Tears pricked as my chest rose and fell, desperate for air and aching for relief of bloodied release from the building pressure.
I clasped a hand over my mouth and stifled a weak whimper.
“A little chilly, isn’t it, Little Dove?”
A few paces from the entry to the gardens was a man stepping softly against the stone with the elegance of a cat, a creature of beauty and oddity. His suit was a decade or two older than the current fashion, a long cape draped over his shoulder flickering with each step coming to rest from the edge of the balcony overhang.
The moonlight cut hard angles into his features, the shadows resembling etchings by careful artists.
I caught myself staring and uttered, “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to be out here without a chaperone. I just needed some air. Never did I think I’d run into you again.”
The strange man gave a low chuckle, long silvery strands falling, with a pair of curious iridescent gold eyes peered behind a black mask at my goose bumps. The man shrugged off his coat, draped it over my shoulders, and cleared his throat. “You’d catch your death out here if you are not too careful.”
I quipped back, almost without hesitation, “Perhaps death has already caught up to me.”
He leaned against the rail of the balcony, his golden gaze burning with fierce hunger. “Has he, now? What a morbid thought to have as a young lady.”
“As opposed to, what, being oblivious of their end?”
The frantic energy from the night bubbled out of me in shocking waves, and I chuckled.
I’d little recourse, as I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol talking, the nerves, or the sheer desperation, but Icontinued to laugh as thought after thought slammed through my skull with the stranger looking on.
I peered out at him from the corner of my eyes, the thought of him mentioning death in front of me fresh on my ailing mind. “It would be foolish to think I can outrun death. No man can and we are forever to be forgotten by death—in death.”
My heart thundered as cloves and spice enveloped the night air, and the odd, familiar sensation bloomed inside my chest.
A cool hand grazed my warm cheek, tucking away a stray strand of dark hair. “Death would treasure a gorgeous creature such as yourself. So enthralled that he’d make any bargain with any gods that’ll listen just for you.”
I let his hand linger there for a second longer than I’d like, the sensation against my skin tender and warm I wanted to sink further into. Yet the gathering voices of the party and the gravity of the situation pulled me out of my delirium.
I pulled away from the stranger. “That may be a nice sentiment, but I am afraid that death is crueler to humanity than a lover of one. Now, if you’d excuse me, I should be getting back.”
I shrugged off the coat, handing it back to him—his gaze ripping into my soul piece by piece and into the act I’d play the rest of my little life.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The whispers reverberated throughout the ballroom, hard to ignore and even harder to fathom thata stranger was here, at a party, without knowing the most notable people for whom the party was thrown.
“You’re here at my engagement party, yet you do not know my name?” I scoffed, my fingers playing with the fabric of his coat.
He pinned the coat back over my chilled shoulders as a light smile danced across his lips. “I wanted to hear it from you, Little Dove,” he whispered in such a way of temptation.
“Valeria. Valeria McCallister.”
“Valeria,” he mused, sending a thrill up my spine. He closed the distance between us, extending a hand. “May I have this dance?”
“Dance,” I squeaked out, a cough nearly bubbling out. I cleared my throat, forcing it back down into the deep part of my lungs as I steadied my breathing. “I, uh—I don’t really dance.”
The music swelled from inside, a waltz I surmised, the dance floor awash in skirts and quick movements. From beyond the balcony, my so-called fiancé twirled a girl by the waist and whispered sweet nothings into her ear, his gaze flickering to the balcony.
At the open palm of the strange man’s hand, I was struck by the thought. This man could be a trick on my decaying mind and body, or perhaps the gods from long ago were listening to my pleas for control of my own life. Sending this man instead of a way out, I chuckled and took his hand gingerly in mine as he guided us into a waltz.
Out on the balcony, the life of the party dimmed compared to the heat flooding my body. Acutely awareof his ghostly touch from the hand wrapped around my waist and the other that held mine, he spun me in time with the music, and for once, my body was light and free.
We spun and spun, the stranger never taking a stray step or allowing a stray touch between us. As the music died, we stood still, chest to chest, where cloves and spice flooded my senses.
I stared at his lips, amazed at how they quirked back into a grin.
