21. Passing Shadow
Passing Shadow
Desdemona
Chaos erupts all around us: voices shouting in annoyance and confusion, screams of fear and excitement, whoops and jeers of morbid delight. I reach out blindly, trying to grasp Ophelia, to catch a hold of her before she can once more vanish like mist from my life.
An arm seizes my waist, and then I’m dragged back into a room, away from Ophelia, my feet stumbling across a too-smooth floor.
My senses are overwhelmed with noises, with the heat of bodies and sweat and skin.
And then I smell alcohol and a strong perfume, heavy with oud, and my heart sinks because I know exactly who that smell belongs to.
“I’ve got you,” Julian says against my cheek.
“No, you don’t.”
The lights flare back on all at once, blood red and blaring, the music screeching back to life. I whip around to shove Julian off me: he lets me go only long enough for me to step back, but immediately follows me, shoving his face into my neck.
“Stop playing games,” he says, wet lips catching on long strands of my hair. “I know you miss me.”
My heart is hammering now, not with annoyance or disgust or anger, but with fear.
I have the horrible feeling like I was just given a chance at something important, but missed.
It’s been more than a month since I last saw Ophelia—that night she came into my room after I made the deal with Elias.
After all this time trying to speak to her, I finally got to, and all I did was tell her off and push her further away.
No wonder she hates me.
I have to make it right. Keep her safe, at least. This party is the worst place for her to be, especially after Birnam. I can’t let anything happen to her. Not again. I turn around, flushed with panic, sluggish with dread, and try to rush back to the corridor.
Maybe she’s still there, maybe—
“Dessie, please.” Julian grabs my arm. His eyes are wide and miserable, his speech is a little slurred.
He’s been doing way more than drinking: his pupils are so dilated the blue of his irises is barely visible.
“I don’t get it. Are you angry at me? Is that why—” He shakes his head and swallows, throat bobbing.
“This whole thing with Lennox, I know what you’re doing. ”
How can he not realise that this is the last thing I want to be dealing with right now?
“Let me go.” Despite the rising tide of panic in my chest, my voice is deathly calm.
“He’s a fucking nobody, a worthless grifter.” Julian’s voice is a pained whine. “You know he’s only with you for one reason, right?”
“What reason?” I snap.
He looks at me pleadingly. “Can’t you see he just wants to impress the Brotherhood?”
“Right.” I smile without mirth. “Just like you when we were together, then.”
“I fucking love you,” he says, pulling me to him. “And I know you love me too, you just need to—”
“She told you to let her go.” A calm voice cuts him off. “Don’t make her ask you again.”
Elias appears over Julian’s shoulder like a ghost—literally, his plastic mask still firmly on his face. Julian whips around, letting go of my arm with an angry noise.
“I don’t know who the fuck you think you’re talking to,” he says. “Just because Blackwood and Kavinski have taken you under their wing doesn’t mean you have any power over me.”
“If I had any power over you,” Elias replies mildly, “you’d be spinning through the cosmos somewhere too far away for anyone to ever remember your existence.”
Julian lets out a sharp, brittle laugh. “You know she’s only stringing you along to make me jealous, right?”
“Must be working.” Elias smirks. “You’re seething, mate.”
Julian swings at him. Elias evades him with a step back and a laugh. Glancing up at me, he mouths: Go on. I hesitate, but he smiles and adds voicelessly, I’ve got this.
And because I have the complete certainty that he does, I turn and run back out into the corridor. Watching Julian get humiliated by Elias would feel good, but right now, only one thing matters to me.
Ophelia.
But my sister, of course, is long gone. The corridor where I bumped into her is empty except for the occasional drunk giggling girl running through it, chased by boys in wolf masks. That doesn’t stop me from searching desperately for her: running into rooms at random, calling her name.
Each room feels like a glimpse into a different person’s nightmare.
In one, some people are playing spin the bottle with an empty Veuve Clicquot bottle, and I see Yuna, one of my childhood friends, kissing one of the rugby boys while Jamie Vale, the captain of the rugby team, watches fixedly, cheeks flushed with fury.
In another room, I see Mira Rajahn springing away from Gabriel North, the headmaster’s son. At first, I think I’ve interrupted them mid-embrace, but when Mira glances at me, her eyes are red and full of tears.
I see Blaise comforting Natalya Valenkova while she stands as still and silent as a statue. I see people fighting and playing, people arguing and making out.
But I don’t see Ophelia. She’s nowhere to be found.
I had my chance…
And I failed.
Finally, having crossed the entire length of the Montgomery manor, I emerge onto a deserted stone porch.
Pumpkins and brass lamps outline a small side courtyard, the sky above a deep azure expanse scattered with tiny silver stars.
They seem so unfathomably far away that I feel suddenly microscopic, so insignificant my entire existence might as well be nothing more than a brief, passing shadow.
The cool night air touches my cheeks and I realise they are wet with tears.
“Fuck,” I whisper, shaking my head.
How could so much change in so little time?
Ophelia used to crawl into my bed in her little black tutu, pressing an armful of ghost books into my chest for me to read aloud.
I used to be the first person she’d run to in every room she walked into; the one she went to whenever she was upset or angry.
When her dark hair grew long and knotty, only two people were ever allowed to brush it: Dad, or me.
And now…
Now I might as well be a stranger. No, worse than a stranger, because Ophelia would probably prefer to go to a stranger for help than speak even one sentence to me. And I don’t even know why. It’s like one day, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, my sister had stopped loving me.
Thick tears drop from my eyes, disappearing into the night air. I feel suddenly exhausted, mortified, bruised. So hopeless I could die from it.
I wish I’d never come here. The party feels like the belly of a repulsive, replete beast, devouring everything inside it, and I walked willingly through its jaws. The entire night is a disaster, a mess, a tragedy. I don’t even know why I came.
Fingers brush lightly against my waist; I know it’s Elias before I turn around, though I couldn’t say how.
I can’t bring myself to look up at him, head tilted stubbornly down, but he doesn’t force me to.
Instead, he wraps his arms around me, hugging me into a warm, hard body.
His entire presence feels like a lifeline thrown into a thrashing sea storm.
“You alright?” he says into my hair.
I nod against his neck. His skin is wet from my tear-stained cheeks. He’s no longer wearing the plastic mask, and there’s a warmth exuding from his body that smells almost metallic, like hot machinery.
“That fucker hurt you?” he asks into the silence. He doesn’t sound angry, just quietly curious.
I shake my head and straighten myself. He meets my gaze, but doesn’t release me from his embrace. His eyes are dark and questioning, somehow completely free of judgement, and, for once, amusement.
Maybe that’s what makes it so easy, in the end, to tell him the truth.
“I had a fight with my sister.”
My voice comes out small and sad, pathetic even to myself.
“Your sister’s here?” He frowns down at me. “Isn’t she a little too…”
“Young?” I shake my head. “She’s not supposed to be here.”
“You know what it’s like being a teen,” he says, sliding a hand up and brushing away my tears in a casual motion. “Rebellious phase and all.”
“That’s not the problem.” I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. “The problem is that it’s my job to keep her out of trouble.”
“She’s not gonna get in trouble,” he says. “Your cousin’s here, have you seen the size of him and his mates? Nothing’s gonna happen to her on their watch.”
“Dimitri’s not actually my cousin,” I say, sighing. “And he’s going through this weird thing right now. I don’t even think he can look after himself, let alone Ophelia.”
He shakes his head.
“Nah, you’re wrong.” I glare at him, but he grins, tugs at my cheek with his thumb. “I mean, you’re right that he’s weird, and this whole thing with his fiancée seems toxic as hell, but that doesn’t mean he’s not keeping an eye on his favourite non-cousins.”
I scoff. “How would you know that?”
“Because he’s been busting my ass all night about what it means to be worthy of a girl like you, making sure I treat you right and detailing all the unpleasant things he’d do to my corpse if I caused you to shed so much as a tear.”
I think of Natalya and wince. “He’s preaching about treating girls right?”
Elias lets out a small laugh. “Well, yeah, that’s what I said.” He tucks loose strands of my hair back behind my ears and tilts my face up to his. “Point being, love, that your little sister’s going to be just fine, alright?”
For some reason, his words melt away the lump in my throat, and a strange warmth spreads over me, like something hard and cold stuck inside me has suddenly melted. The sadness and worry lingers but the tension seems to drain from me, leaving a sense of hollow exhaustion in its wake.
“You’re very confident promising things you have no way of ensuring,” I say, trying to pull away from him.
He grins, lopsided and boyish, and although he relaxes his hold on me, he doesn’t quite relinquish it. His fingers brush up and down along my bare waist in a casual, oddly soothing caress.
“I have good gut instincts.”
“The same gut instinct that told you to pick a fight with Julian?” I ask with an edge of mockery, mouth quivering.
“My gut instinct is telling me you’re not having fun at this party,” he says, tilting his head. “Am I wrong?”
Of course he’s not wrong. How could I possibly have fun at this party? My sister is here when she shouldn’t be, and she hates me more than ever. My closest friends all seem to be on their own paths of self-destruction.
And the only person I actually want to be here with is only here because we’re essentially blackmailing each other.
“I never have fun at parties,” I say finally.
“That’s because you’ve never dated me.”
He kisses my mouth lightly, in such a natural and casual way that I don’t realise it until he’s led me away back into the house.
“C’mon, love,” he says. “Forget about the plan, we’ve already given the Inquisitor what he wanted.”
He smiles, warm and winning, and it’s all too easy to give in to him, to let him drag me away, to fall back into the sweetness of the lie.
“Now let’s go have some actual fun.”