“The car leaves at nine,” I say. “I can have someone come in to help with hair and whatever people like you do to walk into a room like that and make it look like you always belonged there.”
“People likeme?” She narrows her eyes.
“People who can stand in a storm and make the storm look decorative,” I say. “If you want something else, say it. If you want no one, I’ll braid it myself.”
She snorts. “You’d enjoy that too much.”
“I would do it well.”
“Worrying,” she says, but the corner of her mouth tilts and I put the image of her between my knees while I twist her hair into something that would make a chandelier jealous into a box and lock it until later.
She lifts the dress and holds it to her body, facing the mirror propped against the wall. The silk catches light in a way that will change camera settings for every person who tries to capture her. The back is cut deep enough that my hand could span her spine in a single claim and still leave room for want. She meets her own eyes in the glass, then mine in the reflection. Something like heat moves through my chest in a controlled burn.
“Who tailors your taste?” she asks.
“I do,” I say, and let that answer stay on the floor between us like a loaded thing she can pick up or step around.
She lowers the dress and lays it across the bed with a care that would insult anyone who thinks fabric is fabric.
“I’m going to brief Reid,” I say. “Mara will send options for shoes. Choose the ones that make you taller than me if that’s the battle you want to win.”
She smiles. “Noted.”
On my way out, I glance back. She’s in front of the mirror again, the dress lifted, her mouth set, her eyes not soft. Warrior and sacrament, both of us pretending we aren’t making vows in daylight.
In the corridor I pull out my phone.
To: Reid
Double security at the gala. New perimeter includes the hallway to the mezzanine bar and the west service stair. Pull Caldwell’s routes. I want a three-minute overlap where we don’t cross. She’s coming with me.
His reply lands fast.
Reid:Copy. Extra eyes on floor photographers. Do you want a decoy car?
Me:Yes. Send Mara in fifteen with hair, makeup, and a look that reads lethal, not meek.
Reid:Understood.
Chapter 38 – Aurora
I stand in front of the mirror with the dress on and for a moment the room and I are strangers to each other. The wine silk fits my shoulders and my ribs in a way that makes me stand up straighter than I want to admit; the back drops like a question. I touch my collarbone with the pad of a finger. I dip the lipstick and the color looks like a dare on my hand before it looks like it on my lips.
Lila calls me from the airport between tugs of the seat belt and the carousel. She sounds tired and all wrong for advice, but she’s immediate and real and I need that.
“Are you sure about tonight?” she asks. The voice she uses for me when she’s worried — that soft, sardonic undertone I learned to answer with the truth or a joke.
“I am,” I say. I’m not entirely sure. I’m sure of the math, the reasons, the compulsion that got me here, but not the consequences. “I’m going to stand in a room full of people who measure charity as currency. I’ll smile. I’ll answer questions. I’ll walk.”
“You could bail.”
“Then the story becomes‘artist vanishes into secret grant.’” I pinch the lipstick tube and close it. “No. I’m going.”
She exhales and then laughs like she’s relieved. “You do whatever you’re going to do. And if you stab someone, call me so I can be there to take a selfie for the inevitable police report.”
We hang up laughing. I look at the dress again, at the way my reflection holds its breath. This is not the dress I would have picked a month ago. It is not even the dress I would have picked a week ago. It has a back that will make the camera lenses linger and a hem that will make my hips narrow to a better line. It feels like armor someone else designed for me.
There’s a knock and then the door opens and Cassian steps in.
