Page 53 of A Vicious Love

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.