“You think that a single gift makes up for the years? How dare you, Victor. How dare you come to me now after seven years of silence.” They were still dancing, moving to the slow rhythm of the song. Selene knew how to put on a performance.
Victor did, too. He took her through the steps of the dance with grace and charm. She didn’t want that from him. She wanted him to react.
“You said you’d come for me.”
“I’m here now,” he said quietly.
“It’s not enough.” Selene tried to pull the tremor from her voice, tried to be stoic and devoid of emotion. “You were all I had left and then you were gone, good as dead. You were supposed to be different.”
Victor’s eyes softened with sadness. Selene felt the cascade of it, and it made her want to lean into him and tell him it was okay. But it wasn’t okay. Nothing he said could make it okay.
He spun her out and pulled her back in, as the dance demanded. “Didn’t you get my letters?”
Selene’s mouth dropped open, the fury leaving her. “What letters?”
He pulled her closer than the dance required, his voice low in her ear. “I wrote to you every day, Selene. I wrote you letters until I was good at writing them. I sent you letters from Erramasque, from the mountains, from each port. Thousands of letters, Selene.”
He searched her face. Selene wondered what he was looking for. She didn’t have the letters. She didn’t have anything from him. Had he been waiting for her the last seven years, like she had waited for him?
“After years of silence, they stopped being for you and started being for me. You really didn’t get them? Not one?”
“No.”
Victor slid his hand from her waist to interlace with her fingers. His skin was rough against hers. He led her effortlessly through the steps and she let him move her. “The rose—that rose. I had that rose made for you weeks after you’d been sent away. I’ve carried it with me across the world, waiting for a chance to see you again.”
“You’ve been in the city for weeks.”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me.” He brought his hand up to brush away an errant curl from her face. “I didn’t want to disrupt your glamorous life.”
Selene’s laugh was short, all the fight drained from her. “I’ve lost hold of my righteous anger.”
“Shall I do something to bring it back? You know I can be a scamp.” He winked.
Selene looked up at him, fighting back tears. She was tired of the lights and the sounds and the bodies. She needed rest she could not have.
Victor regarded her carefully. “May we have a moment alone?”
“I’d like that.”
He took a few spun steps to the corner of the room and then pulled her behind a tapestry. She knew this passage. They’d used it a hundred times to slip into the king’s events and steal fruit tartes and cream and centerpieces. Turn right, and they’d go straight into the kitchens. Victor took her to the left, and then to the left again. The passageway was unmarred by cobwebs or dust: perfect and clean like the king preferred.
Once upon a time, Selene would have followed this boy anywhere.
She followed him, again.
Despite the years, he still knew the right place to take her. He guided her through a discreet door and into the night.
Selene breathed in the salt of the sea and the sweet fragrance of the garden: fresh-cut grass and the subtlety of the damask roses and petrichor. This was the Queen’s Garden, separate from the sprawling grounds peppered with guests. They were alone in this space: Selene, Victor, the roses, and the stars. He still held her hand, his fingers rough against hers. He was not a boy anymore. And she wasn’t that girl. Selene took a step away from him, giving herself the space she needed.
Victor collapsed onto the grass, tossing his mask into the nearest rosebush. He was flat on his back, eyes glittering with stars. His white uniform soaked up the green. “That did not go as expected.”
Selene sat on one of the marble benches, letting her dress spill around her. She kept her mask on. “What did you expect?”
“That you would hate me.”
“I do hate you,” Selene said.
And part of her wanted to. But she could feel that slipping away from her. The resentment she’d carried for most of a decade replaced by the familiarity of their friendship.
