028— THE ROOM.

I almost cried walking back into the party.

Not about him. It was the cold air after the warm room, the sharp transition, that was all. I stood just inside the door and breathed and pressed my hands against my thighs and told myself, nothing happened. Nothing. My hands were shaking for no reason.

Anya found me before I'd taken three steps.

She looked at my face.

"Don't," I said.

She closed her mouth and held out her drink instead.

I took it.

We stood side by side and said nothing and then she said very quietly. "Your lipstick."

I touched my mouth.

She produced a small mirror without looking at me. I fixed it and handed it back. She put it away.

Neither of us said a word about it.

Kai came back inside two minutes later.

He walked past us without slowing. Hair fixed and eyes forward. Like he'd stepped outside for air and come back and that was the full and complete story of the last fifteen minutes.

Anya watched him walk away.

Looked at me.

Looked back at him.

Then — "So. The architecture guy. Tell me about him."

I laughed. It came out wrong. Too short. But I laughed and she kept talking and I held the drink and told myself my hands had stopped shaking.

They hadn't.

                  …

The car ride home was twenty minutes of nothing.

He didn't look at me once. Eyes on the road. Hands on the wheel. The city moving past the windows in light and dark and I had so many things I wanted to say. Cutting things, the kind I was good at, the kind that landed, and I said none of them.

I was angry.

At him for saying mistake like it cost him nothing. At myself for kissing him back. At my own hands for going into his hair like that, like they'd forgotten everything.

Mistake.

The word sat in my chest and I stared out the window and I did not think about his mouth on my neck. About his lips on mine. About the sound he made when I pulled his hair closer. About his fingers in my dress.

I didn't think about any of it.

We got back to the mansion and got out of the car and walked inside in silence and I was so grateful the entryway was empty I nearly said it out loud. No Niko. No Elena. Just Anton materializing to take Kai's jacket and disappear.

I went straight upstairs.

                …

I locked the door and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up and the dress pooling around me.

My hands were still shaking.

I pressed them against my knees and stared at the wall and it came anyway. His hands on my waist. His mouth on my neck. The warmth of it, the way he'd inhaled against my skin. His lips on mine afterward, harder, both of us past pretending.

Then the step back.

The even voice.

Mistake.

I laughed.

Hollow. It hit the walls and came back empty.

"Of course it was," I said.

I got up off the floor and got into bed still in the dress. Closed my eyes.

I was not hurt.

There was nothing to be hurt about.

I slept.

                  …

Morning came loud.

Elena and Niko were already in the dining room when I came down, sitting on the same side of the table, too close, giggling about something that stopped when I walked in and immediately started again because neither of them had ever been subtle.

"Tell me everything," Elena said. "The party. All of it."

"It was fine," I said.

"Fine." She looked personally offended. "You wore THAT dress."

"Very fine. Extremely fine."

"Did you dance?"

I thought about Daniel. About Kai across the room with something coming apart behind his eyes.

"There was someone," I said. "Human. Funny. He asked me to dance."

Elena grabbed Niko's arm. "SHE DANCED."

"One dance."

"With a boy."

"With a person."

"Was he cute? What was his name? Are you going to see him again because you absolutely should…"

Kai walked in.

He went straight to the coffee. I looked at him. He looked at me for half a second, and looked away.

Half a second.

Like last night was furniture.

I smiled at Elena. "His name was Daniel," I said. "Very charming. Excellent dancer."

Elena made a sound that was mostly vowels.

Niko studied the ceiling.

Kai poured his coffee.

"Did he ask for your number?" Elena said. "Please say yes because you deserve someone who actually—"

"Table manners," Kai said.

Elena blinked at him.

I looked at him over my cup with a look I didn't bother softening and he looked back with absolutely nothing on his face and I wanted to throw the cup at his head.

Niko saw the look. Elena saw the look.

Nobody said anything.

We ate in silence.

                   …

Three days.

Three days of breakfast silence and training and Kai moving through the mansion like the terrace didn't exist and me doing exactly the same thing because two people could play that game and I had been playing games longer than he knew.

I was fine.

On the third day I started mapping the mansion again. Just restlessness. My hands needing something. I moved through the east wing and tried doors I'd tried before and one I hadn't.

It opened.

The room was small. No windows. A lamp in the corner making everything amber. And on the walls were paintings. Floor to ceiling. 

Dark backgrounds, light pulled forward and subjects emerging from shadow like they'd always been there. Some framed, some bare canvas at the edges like they'd been left mid-thought and returned to later.

The largest painting was on the wall directly opposite the door.

She was holding a small dark-haired boy by both hands, but I barely registered the boy. I was looking at her face. The way the painter had caught her— open, looking at someone off canvas with an expression that made my chest do something uncomfortable.

Nobody painted someone like that unless they meant it.

Nobody painted someone like that unless they were completely gone for them.

I looked around the room. All these paintings. All this same face, from every angle, in every light. Looking at nothing. Looking at everything.

Whoever she was, he had painted her over and over and over again like he couldn't stop.

Something sat in my stomach that I was not going to call what it was.

I thought about the way he'd kissed me on the terrace three nights ago and the way he'd looked at me like furniture at breakfast this morning.

I looked at the woman in the largest painting.

Her ice blue eyes. Her face that had edges to it, nothing soft, beautiful the way sharp things were.

Of course.

Of course there was someone like that.

Of course, I was just a…

"What are you doing here?"