her for himself with the same amount of passion she can visibly see simmering in his eyes?
What about her is missing for him to actually take her as his?
“Please,” he whispers, pressing the unspoken issue further, dropping his forehead to hers.
“Just let me explain everything to you.” He lifts his thumb to her cheek and sweeps it tenderly across the exposed skin just below her mask.
She leans into the touch, realizing her heart both shreds and swells at the tenderness of it.
She feels his breath on her lips. “I’m not above begging.
” They are so closely pressed together that if someone were to walk by, they may have thought Gray and Marcella were two lovers sharing a passionate kiss off the dancefloor, stealing a moment in a crowded room for themselves.
The offer hangs between them like a weight on a balancing scale, waiting to see which way the tides will turn.
Marcella wants to know—is practically desperate to understand—Gray’s reasonings for why he said no to her that night at the inn.
And here he is, offering to tell her. It should be so simple: she should say yes, and she should hear what Gray has to say.
Yet feelings are many things, and simple is seldom one of them.
Or maybe feelings are incredibly simple, and it is the vessel making them complicated.
Regardless, all Marcella knows is that she should hear Gray out, and yet for whatever reason, she just…
can’t. Call it pride, self-preservation, or sheer ignorance, the truth remains: hearing him say the words aloud will make it all the more real, and Marcella—though cowardly and childish as it is—simply isn’t ready to face the full weight of its reality.
Especially not right now, at this lavish ball filled with sharp eyes and sharper ears.
So despite the ache cracking her chest apart, she turns away from his touch, stepping back from the warmth of his body and putting space between them once more. “I’m sorry,” she rasps. “But I can’t justify any reason being good enough for why the person I chose didn’t choose me back.”
Even through his mask, Marcella can see his face crumble. He reaches for her, a desperation to the movement. “Marcella, please…”
She doesn’t let him finish before waltzing away, her hand finally coming free of his; her heart aching more and more with each and every step she takes away from him.
And though it hurts, she doesn’t let herself stop putting distance between them because she knows her worth. She knows she is deserving of a person who, despite whatever barriers they may face, chooses her first, no matter how difficult that may be.
When she reaches the drink table, she finds herself missing Lyra with an added layer of ferocity. She always had the best advice—always listened without judgment.
Marcella made two friends that felt like forever when entering Bathara. Ones who quickly became as much a part of her heart as anyone she had ever known back home.
Now, she is alone, potentially having lost those two people forever, after already having to say a permanent goodbye to Griff.
There are no words to adequately describe what that knowledge does to her. So she doesn’t even try.
Instead, she chooses to drink.