Hearing my name from his mouth shattered something fragile inside me.
“How—” I began, but the words failed. “Am I imagining you?”
“Maybe we are both imagining each other.” His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile.
I swallowed hard. Memories collided violently with the present. His aunt’s cold smile, Elizabeth Whitcombe’s pale hand resting on his arm, the engagement announced as if I had meant nothing to him. Years of practiced grief surged up and tangled horribly with the warmth still pooling in my veins.
“Why did you do it, Sylum?” I asked, my voice thick with torn emotion. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“I should have,” he murmured, stepping closer. The faintest trace of candlelight from the terrace caught his eyes—those eyes I’d once loved so fiercely were now unreadable. “You’ve no idea how long I mourned you.”
The air between us grew thick. My pulse quickened as his fingers brushed a stray curl from my cheek, his touch barely there, but enough to make my heart ache.
“This isn’t real,” I said again, but the words came weaker this time, traitorous.
His hand slipped to my jaw, his thumb tracing the edge of my scar. “Tell me it feels unreal,” he murmured.
I couldn’t.
My breath hitched as he leaned closer, so near I could see the fine tremor in his lashes, smell the faint trace of brandy on his breath.
“I thought…” I started, the words unraveling. “I thought you were gone forever.”
“I was,” he replied softly, not offering further explanation.
Before I could speak, before I could think, his lips were on mine, a ghost’s kiss turned feverishly real.
It wasn’t the kiss of a stranger. Every heartbeat, every stolen glance, every ache from the years between us seemed to surge back through that single touch.
I wanted to pull away.
I didn’t.
The world swayed, my pulse a thunder beneath my skin. His hands framed my face, and when I finally tore my mouth from his, I was breathless and dizzy.
“We can’t do this. What if we’re caught?” I murmured, voice shaking.
He smiled then, small and terribly sad. “If it isn’t real, Lucy, how would we be caught?”
I opened my mouth, my mind too fuzzy from the champagne to form a coherent argument. As if reading my thoughts, he placed a finger to my lips, silencing me. “Let go, my love,” he said quietly, “indulge in your passion.”
The sound of laughter spilled from the ballroom behind us, too distant, too careless. The night had folded in around us like a dream, and I couldn’t tell whether I was inside or outside of myself anymore.
“Sylum…” I sighed, my fingers still pressed to his chest.
“Yes?”
“If I wake tomorrow and find that none of this was real…” I trailed off, but he leaned in until his forehead rested against mine.
“Then dream of me again,” he murmured.
I nodded, lifting onto my toes to press my lips to his.
If this was madness then I never wanted to feel horrible sanity again.
One night.
That was all.
