Victor laughed. “Is that all? Heavens, I thought you were going to ask me to jump off the building or something half as terrible.”
“Why would I ask for anything like that?”
“You’d be surprised.” Victor took out his dagger and cut a curl from the nape of his neck. He dropped it into her open hands. It coiled there, like a small snake. “I get asked all sorts of requests in court.”
“To leap off buildings?” She tucked the curl into her pocket beside her father’s watch.
“Once a woman asked me if I’d murder her husband.” He sheathed his knife.
“Did you?” Selene leaned closer.
“Of course not. And I didn’t murder her when the husband asked me to. Nor did I smuggle tigers, like the papers are suggesting.”
“You lie to your friends, and I’ll lie to mine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But let’s not lie to each other.”
Victor’s smile was genuine. “I’ve never even seen a tiger.”
“Not in all your adventures?”
Victor reached over and brushed one of her curls off her shoulder again. She could feel the heat of his fingertips through the fabric of her gown. “Nothing so wild as this.”
And her heart matched the cadence of his words, a tremulous rush of familiar wanting.
No, no, no.
She couldn’t do this. She’d been just a girl, then. She hadn’t known about broken hearts or blood or desire. She’d wanted to be at the edge of the sea with her father, singing the world into a more beautiful place. In those dreams, Victor was there, too. She hadn’t understood how—she just knew she wanted him in her life, forever.
Selene was old enough to know now that dreams didn’t come true. That she had to claw and bite and bleed to get what she wanted. She was old enough to know now that Victor wouldn’t stay.
Victor must have sensed her turmoil. He crossed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her. Selene couldn’t remember the last time she’d been held like this. She fought the rush of her heart, trying to stay grounded in her resolve not to be pulled into Victor’s orbit. But then he pressed his face into her shoulder, and she breathed in the sweet salt that permeated his clothes. She could have this. She could abandon her whole life and let Victor take her away from her dreams, her grief, her ambition. Like the dark, he could make her forget. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the world from slipping away.
He took a step away from her, hand still resting on the small of her back, fingers against her skin in between the ribbon lacing of the dress. He brushed his thumb down her jawline. She shivered beneath his touch. She could taste the sea on him—the brine and wildness of a storm and something else she couldn’t quite name.
“I missed you,” he said.
He rested his hand against her neck, fingers against the black lace choker she had secured there. His eyes dropped from hers, down to her lips, and back again. Oh, she could do this. She could get caught up in Hurricane Victor, let herself get swept away like she had when they were children. It would be so easy.
But this wasn’t what she wanted anymore. She had her own life, her own wants. She had music to write and ghosts to save and competitions to win. Victor was a memory. She took a step away.
“I have things to do.”
“You said that.” Victor’s smile fell into place. “Anything better than this?”
No,she wanted to say.
“Join me for dinner.”
For one fleeting moment, Selene thought she would say yes.
“I have to rehearse.” She looked to the stairs, to the door, to the balconies. Anywhere but Victor.
“Surely you must nourish your body, rest your soul.”
“I don’t have time, Victor.”
“A quick dinner, then. Please.”
Gods, the way he said that word. It was made new. It was a thousand symphonies folded up into that single pang of emotion. Selene remembered the thousand times she’d answered that plea. But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t give in.
