“How did you get that card?”
“It was my father’s. Some dude working for the phantom came to our house and delivered it to me in person, since my father was absent. Dad doesn’t even know I’ve stolen his invite to bring the prettiest girl in Paris with me for a night she’ll never forget, but I’m sure he’d approve,” he joked.
“You’ll get into trouble for it.” I chuckled. “But thank you.” Tonight was my first event of this magnitude—or at all—and I was ready to step out of my comfort zone. I had never traveled anywhere or lived anything exciting.
After crossing the imposing gothic fence, where two gargoyle statues held guard, we escaped the rest of the hostile forest and arrived in front of the ghostly manor. “What—What’s all this?” My eyes opened wide. People cosplaying sorcerers were rocking the night with African drum beats. The guests were dressed as eccentric Renaissance royalty, giggling and already drunk.
It was extreme.
Magnificent.
The reincarnation of one of the scandalous Great Gatsby parties at Dracula’s manor on a dusky night.
“That is the Devil’s work.” Adonis raked a hand through his sleek hair and adjusted his royal blue costume in the mirror of the car. “Great parties, monstrous man. At least with a masquerade ball, he can hide how hideous he looks.”
A jack with a pink wig and a parrot on his shoulder opened the car’s door for us. Adonis handed him the keys to park it while my nose got drunk with the diverse scents coloring the night. It was an exotic firework, a watercolor painting of emotions colliding together.
“Hideous?”
Adonis didn’t pay attention to my question, focused on tying his masquerade mask and completing his outfit with a golden feather hat. He was the epitome of Prince Charming—compared to me, who looked like I was in my undergarments. With a linen corset tightening my waist and pushing my breasts upward, my pristine white Grecian dress braced the curves of my hips perfectly—and because I was that obvious, I used lilies as jewels and hairpins.
“Why hideous?” I asked once more when he offered me his arm to stroll toward the entrance.
“Have you ever wondered why no one has ever truly seen his face? Why is he always hiding like a creature from a fable inside his gothic manor?”
I shook my head. I was so obsessed, living in my own universe, that I wasn’t one to encourage nor entertain gossip for the simple reason that I, too, had been the main subject of it in the past. It was only a partiality of reality. An interpretation of one’s soul.
“Well.” Adonis whirled in front of me with a sly smirk. “Even your uncle admitted he had never seenanythinglike that.”
“He’s a person, Adonis, not athing.”
“You’d think that. He’s a monster.” Something dark slithered through my veins hearing Adonis’s harsh words. I wondered if he wanted to scare me on purpose. “Don’t worry, princess. I’d slay the beast for you if I had to. After all, I promised your uncle I’d keep an eye on you tonight.” Of course, my uncle knew where Adonis was bringing me before I did.
“Your phones,” the imposing security guard interrupted us at the gate, his glance flicking over a velvet box behind him.
We had no choice but to capitulate, giving our phones away for the rest of the night.
Adonis leaned toward me, whispering in my ear, “And of course he’d ask for complete privacy so no one can immortalize in pictures how repugnant he is.”
He cracked a smile before using his natural charm to prove we were legitimate invited guests to this party. I gazed at the universe of sins around me. It was a perverted jungle in which the crowd surrendered to their obscure desires the moment they signed their names at the entrance.
I was an outsider at the gates of hell.
I tilted my head up to watch the stars sparkling through the dusky night and met the stare of a man with a grim figure. We were both static, as opposed to the extravaganza around us. Alone on the highest balcony, he reeked of superiority in a black satin costume without a single speck of color about him anywhere. Austere. Unwelcoming. I observed this man melting with the shadows, a cold shiver not leaving my back.
I was too far away to distinguish his gaze under his dark-silver Venetian mask, but I had no doubt his eyes were firmly set on mine. Each fiber of my body screamed at me with a deep intensity,Turn away. That man is up to no good. But being hidden behind my ivory-white mask gave me enough confidence to ignore my gut.
Just when I thought the man was carved in stone, he gave a slight nod in my direction. Was he greeting me? I swiveled my eyes in the opposite direction, feeling unveiled by him.
“Take this.” The security guard handed me a jet-black ribbon, commanding me through gestures to tie it around my wrist. “Keep it,” he ordered then, holding my stare as if he knew something I didn’t.
I searched for Adonis’s sign to enlighten me on the situation, but he seemed as clueless as me. Instead, he executed the guard’s order, helping me to tie the ribbon on my wrist.
“Let’s go,” he said, sliding his hand behind my lower back, guiding us eagerly to the heart of the party.
On our way, my curiosity sparkled through my core, and I couldn’t help but glance one last time at the balcony.
He was gone like an imaginary ghost.
