7. Sienna #2
“Yes.” I stepped slightly closer to the painting, careful not to cross the line. “The hand is controlled, but not artificial. That’s what makes human craft beautiful, I think. Someone studied for years. They failed over and over. Learned pressure, colour, patience.”
The man said nothing.
I smiled faintly at the painting.
“That matters now more than it did then, I think. Back then, human hands were the only way. Now anything can be created or made if someone has enough access. Rooms, faces, music, paintings, bodies.” My voice softened. “Convenience became so powerful that people forgot effort had value by itself.”
Still silence. I should have stopped.
I didn’t. When it came to art I had an opinion.
“The value of old art disappeared before humans realized convenience wasn’t always the answer,” I said. “Or maybe it didn’t disappear. Maybe it just became quieter. It’s harder to hear something made slowly when the world learned how to make everything instantly.”
I turned then, expecting a stranger.
The man beside me was Damius Crow.
My whole body forgot how to work.
He stood a few feet away, dressed in a black suit. No tie. Silver hair. Tattooed throat. His face was sharp, preserved by money and science and whatever else Crows used when nature became inconvenient.
His eyes too alive in the way predators were alive when they had stopped needing to run to catch anything.
Damius Crow.
In Harlan and not sealed away in the Crow estate in Villain like a nightmare politely kept in another city.
Beside me…looking at my favourite painting. I couldn’t breathe. Every family warning I had ever heard moved through my head at once.
Do not attract Damius Crow’s attention.
Do not lie badly to Damius Crow.
Do not speak unless spoken to.
Do not offer him something he can turn into debt.
Do not forget that monsters become old by being better at survival than everyone who challenged them.
His gaze remained on me.
I curtsied before I decided to.
Just enough to acknowledge rank, danger, and the sudden horrifying fact that I had been talking to Jamison Crow’s grandfather like he was a harmless stranger with an interest in brushstrokes.
“Mr. Crow,” I said.
“Sienna Bellemere.”
“I didn’t realize it was you,”
“No,” he replied. “You didn’t.”
I swallowed. “I hope I wasn’t disrespectful.”
“By answering a question?”
My fingers tightened. “I spoke too much.”
“Did you?”
I had no idea how to answer that.
He turned back to the painting. I followed his gaze because looking directly at him felt dangerous and looking away first felt worse.
“The artist changed the shoulder,” Damius said.
“I like that part.”
“Why?”
I looked at the painting, then at the faint correction under the final layer of paint. “Because it proves they were trying to get it right.”
Damius said nothing.
My heart was beating too hard. I wondered if he could hear it. Crows always seemed like they could hear weakness from across rooms.
“What brings you to Harlan, Mr. Crow?” I asked, then immediately wished I hadn’t.
His eyes returned to me. I had asked Damius Crow why he had left Villain.
What the hell was I thinking.
I bowed my head slightly. “Forgive me. That was intrusive.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know.”
That was honest at least. A faint expression crossed his mouth.
“Your family had its monthly dinner last night,” his eyes moved over the painting.
Every wall in Harlan had ears if Crows cared enough to listen.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Your cousin married well.”
“Yes.”
“Your father must be pleased.”
“He is.”
“And your mother?”
I looked at the painting.
“My mother is difficult to please,” I said carefully.
“Most women with disappointed ambitions are.”
My throat tightened. I did not know whether he meant my mother.
Or me.
Damius stepped closer to the painting, hands clasped behind his back. His movements were controlled. Jamison had inherited that stillness.
“You spend time here,” he said.
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Between rehearsals.” I tried not to react. He knew that too.
“Yes.”
“Ballet.”
“Yes.”
“An expensive discipline for a temporary body.”
I lifted my chin, a little braver because he had stepped near the one thing I understood. “All bodies are temporary.”
His gaze slid back to me.
I froze.
I had contradicted Damius Crow.
God above. Maybe fear made people stupid before it made them silent.
For a moment, he only looked at me.
“True.” He finally said.
The single word moved through me like a reprieve.
I breathed again.
He turned away from the painting and began walking down the gallery.
It took me one awful second to realize I was expected to follow.
So I did.
We passed a case of old charcoal sketches. He stopped before one showing a dancer mid-turn, her body caught in a line so delicate it looked impossible.
“Better?” he asked.
I blinked. “Better than the painting?”
I looked at the sketch.
The dancer’s arm reached upward, fingers unfinished, lines overlapping where the artist had searched for the right shape.
“No,” I said, then worried that was too blunt. “I mean, it’s beautiful. But it feels studied. The other feels like confession.”
Damius watched the sketch.
“Confession,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“What do you confess, Sienna Bellemere?”
The faint footsteps of someone in another wing, the soft thud of my own heart.
I could not tell if he meant in art.
I chose the safest truth I could find.
“That I don’t always know what I’m looking at until it’s too late.”
Damius looked at me, and a long silence followed.
“Interesting.”
That was not reassuring. My phone buzzed in my bag…I didn’t reach for it.
“Answer it,” he said.
“It can wait.”
“I did not ask if it could.”
I swallowed and took the phone from my bag.
A message from Madame Aveline. Practice moved to Studio Three. Ten minutes. My fingers shook as I typed a response. On my way.
I locked the phone and held it in both hands.
“I have rehearsal,” I said softly.
“So you do.”
I waited, for permission. I hated myself for waiting, but I did.
Damius turned back toward the sketch. “Go.”
Relief came so fast it almost made me dizzy.
I dipped my head. “Goodbye, Mr. Crow.”
“Sienna.”
I stopped. The way he said my name made it impossible not to.
“Tell your father nothing.” He did not look at me when he spoke.
“Yes, Mr. Crow.”
I left while hoping to the gods above it was not my fault Damius was in Harlan.