Chapter 27 Even This #2
As I pace the hallway, I try all the doors.
Rather than crack them open and peer around, I use full force, intending to feign intoxication should I disturb anyone who cares enough to complain.
Better to appear disagreeable than sneaky.
I interrupt a couple in flagrante against dark bookshelves who don’t even bother to glance over.
I discover a room fitted with wall-to-wall glass cabinets of old tech.
I recognise gramophones, point-and-shoot cameras, typewriters and projectors amongst a panoply of wires, oblong-shaped items, and gleaming devices.
After a few more empty guest rooms, I hear muffled cursing behind the last door in this wing.
It’s a familiar voice, and my breath hitches.
I find Marlowe on the other side, one arm on an ornate dresser for balance whilst she leans down with the other. She’s trying, and failing, to hook an earring that’s fallen to the floor. She doesn’t look up.
“I said I just needed a minute, Dominik, for fuck’s sake.”
The door clicks behind me, and my throat is too dry to speak. She finally looks up, and nothing matters because our eyes meet and it’s like being punched in the chest.
Marlowe’s expression sags. She snaps up, gripping onto the dresser. Her mouth moves for a few seconds before she finds words. “What are you doing here?” It’s almost a whisper.
I want to touch her so badly it hurts. Instead, I sweep up the earring and place it by her hand.
She looks otherworldly. Her dress is a silvery gossamer material, diaphanous and pillowy, showing off her silhouette.
It perfectly offsets her dark skin, the gold that’s been dusted along her cheekbones, her temples, her chest. She looks like she belongs here, sweeping down these vast halls. It makes me feel sick.
Marlowe swallows hard and looks at the earring, palming it gently.
“Dominik gave me these to wear tonight—the whole outfit, in fact, but the dress is too small, and I can’t fucking bend in it.”
“I don’t care about the dress, Marlowe.”
She exhales shakily. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.”
“Please don’t let him see you here. He said—” She stops herself. “Just go, before someone sees.”
She smells like citrus. I hate it. A longing for the scent of pomegranate and lavender on her skin hits me like a maglev, and it’s this that snaps my patience; this that pushes me over the edge of the precipice.
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life here, miserable, with him?”
Marlowe flinches, but then her jaw tightens. She throws her head back rather than retreat, and I hate that I’m both proud of her and on the wrong side of this fight.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that he threatened you.”
Her shoulders sag.
“I heard the things he said to you. I wish you could have confided in me, but I get it, Marlowe, I do.”
Something ignites in her, gathering intensity quickly. “Then you should’ve known not to come here. It’s eight years with Dominik at the most. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Vee. Even this.”
“We can help you. It doesn’t have to be... this.” I gesture at her outfit. Like a doll, Gryphon clothed her without care for her wants or her needs.
Marlowe presses her eyes shut as if she’s pleading for patience. “Do you know how many politicians are at this party? How many celebrities? CEOs? Dominik has contacts everywhere. I’m not going to risk a future with my son.”
“Is this what you want Vee to think love is? Ownership?” I snap.
She moves so fast that we end up toe to toe. She’s closer to my height in those heels she’s wearing.
“You don’t get to tell me how to parent my kid,” she growls.
“You spent a few days with him, and you think you have the right? It is breaking—” Her voice cracks and she pauses, starts again.
“It is breaking my heart to know Vee might internalise all this shit. Until he’s legally an adult and Dominik has nothing to hold over my head, I’m choosing the lesser evil.
I don’t need you here, criticising me for an already impossible decision. ”
My hand moves of its own accord. One moment, Marlowe’s glaring at me, and the next, my palm is pressed to her cheek. She stares at me, wide-eyed. A tear clings to her lower lashes, trembling. Her eyes rove over my face, frantically, greedily. It’s been one day, and I’ve missed her already.
“Valeja.” It’s a plea and an accusation all in one word.
The tear falls. A sob rips free from her chest. Then her mouth is on mine, and she’s kissing me, fiercely, desperately.
It feels like being resuscitated, like being dragged from the edge of a ruinous fate.
Before her, I don’t think I ever truly knew what it meant to be alive.
My heart settles for the first time since she walked away from me.
With Marlowe in my arms, I can breathe again, and I take advantage of it by sipping at her lips, coaxing them open and tasting her.
“Tee,” she gasps against me. “Tee.”
A shudder rolls through me to hear her call me that; a name just between us.
“Please come with me.” I plead between kisses. “I have a ship now. It’s called Homebound.”
From the very beginning, I’ve been unable to resist her.
This tightness in my chest makes it painfully obvious that there’s no decision I won’t make to have her.
And I remember, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I used to consider myself rational, used to believe in logic over heart.
Scoffed at the idea of being in love, because the stories I heard were inconceivable.
Now I prostrate myself before her, anyway, in the hopes that I may one day be so lucky.
Before today, I would never have fought anyone on a decision to protect their child. If she’ll just let me help her, I can get her away from Gryphon. If she’ll just—
Her hands sink into the hair at my nape, and she presses me back against the wall, closes all space between us except the one now between our mouths.
“Remember the first time you nearly kissed me?” she whispers.
“Marlowe—”
“Remember?”
Of course I do. I’d thought of nothing but her all day.
Even though she confused and annoyed me, she was also fascinating.
She’d shaken everything up, and something in me started to change right then and there—it started to want.
I was attracted to her fight, that big heart of hers, and those molten eyes.
Marlowe looks at me now as though she’s unsure, as though she genuinely thinks I might have forgotten. But that day is important to me, and I want to reassure her that I’ll never need reminding.
“You were worried about Samiran,” I admit with a humourless laugh.
“Why is that funny?”
I meet her eyes, warm and dark and endless, and nudge her nose with mine. “Like anyone else could matter after you.”
She burrowed into my life with such ease.
Marlowe kisses me again, slanting her mouth against me and teasing me with her tongue.
She tastes like champagne and fruit, and smells like lemons.
It’s too much and not enough. I pull away, press chaste kisses to her neck at first, then devolve into sloppy, open-mouthed things that reveal too much of my need to consume her.
She arches her spine, moans into my touch.
“You called me sundara,” Marlowe rasps.
I kiss the side of her jaw.
She groans. “You asked me who was waiting for me.”
I kiss the space where her jaw meets her ear.
“You said my name and looked at me like you’d never seen anyone like me before.”
When I meet Marlowe’s eyes, she’s crying. She pushes my hands away and tries to kiss me again, tries to ignore the pain coming off her in waves. But I catch her wrists and steer her towards the bed until it hits the back of her knees, and she’s forced to sit.
I sink to the floor before her—kiss the soft, fragrant skin of her wrists.
“I’m waiting for you,” I say.
She’s trying to convince herself that eight years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but Marlowe isn’t the kind of bright thing you can pin in place.
She’ll fade away in Gryphon’s clutches, all in the name of protecting Vee.
I respect it, I understand it, but there must be another way—if only she’d just consider it.
Her fear blinds her. She’s spent too long doing it all on her own; she can’t see she’s not alone anymore.
With her hands freed, Marlowe swipes at her wet cheeks.
I curl my fingers around her calves and lay my head in her lap, and we just sit here, like this.
For a quiet moment, my heart doesn’t ache, and her tears don’t fall.
She sifts fingers through my hair, and I run my palm over the soft skin of her leg.
Eventually, she’s calm enough to speak. “You shouldn’t.”
Marlowe slips out from underneath me, and the door clicks shut a second later.
I stay folded up on the floor for a moment longer, trying to gather my nerves, heart, and thoughts. Some time passes before I drag myself to my feet. When I lick my bottom lip, I can still taste Marlowe on my skin, and it clears some of the haze.
She doesn’t think there’s a point in fighting.
I think of the last time I heard Vee giggle, trying to throw sweets straight into Beau’s mouth and constantly pelting our—my—crewmate in the face instead.
How his teeth had gleamed, his eyes sparkled, and his curls bounced with every giggle.
How Beau urged him on, even though the kid has terrible aim in real life.
I think of Marlowe, finding out about Thing 1 and Thing 2; laughing with such incredulous joy that I knew she wasn’t mocking me, and I was glad I’d shared just to see her reaction.
Such small moments, and yet they take up space inside me and have weight—are a currency I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Of course there’s a point in fighting; she’s the one who reminded me of that. And now she’s going to let a man bulldoze her life? I’m not going to let Marlowe Rose be subsumed by Dominik fucking Gryphon. I’m not leaving without them.
I smooth my hair into place and head back down. Incidentally, the music has stopped, and I barely pass any people on the stairs. When I slip into the ballroom, the buzz of conversation and rustling clothing permeates the air, now packed from wall to wall with bodies.
Gryphon stands on the stage.
We’ve never communicated face to face; there’s so much about a person that gets lost in translation over video.
He has a smarmy tilt to his mouth that I want to slap off his face, and an undeniable resemblance to Vee that makes my stomach clench.
It’s all I can do not to launch myself at him as I drift closer to the stage.
Watching out for Eduard proves a good distraction.
Gryphon extends an arm clad in dark velvet, and Marlowe—hidden behind the quartet—places her hand in his, allowing him to tug her into the limelight.
He towers over her, which explains Vee’s height, and looks almost menacing with those angular features and broad shoulders.
I hate that his hands are on her. Even worse, she hates it too.
I catch a subtle flinch as Gryphon loops his arm around her waist and presses a kiss to her temple.
It’s all so fucking contrived. I stare up at them, wondering where Vee’s been stashed tonight. If I can find out, I can grab him and then Marlowe, and we can be gone before anyone knows.
Gryphon flashes a white smile, and when his voice fills the air, I notice the miniscule mic attached to his lapel. I don’t hear a word he says because I can’t look away from the carefully blank expression on Marlowe’s face.
Marlowe laughs. She crows. She giggles and cries. She jokes. She scowls and snorts and gasps. This emptiness behind her eyes? I have never seen. It sends more than anger through me; it’s heartbreak, too. She’s been fighting Gryphon for so long, and he has finally worn her down.
Did the arrogance come with the privilege, or was it the other way around?
I’ve seen this show before—different circumstances, but the same weariness on the shoulders of a woman with nowhere to go.
Gryphon extends his free arm “Now, for the reason I brought you all here.”.
My eyes are still pinned to Marlowe’s thinly veiled grimace, so it takes me a moment to track movement on the stage. My heart twists as Vee stops in the crook of his father’s arm.
The knowledge that I miss him is sharp but quickly overtaken by the nervous way he gnaws at his lip, the rapid stuttering of his eyes over the crowd. In a suit tailored expensively to his narrow body, he is a perfect, if sweaty, combination of his parents.
“Do you want to tell them, son, or should I?” Gryphon grins.