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I should have pulled away. Should have said something sharp, something clever. Instead, I let him lead me deeper into the dance. The violins stretched between us like wire, vibrating and begging to snap.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered.
“And yet,” he said, his voice a growl under the velvet, “here I am.”
Bitterness bled into my tone. “You always were good at disobeying quietly.”
“And you always were good at making it necessary.” His hand flexed at my waist, not possessive but anchoring.
“You could’ve sent a warning,” I muttered.
“Would you have stayed away from here?”
“No.”
“Then what good would a warning do?”
The chandelier’s fractured light caught his hair, turning him into something too radiant, too breakable.
I glared up at him. “You look ridiculous.”
A smirk ghosted across his mouth. “Is that why you keep staring?”
I hated him for knowing, for seeing. The music slowed, drawing the crescendo toward us like a tightening noose. We moved as one, stopping at the heart of the ballroom as the world contracted to the space between his chest and mine.
“Why are you here?” I asked, my voice a whisper almost lost in the music.
He didn’t look away. “To watch your back. Because you keep turning it on me.”
The violins fell silent. He didn’t let me go. Instead, he guided me away from the dance floor with a steady hand on the small of my back. We passed through a curtain of crushed red velvet into a narrower corridor, where the ballroom’s gold brilliance gave way to shadows. The hush was immediate. Sconces lining the wall pulsed low, their golden flames licking upward like dying stars.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, not resisting but needing to hear my voice, which sounded thinner than I liked.
He replied without missing a beat. “Somewhere you don’t have to pretend you aren’t looking at me.”
I scoffed, letting acid coat the syllables. “Please. You’re not that hard to ignore.”
We came to an alcove half swallowed by shadows. Arched stone walls, carved with old runes I didn’t recognize, stretched upward, and velvet cushions covered a low bench against the wall. Remiel stopped there.
I crossed my arms and leaned against a column, letting the cold stones bite through silk and skin. I wanted the sting.
He turned to face me, his jaw still set like a challenge, but his eyes, still gold, flickered with something closer to regret, fury, or grief.
“Where have you been?” I asked, softer than I had meant to.
His gaze didn’t falter. “Did you miss me?”
“Pfft. No.” I looked away. “I just found it odd. You followed me for weeks like a loyal stray, and then poof! You vanished.”
“I was summoned.”
My jaw clenched. “By who?”
“The tribunal.”
There it was again—the cold punch of it. The thing I hadn’t wanted to hear. Because it meant he wasn’t truly here for me.
“You could’ve said something,” I muttered, smoothing the hem of my gown as a distraction, an anchor.
