Chapter 8 #5
I wrap my hands around the mug again and let the warmth seep into my fingers. Nothing in my body feels like last week’s panic. My heart beats at a normal pace. My breathing stays shallow, not sharp.
The screen lights up again almost immediately.
Nico: Thanks, princess. Nothing important broken. Yet.
I can see it, without seeing it: him slumped in a bus seat, headphones around his neck, phone lighting up his palm.
That stupid grin he thinks no one notices tugging at the corner of his mouth as he reads my message.
One of his teammates throwing something at him from the aisle.
Who’s got you smiling like that, Reiner?
My lips curve before I can stop them.
This, I think, must be how normal people do it. They watch names on a screen, send small, stupid texts, imagine smiles two countries away, and do not choke on the fact that they care.
The phone goes dark again. I set it down, the glow of the little chat bubble still imprinted behind my eyes.
It is not a declaration. It is not a promise.
But it sits there between us like a thin, bright thread, stretching from Bormio to a snow-covered vineyard in France.
***
Vienna, New Year’s Eve Party, December 31
éLISE
The ballroom looks like money tried too hard.
Crystal chandeliers drip from the ceiling, throwing light over champagne towers and shining smiles. A live band plays jazz in the corner, and everywhere I look, there are sequins, cufflinks, and people who know exactly how much everyone in the room is worth.
I know exactly where I fit in this ecosystem. I step into it as if slipping into a glove.
“élise, darling, you look radiant.”
“I adore your dress, Madame.”
“Yes, Austria has been… an adjustment. We manage.”
Polite smiles, practiced compliments, perfect posture. I let men in black tie kiss my hand, let women air-kiss my cheeks, tilt my head just so when I laugh. My glass is never empty. I make sure of it.
The champagne goes down too fast. My laugh gets a fraction too loud. I flirt with important men because I can, lean in a little closer, touch their arm a second too long, watch their eyes drop to where my dress does all the work. It costs me nothing, but it makes my father mad.
I can feel his gaze from across the room, sharp as a wire. Laurent Moreau, rebuilt king of exile, stands in his perfect tuxedo, holding a flute of champagne like a scepter. His mask does not slip, but his fingers are white on the stem.
He does not say a word.
Good. Let him watch.
I am talking to a minor disgraced Italian aristocrat whose name I have already forgotten when the journalist appears at my elbow, a woman in a sparkly dress with a press badge tucked cleverly under her hair.
“Miss Moreau?” she asks in a sugar-sweet voice. “I write a column for a lifestyle magazine. Could I steal thirty seconds?”
Father hates the tabloids. Which is why I smile.
“Of course,” I say. “I have at least thirty seconds.”
She asks the usual questions. How do you find life in Salzburg? Do you miss Paris? What are your plans for the new year?
I could give the usual answers. Safe, polished, dead.
“Life in Salzburg?” I tip my head, smile. “We adapt. The settings do not change. Charming facades, careful manners. Old money is just rot that learned to wear pearls, whether the address is Paris or the Alps.”
Her pen freezes for a heartbeat, then flies. She laughs, delighted. “That is… vivid.”
“It is true,” I say sweetly. “We paint over the mold and call it heritage.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my father’s jaw clench, as he caught my last words. His fingers tighten on the glass. He does not laugh.
The journalist asks about our “beautiful family estate” in France.
“We have vineyards,” I say. “And sheep. It is very picturesque. Like a retirement home for Godfathers.”
She snorts, tries to cover it with a cough. “May I quote you on that?”
“Please do.”
When she finally thanks me and drifts away, my father moves three steps in my direction, then stops. His smile is fixed. His eyes are not.
I raise my glass to him from across the room, a little toast to our mutual understanding.
***
Just before midnight, the party spills out onto a terrace facing the Ring.
Fur coats and black wool, bare shoulders and ridiculous heels, everyone clutching fresh glasses as if they might freeze without them.
St. Stephen’s rises in the distance, dark and familiar, while fireworks already stutter above the city in impatient bursts.
I stand at the stone balustrade, the cold cutting through the satin of my dress, and let the noise wash over me. People count down in different languages. Someone pops a bottle too early and gets scolded. The band has followed us out, trumpets steaming in the night.
I tilt my head back and watch the first big explosion paint the sky red, then gold.
My mind goes somewhere else entirely.
A cramped bed in the Olympic village, his weight pressing me into the mattress, laughter dying on my tongue when he made me feel something that was not calculated.
The Reiteralm gondola jerking over the towers, his hands on my thighs, the forest after, cold and messy and terrifyingly alive.
A small pub that smelled like sweat and fried onions, beer that tasted better than it had any right to, his friends shouting his name like they loved him, not like they owned him.
A donkey called Seppi leaning into my hand as if I had always been there.
People who did not know my surname and were kind, anyway.
It started as a rebellion. A private war against my father, against the cages he calls protection. A thrill. A thrill with a pretty face and reckless legs.
But standing here, with Vienna exploding over my head and my father’s gaze a weight between my shoulder blades, I know I crossed a line somewhere in the middle of a forest in Styria or a barn in Val Gardena.
I have seen a world where I am not being watched every second.
I cannot unsee it.
The fireworks hit their crescendo. Gold raining down, blue spirals, white sparks that seem close enough to touch. People around me cheer, clink glasses, kiss whoever happens to be next to them. It all feels like a stage set: gilded balconies, choreographed joy, every player hitting their mark.
I am suddenly acutely aware that I am the only actress here who knows there is another theater outside this one. A smaller one. Colder. Messier. More real.
My phone is in my hand before I realize I have taken it out.
I open our chat. The last message there is his: Nothing important broken. Yet.
My thumb hovers. The old élise would put the phone away, finish her drink, glide back inside, and pretend this year never happened.
I am tired of being the old élise.
As the last firework crackles out over the Ring and the sky returns to black, I type before I can overthink it:
ELISE: Next stop Hinterstoder. If you still want a double room after the race, I will book it.
My heart stutters. I add nothing else. No winking face, no joke to soften it.
I hit send.
The message leaves in a small, traitorous blue bubble.
Behind me, my father says my name once, a warning dressed as concern.
“Coming, Papa,” I call over my shoulder.
But my hand stays on the phone a second longer, thumb resting on the screen, as if it is the only real thing I am holding.