Chapter Sixteen
“Why are we going to the ballroom?” I ask as Mr. Brown leads me down the stairs after lunch the following day. “It’s too early to dance.”
I’m not exactly keen to see the demon, either. Then again, he saved my life. That fact echoes in my brain over and over again. But I hate him, I remind myself. I hate even more being in his debt.
“He wants to see you,” is all Mr. Brown says before pushing me through the doors and clicking them shut behind me.
He turns to face me, face carefully blank. I swallow nervously, waiting.
When he doesn’t insist I dance—now that I can, my ankle all healed up—I walk closer to him, leaving aside any pretense or politeness. “Why did you save me last night? Was it the same reason a cat plays with a mouse before eating it?”
He gives me an unreadable look but doesn’t answer. I wait, impatient, for his reply. “Well?” I push.
The demon’s voice is a deep thrumming from his chest. “I think if I wanted to kill you, I’ve had several chances by now, no? I don’t need to toy with you.”
I narrow my eyes at him. This is true. “I suppose. Though you’ve toyed with me plenty, I’d say.” I look at the front of his shirt—another black one today. I must be imagining it. I can almost smell gunpowder residue on him. “You were shot.”
“I’m fine. My sort recovers remarkably fast.”
“I would think being shot in the stomach might be fatal, even for your sort.”
“Not the way being hit in the heart is. We only die from certain types of injuries.”
“So you can die.” I pause, wondering why he’s telling me this. Not to mention everything else. “Why are you being so normal?”
“Why do you have so many questions?”
I shoot back, “I usually do. I just don’t ask them, or at least, you hardly listen.” Then I take a chance. “I have another question I would like to ask, as long as you are willing to listen.”
He shakes his head. Dark locks catching the light. “I’ve said enough.”
“Please. You owe me. I know you feel guilty for treating me like that after I was so frightened last night,” my voice breaks off, not an act at all.
It’s apparent that he’s hesitating when he looks away. His jaw tightens. “I have to leave.”
“But you’re the one who had me brought down here!” I argue.
“Well, I have business. I’ll be back tonight to see you dance, if you can. If you can’t…I don’t mind if you skip it.”
“Wonderful.” I roll my eyes but bite back a snotty how kind of you.
“You may speak to me afterwards, if you like.” He pauses for a long moment, then adds, “If you’d join me for dinner?”
A scathing rejection hangs on my lips, yet something holds me back.
This is a chance for me to ask him for real, now that I somehow—miraculously—have gotten on his good side, to save Aven.
He’s sorry for what he did—and I’ll use every bit of advantage that gives me.
Besides, he didn’t order me. For once, he asked.
I can almost catch the way he holds his breath for a fraction of a fraction of a moment.
Then I recall, too, what he said the first day, You will be my companion, of sorts.
He’s lonely, I think.
“Fine.” I don’t smile up at him. I also don’t frown.
He looks at me, and I can’t look anywhere else.
I watch him walk away. I can’t keep my eyes off the dark of his shirt, his hair, the lean height of him.
Can’t stop hearing the sound of his footsteps down the hall.
The smell of him haunting the air—leather, wine, flame, smoke, dark—is hypnotic.
Not in the way the demon woman was hypnotic, against my will, but something else.
Like I’ve never seen him before. I knew he was beautiful, much as I’d like to deny it…
. But now it’s as if I’m noticing and admiring a hundred new details. Why?
Everything feels off. Even my reactions to him.
When Mrs. Minthy comes up to my room later and does my bath, the strange feelings continue. Everything is intensified. The way the water surrounds my skin—it’s as if I’ve never been in water before.
As Jinny runs her fingers through my hair afterward, I feel each scratch of her fingernails, each jab of the pearl clips she uses. The scent of the oil and soap on my skin. Everything is more.
“Are you alright, Miss?” Jinny gawks at me.
“I’m fine. Just hungry.” I blame the switch in routine. Usually I eat, then get ready, then go dance. Tonight, things are different—I’m saving my appetite for dinner with the demon. I am hungry, maybe. But that’s not what this is.
At half-past eight, Mr. Brown raps on my door and opens it. I stand, ready, in my sage green dress and red slippers. Somehow, I felt him coming. I knew it, even before my ears did.
I step past him. “Thank you for knocking.”
He nods in answer. “I like to think we’re developing a rapport—as much as we can, given you tried to kill me.”
He’s cracked a rough smile. With indignance, I mutter, “I didn’t want to kill you.”
A chuckle, and we say nothing else until we reach the ballroom. When Mr. Brown’s fingers hit the keys for my warm-up, I stop and turn toward him, astounded.
“What?” He looks back at me, his sharp face suspicious.
I stare at him, at the piano, then shut my eyes as the melody reaches my ears. It’s so overwhelming, the beauty of it.
He ceases playing suddenly. “What?”
“It’s lovely, this piece. Did you tune the piano since yesterday?”
“No.”
“It sounds different, the music. Play some more.” When he doesn’t start right away, I add, in exasperation, “Please.”
The song comes again, and it is perfect, each note. I stop stretching, and stand, absorbing it, the rise and fall of the music, the way it hits my ears. I can hardly wait to dance to it.
When the demon comes in, he sits and motions for me to start.
I thought I’d be consumed with the ethereal music, but I find as I dance, I’m too distracted to notice, too busy looking at him, noting how his chest rises, how he blows out a breath through pursed lips, how his face is creased with frustration.
He’s distracted too. Though his dark-as-night eyes are on me, on my dancing.
What is he thinking? He isn’t truly here.
I see this, I feel it. Like the music, I catch each note of him. There’s something troubling him. And it’s not this performance, it’s not my existence. It’s…something else.
When I’m done dancing, I pause to ask him, breathlessly, “Will we still speak? Shall I still join you for dinner?”
“Yes.” Then he waves a hand to dismiss me. “Give me a few minutes. Mr. Brown will bring you.”
I leave the glow of the ballroom and head to the dining room with Mr. Brown.
As we approach the set of doors to a room I haven’t entered before, I smooth the skirt of my green dress.
All I can think about is the way the fabric feels—impossibly soft underneath the sensitive pads of my fingers, the texture of each individual thread. I can’t stop touching.
He smirks. “What’s the matter with you?”
Glaring, I turn to him. “What do you mean?”
“You’re acting funny. I thought you were going to faint when I was playing.”
“I’m not acting funny.” I feel my cheeks heat. “Everything else is.”
“The dining room.” Mr. Brown’s voice reaches my ears in a medley of syllables and tones. I tense, the sensation unsettling. He motions impatiently. “Aren’t you going to go in?”
“Of course.”
I step inside. It’s much smaller than the ballroom but still expansive.
The chandelier drips candlelight across the space, reflecting on the surface of a long, dark table, wood polished to a mirror-finish.
I stare in delight at the walls—paneled and covered with elaborately painted flowers and vines and trees, like some sort of fairytale land.
“It’s enchanting.” I blink, adjusting to the gleam and glow of it all. I realize I have a stupid smile spread across my face, and I drop it at once. Turning back to Mr. Brown, I ask, “What’s he doing anyway?”
“He’ll be along.” He shrugs then steps back into the shadows, remaining present but invisible.
Though, for some reason, it feels less like he’s babysitting me now and more like a normal thing a butler might do.
I walk around the table, running my hand along the backs of the fine seats.
I choose one randomly and sit down, trying not to appear too eager, too anxious, too… anything.
When the demon enters, he nods at Mr. Brown in the corner. To my surprise, the butler exits the room directly, leaving us alone. I swallow, suddenly wracked with nerves.
Raising one dark brow, he, Orrin, casts his eyes on me.
Then smiles. Not the cruel lift of his lips like usual, but something almost pleasant, albeit brief.
There’s a humanness about the expression that draws silence into my mouth in the place of words.
He takes a seat opposite me, as I’d expect, which suits me fine.
I’d rather have him dining three countries over, but at least he isn’t sitting next to me.
The more space between us, the better. I push aside the memory of his arm wrapped around my body in the bath.
The feeling of comfort I had when he held me.
He saved my life, and he didn’t have to. And he didn’t have to kill those men so brutally, as though he was punishing them for harming me. Again I wonder, why?
“I know that you hate me,” he says.
“And I know the same is true for you.” Although when I attempt to guess why, I’m still not sure. It’s about more than me having stolen the slippers. He has too much rage at me for that simple crime—or he did have.
I narrow my eyes at the empty wine glass in front of me with longing, wishing for something to settle my nerves, this strangeness all around me.
Something about the empty glass makes me pause.
The way the light hits it. Fractals coming off the shining rim.
I blink, and it goes away. The breath I suck in is sharp, tight.
His voice. “What is it?”
I swallow first, then shake my head. “Nothing.”
“I can tell something is wrong.”