High Mis—
Wait.
The moment stretches, tension crackles, before a sea of flutes shoot skyward ...
Oh, shit.
Bare feet planted on the top step of Stony Stem, I peek down at my hand clutching a fiery torch. At the cupla secured around my wrist like a dark blue shackle.
The only color I ever pictured wearing wasblack.
My heart’s lost its rhythm, composure nowhere to be seen. I can feel my strong, resilient mask smearing a little more with each droplet expelling from my eyes.
I’m not okay.
My tears may be silent but inside I’m screaming.
Staring at the door that usually separates Rhordyn and I during our nightly ritual, I drop my shoes, listening to them tumble down the steps behind me. The key to Stony Stem swiftly follows—the one I begged Cook for after I fled the ball.
My tongue sweeps across my bottom lip to find it’s still smacked with the taste of Cainon—
I kissed Cainon.
I stab the torch into a wrought holster protruding from the wall and draw a quaking breath, choking on the smell of citrus and salt, realizing my dress isdrenchedin the unfamiliar scent. A whimper bubbles in the back of my throat, the silky, figure-hugging sheath suddenlysuffocatingme.
This gown was its own sort of mask ... and deep, deep down in the shameful corner of my mind, I’d hoped Rhordyn would see through it.
Peel it back.
That he’d take one look at me and see the dress for what it really was; a pretty tourniquet to hold me together while I fell apart on the inside.
But he didn’t, and the dress worked too well.
Too fucking well.
Off. It needs to comeoff.
I battle the fastenings at the back of my neck, but my fingers are jittery, frustration bleeding out in ravaged sobs that betray everything I’m feeling inside.
A groan rents the air as my hands fly to the front, gripping tight. I rip the bodice, gasping at how easily it tears down the middle and bares my naked breasts.
I rip again, feeding off the sound of splitting seams, wishing my hands andwrathbelonged to somebody else.
Somebody cold and brutal and—
Not mine.
He’s not mine.
I take my ire, confusion, sadness out on the masterpiece I never wanted in the first place, the dress shrieking while I force it to release me in increments.
What I want, what I need, and what is right are three entirely different things ...
A twisted sound wrings out of me as the last scrap of material falls, the shredded ribbons decorating the ground like a bloody puddle. Heaving and raw, I stand on the steps with nothing to warm me but the roaring flame of my own self-hatred, my hatred towardhim, and that stack of psychological kindling between us that finally caught light.
I pause, sheathed in uncertainty, staring down at the pile of ruin. I may have led myself to this moment, but the whiplash has left me spinning without direction.
I’m now tethered to an expiration date. My net will dissolve, and I’ll no longer be welcome here in my carefully curated normal because I’m promised to another male.
