16. A ROOM FULL OF MASKS

The black sedan pulled up  to the entrance of the hotel, and for a moment neither of them moved.

Camera flashes lit the night like fireworks. Reporters pressed against the security barriers, their bodies slamming into one another. Selene stared through the tinted window at all of it, and felt her confidence begin to falter.

She had never experienced anything like this. Not once. Not even close.

Alaric noticed her hesitation — the slight change in her breathing pattern, the way her hand clutched and played with the fabric of her dress. He didn't say much. He simply reached over and offered his hand.

"Stay close," he said, as they got out of the car.

She looked at him for a moment, then accepted it. The cameras caught the exchange instantly, thousands of shutters clicking at once, though neither of them heard it over the sound of their own pulses.

The moment they stepped in, whispers rippled through the crowd of guests and reporters lining the entrance.

"Who's the woman beside CEO Blackwood?"

"What about Miss Bianca?"

"Since when does he bring dates to corporate events?"

*Isn't that his new female assistant?*

Selene became painfully aware of the looks she was receiving, every head turned in her direction. She tried, instinctively, to put a little distance between herself and Alaric — a half-step back, just a bit.

He didn't let her. Without even glancing her way, he said quietly, "Stay by my side."

Something about his voice — calm, certain, unbothered — settled the panic in her chest just enough to keep her feet moving in the right direction.

*You'd think for a man who has spent all his life being photographed,* Nyx murmured somewhere deep inside her, *he'd have more words of encouragement for newbies like us.*

The corner of Selene's mouth curved into a tiny smile.

Somewhere in the room, Bianca watched the whole scene unfold with a practiced smile plastered on her face. She had planned the night meticulously — the dress, the arrival time, she’d even paid some reporters to focus majorly on her for the hype of it. She had planned to be the highlight of the evening.

Instead, everyone around her was fixated on the assistant.

Her annoyance settled in quietly, like a stone dropped into still water, sending small ripples she was careful not to let anyone see.

******

Nothing could have prepared Selene for the ballroom.

Crystal chandeliers hung like frozen waterfalls above a sea of tables draped in white and gold. A live orchestra played something slow and rich right beside the stage. Floral arrangements taller than she was lined the room in perfect symmetry. Executives from different countries mingled with celebrities she recognized from magazine covers, investors whose names alone could move markets, politicians she'd only ever seen on the news.

Everything about it felt effortlessly elegant.

And yet, overwhelmingly unfamiliar.

*I'm certain,* Nyx offered helpfully, *that the dessert table alone costs more than your entire month's grocery budget.*

*I don't doubt it,* Selene thought back, though the absurdity of it all made her feel quite strange. It was easier to breathe when at least one voice in the room she could relate to, even if it was in her head.

Alaric's hand found the small of her back — light, brief, grounding. "Still here?"

"Barely," she admitted.

"You're doing much better than you think."

She wanted to believe him. Everywhere she looked, someone wore a gown that probably cost more than her rent, or a watch that probably cost more than her insurance. Servers moved between the tables with trays of champagne balanced like it was nothing, and somewhere behind her the sounds from the orchestra sounded richer than she could ever imagine to be. There were few days she when felt out of place, and today was one of those days.

"Relax," Alaric said, low enough that only she could hear him. "Everyone here was a first-timer once."

"Easy for you to say," she murmured back. "You were born into this."

"...Perhaps." A pause, thoughtful rather than dismissive. "Doesn't mean I ever stopped learning each time."

It wasn't much. But it was enough to remind her that the polish on everyone in this room, his included, was thinner than it looked.

******

For the next half an hour, Alaric guided Selene through a series of introductions — executives, board members, a foreign investor with an accent she couldn't place. Each conversation was short. Respectful. Professional.

What surprised everyone, including Selene herself, was how naturally she moved through it. She remembered names on the first try. She asked the right follow-up questions. She listened — genuinely listened — instead of feigning the kind of practiced interest people usually brought to rooms like this.

She wasn't trying to impress anyone. That, somehow, made her impressive.

One older gentleman from a shipping conglomerate spent nearly ten minutes talking about his granddaughter's upcoming wedding, and Selene asked all the right questions — the venue, the dress, whether the groom's family had settled on a color scheme yet — with an interest that clearly wasn't manufactured. He walked away calling her "a breath of fresh air" to anyone who would listen.

An investor from overseas, notoriously difficult to charm according to the murmurs Selene had overheard from her workplace, actually laughed at something she said about flying and time zones. Alaric, observing from a few feet away, said nothing, but something in his expression eased slightly each time it happened.

"Your assistant is exceptional," one executive murmured to Alaric as Selene stepped away to talk to someone else.

"I know," Alaric said, without hesitation, without inflection, as though it were simply a fact filed alongside quarterly earnings.

Selene, a few feet away, heard it clearly. She kept her expression neutral, pretended she hadn't caught the words at all, and let them settle somewhere she wouldn't examine too closely until much later that night.

Across the ballroom, a man in his fifties broke away from a cluster of businessmen mid-laugh, his eyes drawn toward Selene before he'd even finished his sentence with the others.

He hadn't been able to observe her clearly in the dim light when he'd watched from outside Blackwood Corporation.

Today, something about her caught his attention. It wasn't her beauty. It wasn't the fact that she stood beside Alaric, closer than he would normally allow.

It was something else. Something he couldn't put a name on.

Very familiar, he thought, and didn't understand why the phrase surfaced so easily, as though it had been lurking just beneath the surface for years.

He finished his current conversation with practiced patience and crossed the room.

"Uncle Warrick," Alaric greeted as he approached, tone shifting into something warmer, more relaxed than the version of him the executives had been getting all evening.

Warrick smiled, extending a hand toward Selene. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Selene."

"Likewise, sir," she said, shaking it.

For the briefest moment — barely longer than a heartbeat — something passed through him. Like trying to recall a dream that had already begun dissolving the second he opened his eyes. He studied her face a fraction too long, searching for whatever had triggered the feeling, and came up with nothing.

He let it go. Almost.

"Forgive me," he said, recovering smoothly. "You remind me of someone."

Selene offered a polite smile, the kind she'd perfected over years of small talk. "I get that a lot."

She assumed it was simply a conversation starter — the sort of thing people said to fill silence at parties like this. Warrick let the moment pass, engaging in a brief conversation with Alaric, then excused himself a few minutes later to greet another guest.

But as he walked away, he looked back. Once.

Just a bit.

He didn't know what he was looking for. He only knew that something felt very strange about the new assistant.

Bianca arrived at exactly the right moment, as she always did, gliding into the conversation with a warmth that didn't reach her eyes. Her gown was the exact shade of deep red that would catch the right amount of attention, and Selene suspected that wasn't merely a coincidence.

"Selene, was it?" she said, looping her arm loosely through the air between them, close enough to seem friendly, far enough to seem careful. "I have to ask — how are you finding all of this? It must be quite different from what you're used to."

*Isn’t this like the third time she’s asking for your name?* Nyx, somewhere in the back of Selene's mind growled loudly.

Selene didn’t reply, keeping her expression neutral on the outside.

The questions came smoothly after that. Surely she’d attended galas like this before, given how comfortable she seemed? Had Selene traveled much internationally? As Alaric’s assistant, she should have a bit of exposure, right?

Each question was a small, carefully set trap, engineered to expose exactly how far outside her depth Selene really was.

Selene didn't take the bait, mostly because she didn't try to avoid it at all.

"Honestly, no," she said easily. "This is my first gala. I've never traveled outside the country. Most of these things are new to me." She smiled, unbothered. "It's a lot. But everyone's been kind so far."

There was a small pause among the guests standing nearby — the kind that precedes either awkwardness or admiration. It tipped, quietly, toward the latter.

"How refreshing," one woman said, sounding like she meant it. Another guest nodded in quiet agreement.

Bianca's smile didn't waver, but something behind it recalculated. Selene's honesty had done what practiced sophistication couldn't — it had made people like her.

"These events can be overwhelming," Bianca offered, softer now, testing a different angle.

"Maybe, but then you remember everyone here is just another person," Selene said simply.

It wasn't a clever line. It wasn't meant to be. But it landed like one anyway, and Bianca excused herself not long after, her irritation folded neatly beneath the same practiced smile she'd worn all night.

Selene was no longer someone she could dismiss. She was becoming something far more dangerous — a rival Bianca hadn't planned for.

By the time dinner approached, something in the room had shifted. Alaric and Selene moved through the crowd with an ease that hadn't been there at the start of the night — fewer words between them, more understanding in the glances that replaced those words. More than one guest noticed it, the quiet rhythm of two people who had somehow stopped needing to explain themselves to each other.

Then the orchestra stopped.

A hush spread through the ballroom as the Master of Ceremonies stepped onto the small stage near the dance floor, tapping the microphone once.

"Ladies and gentlemen — before dinner, we invite our host to open tonight's gala with the traditional first dance."

Hundreds of eyes turned toward Alaric.

Across the room, Bianca straightened, smoothing the front of her gown, already stepping forward on instinct. Everyone expected the same thing she did — that he would cross the floor, extend his hand, and choose her, exactly as tradition and every unspoken expectation of the evening demanded.

Instead, Alaric's gaze shifted.

It moved past Bianca. Past the crowd of executives and investors and familiar faces who had spent all evening watching him. It found Selene, standing quietly near the edge of the room, and stayed there.

He began walking in her direction.