“Do you remember,” he murmurs, “watching the dancers from my father’s study?”
I laugh again, younger versions of us at the edge of memory, like ghosts dancing beside us. “Of course,” I say, the corner of my lips tipping up.
“You were always barefoot,” he says. “You kept stepping on my feet.” There’s a bite to his words—fondness folded into something darker. Ownership sharpened to a point.
“You said I was the worst dancer you’d ever seen,” I breathe, trying to laugh it off.
“You were,” he says, the vibration of his lips against my hair. “But you weremine.”
The words don’t land with nostalgia. They land with weight. Not a possession spoken loudly, but a seal, pressed permanently into the space between us.
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s packed tight—full of things neither of us should say.
My breath hitches.
The ballroom spins around us—blurred gowns, candlelight, polite applause. But it’s not part of us. Not anymore.
We’re not dancing. We’re circling something. Something dangerous.
I press my hand to his chest, feeling the steady beat under uniform and bone. His pulse drags mine with his—over the edge of some unseen ledge until we’re both falling.
“Gavrail…” I whisper, my voice too soft. Too real. A warning and a plea braided into one. Wanting to stay in this moment. Wanting to run from it.
I realize only then that we’ve stopped moving.
He doesn’t let go. Not right away.
His hands remain where they are as his gaze drops to my mouth—and the air between us is suddenly knife-thin, one wrong breath and we will both be cut. Left to bleed out on the marble floor.
Then, slowly—deliberately, like turning his back on a fire he still wants to burn in—he eases his grip.
He releases me. I step away, not daring to look back.
But I feel him anyway—a shadow stitched to mine.
Like gravity I’m not sure I can ever escape.
* * *
My heart is still hammeringbeneath my ribs, the chandeliers blurring as I slip past the ballroom doors, leaving behind silk, music… and the memory of the boy who used to spin me around through the shadows.
But just before I cross the threshold, I feel it?—
A flicker at the edge of instinct.
Two gazes. Heavy, assessing.
General Vaylor watches from one side of the ballroom, his posture unyielding, drink untouched in his hand. He’s silent and poised as his gaze flicks between me and Gavrail, then between me and Noa, tracking every movement with his sharp, calculating blue eyes.
Directly across the room from him stands General Kamenov, one hand folded neatly behind his back. He doesn’t blink. His diplomatic smile hasn’t moved since the moment I stepped away with his son.
Opposite ends of the room.
Same silence.
I don’t look back, but the pull of their attention feels like threads hooked into my spine. The weight lingers—like warning. Like a reckoning already in motion.
And I wonder, suddenly, which of them sees the threat—and which sees the weapon.
