Each time, my attention sharpened. Each time, I told myself it was coincidence.
I stopped pretending I didn’t notice.
I began to wonder who he was. What he did. The thought slid into my mind uninvited, stayed longer than I wanted it to. I didn’t ask. Didn’t follow.
I had come here to be unobserved, not to entangle myself in someone else’s gravity.
But curiosity has a way of reframing itself as inevitability.
The night it finally broke, it was raining again.
I’d been invited—half-invited, really—to a private showing by one of the painters in the program. A friend of a friend, an address sent via text, the kind of event that felt exclusive without trying too hard.
I almost didn’t go. I was tired, my nerves frayed.
But I could already hear Élodie Marchand’s voice in my head—calm, incisive, impossible to argue with.
Élodie believed in momentum.
She was the reason I was in Paris at all. A photographer turned curator with a reputation for precision and taste, Élodie taught here—quietly, selectively—and the residency had beenmy way in. I’d applied because studying under her meant access not just to technique, but to a way of seeing that didn’t flinch. When Élodie spoke, she stripped things down to what mattered and expected you to follow.
You don’t stay home in Paris, she’d told me once, dismissive and precise.You follow the invitation. You see who’s watching.
She had a talent for framing discomfort as opportunity, for making exposure sound like a necessary step instead of a risk.
So, I went.
The building was old, its façade unassuming. Inside, the space glowed—candlelight and conversation, art leaned casually against walls as if it belonged anywhere but there. I drifted through the rooms, glass of wine warming my palm, my attention scattered.
Then, I saw him.
He stood apart from the others, his presence subtly rearranging the room around him. People gave him space without realizing they were doing it. He looked at me like he’d been expecting me, and something in my chest went tight and hollow all at once.
This time, he spoke.
“Mila Zee.”
Just my name. No question attached. The sound of it on his tongue did something to me I didn’t have language for yet.
I didn’t ask how he knew it.
For some strange reason, I felt seen.
Recognized.
I had come to Paris to disappear.
Instead, standing there under flickering candlelight, I felt the first unmistakable pull of something that promised the opposite. A descent. A narrowing. A claiming of attention so complete it bordered on surrender.
I didn’t know his name yet. Didn’t know what doors opened for him, or what he’d burn to keep them that way.
I only knew that when he looked at me, the girl I’d been began, quietly, to let go.
And I didn’t stop her.
2
Dominion Hall
