For once, I didn’t look like a Chernykh daughter. I looked like something untethered.
The doors opened for us, and we stepped inside, making me feel as if the world was shifting along its axis. Music thundered softly beneath crystal chandeliers. Gold light spilled over marble floors veined with charcoal. Masks shimmered everywhere, some minimal, others elaborate sculptures of feathers, jewels, horns, lace. It felt less like a ballroom and more like stepping into the inside of someone’s decadent imagination.
I stopped without meaning to.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Mila smiled knowingly. “You love it.”
I did.
I noticed everything at once.
The embroidery on a woman’s sapphire gown, which was clearly hand-stitched, probably French. The structured lapel of a man’s Italian cut midnight suit, with the narrow waist. A mask adorned with black swan feathers, meticulously layered to create dimension rather than bulk. It was all couture. I felt as if I had stepped into the back room of a fashion show, the frenzy representing the chaos that unfolded right before the first model walked on stage.
For me, it had always been this way. Textures spoke to me the way people didn’t.
Fashion wasn’t just clothing. It was language. Armor. Seduction. Defiance. I read it instinctively. And tonight, the entire room was buzzing fluently with it.
Zhenya tugged me forward. “Dance before you start critiquing everyone.”
“I’m not critiquing,” I said absently, watching a woman glide past in silver chiffon. “I’m appreciating.”
“You’re not just appreciating. You are cataloging and analyzing and designing things in your own head,” Mila corrected.
She wasn’t wrong. I was doing exactly that. Mila had been a business major in college, while I had been studying fashion, but our friendship was based on the two of us being roommates from the very first semester. She had been patient with my mess of fabric rolls and mannequins crowding our tiny room and had never complained. She was one of the few people who knew exactly how my mind worked when it came to fashion.
We moved deeper into the ballroom. The music swelled, the bassline vibrating subtly through the floor. Guests mingled in clusters, laughter rising and dissolving into the air like champagne bubbles. For the first time in a long time, no one looked at me with recognition. There were no brothers hovering nearby and no bodyguards shadowing every step.
Just anonymity. It felt intoxicating. Something I was most definitely not used to.
A server offered us champagne again. I took another glass without hesitation, the coolness of it pressing against my palm grounding me in the moment. Zehnya and Mila downed their glasses and picked another from the tray, all of us blending into the rhythm of the party.
“To freedom,” Zhenya declared, lifting her flute.
“To bad decisions,” Mila added.
I smirked. “To having just this one night without any consequences.”
They laughed as we clinked glasses, hands steady as I took another sip of the gold liquid. It burned lightly as it slid down my throat, my courage increasing, and my heart beat finally began to slow down.
I let myself breathe, stepping towards the dance floor at once. Mila and Zhenya followed after me, the three of us beginning to dance. None of us had come here in search of a man, especially Mila and Zehnya, since the two of them were already in rather happy relationships. I simply wasn’t looking for one. I had no desire to handle the complications that inevitably come along with dating as a Chernykh. I just wanted to have a good time.
For once, I wasn’t calculating exits or monitoring who entered the room. I let the music guide me, hips swaying with the rhythm, silk panels of my gown shifting around my legs like smoke. Zhenya spun beside me, laughing freely. Mila matched the beat with understated grace.
The anonymity changed everything.
I wasn’t Elisse Chernykh. I was just a woman in gold silk. And I liked her. After a while, we drifted toward the edge of the dance floor, slightly breathless.
“Look at that mask,” Mila murmured, nodding subtly toward a man wearing something that looked carved from obsidian, sharp edges framing his jaw.
“Too theatrical,” I said. “He’s compensating.”
Zhenya snorted. “You can’t analyze people’s insecurities based on their accessories.”
“I absolutely can.”
My gaze moved across the room again, drinking in detail after detail. A couple argued quietly near the bar, the woman’s gown stunning but poorly fitted at the waist. A man with emerald cufflinks clearly trying too hard to appear unbothered.
