Eunice offered to keep an eye on Mia.
I was free to go to that place inside of myself that disconnected me from the world.
A blast of cold air shocked me as I walked out of the door.
Rarer than my lack of dance was the snow. Just like it had snowed years ago, where it rarely did, when he’d watched me dance through the studio window in Natchitoches.
It wasn’t a hard fall. Flakes spun in the wind, a few sticking where they landed, the colder ones starting to collect on the ground.
The air reflected the weather—deep grey. It had flowed easily from one season to another—letting go with the flow—and branches were bare, charcoal sketches on a slate-colored canvas. Grass and vibrant flowers were tucked in for the duration.
I’d be warm soon enough.
Someone had installed a stereo with speakers around the villa. Perhaps for fancy dinner parties. A voice crooned softly while delicate snowflakes twirled around me.
I had no privacy, but once lost, I needed none.
It didn’t take me long to fade out and lose myself to the dance. Nothing existed. Not the smell of frozen things and Eunice’s oatmeal cookies, not even the sounds of the occasional crunch of boot and lift of voice.
Five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five years could have elapsed when Mia’s squawk, so bird-like, brought me out of the dance and back into reality.
It wasn’t her I saw when I came back to myself.
Brando.
He stood next to a slumbering tree, watching, our eyes connecting for a moment before the humming in my blood surged up from the repressed place and reminded me why I stood here.
For us.
Nino and Guido stood close to Eunice and Mia, keeping an eye on things. Luca stood still, a look I couldn’t quite understand in his eyes. This was the first time he’d watched me dance in person. Perhaps he was shocked at what I could do? He stared at me for another minute or two before turning the same eyes on his son, then back and forth between us.
Before anyone could move, a tension shocked the air, colder than the weather.
Nino blinked.
Eunice had been in the process of setting Mia down so she could run to me through the light dusting of snow. As Mia’s feet touched down, Eunice’s eyes rolled up before she collapsed to the ground in a heap—she’d seen what we all had and fainted at the sight of it.
Guido, who was the closest to Mia, snatched her up, and he and Nino kept her between them as they rushed to get her back into the house.
At first, I was too stunned to move, wondering if I had somehow twirled into another world.
A lion came out of nowhere, as though summoned up by a burning curiosity to see beyond his own confines. His humungous paws slapped against the ground. His brilliant gold mane was full of drifts of snow. His mouth dripped blood-tinged saliva as if he’d just been fed, the shorter hairs underneath stained crimson. With each pant, his breath left him in a cloud of mist.
Theleone,lion, didn’t seem to have any attention to spare for the men. He came huffing up to me, slow and easy, knowing exactly who he was and what he could do. As many beasts as I’d been around, this one made me feel miniscule. The power he emanated almost bowed me over from proximity alone.
Words were being snapped from man to man, I could hear them in the distance, but I couldn’t quite grasp meanings. The beast’s eyes, close to the color of his fur, a deep honey gold, ensnared me.
Why wasn’t I more afraid?
Why were some people able to go into a dead faint when presented with a situation this serious, and I couldn’t? A voice in my mind warned me that I should have wished for it, but another voice rebuked the sane one.No,this is an experience. I got the feeling the latter voice was the one who stopped me from passing out. Some quirk in my genes that thrived on dangerous situations and the beasts that controlled them.
“Leone,” I breathed. My arm itched to reach out, to rub the spot between his eyes and nose.
“Scarlett.” Brando took a step closer, and the lion reacted, turning his head a fraction.
“Get back,” I hissed in Italian, keeping my palms down for emphasis. “He’s only curious.”
From the blood staining the lion’s mouth, it was apparent that he’d eaten recently. He didn’t come to hunt. If so, I would have already been dead.
