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This was not Isolda.
Antonio. The word filled my mind with gentle sweetness. My posture straightened, and I sloppily moved my hands across my hair to smooth some of the wildness.
My gaze went to his burnished brown eyes first, and then his tousled hair and simple clothing. I watched him take in the entire room as I stood there in a pile of silk and tulle. Sweat beaded along my forehead.
“I was coming to ask if you were all right, but now I see you definitely are,” he said with a breathy laugh.
I scowled. “What do you want?” I snapped.
His eyebrows shot up. “Nice to see you’re not letting that incident with Isaac and his mother dampen your cheerful temperament.”
The weight of sorrow didn’t feel like something that should be joked about. “I liked you better when you didn’t speak so much.” He cracked a smile that vanished seconds later, and I paused. “I have other things to worry about, you know. I don’t think you know everything about me.”
The Withering was terrifying. Antonio had told me that Élites couldn’t heal other people, only in very special situations. The science of it didn’t balance out, but I… was trusting him. I prayed Magda was being safe with Ronaldo and that they would be spared heartache.
“I think you know that isn’t true. You have nothing to worry about but charming Canciller Duarte.” He was dead serious, but he was also out of touch. He could pay off dancers so that they wouldn’t talk about me, threaten and bribe me to stay and compete, but he knew nothing about my fears. A bitter taste bloomed in my mouth when he said, “Which reminds me, we need to load the cars for the capital soon, and you have a meeting with Joaquín Pérez soon. I came to see if you were finished packing.”
I completely ignored the comment about my meeting with the Master Strategist. It was on my agenda. I didn’t need to be babied. “Cars,” I grumbled as I rolled my eyes. “We are two people.”
Antonio pursed his lips. “Yes, plus all these dresses. Isolda, Javier, and Manuel are coming, too.”
I had known that Isolda was supposed to come, but when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, I knew something was wrong. I narrowed my eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He took a deep breath. “My mother will attend the week of celebrations. She’ll meet us there. She said she’s bringing a complete team of her stylists for you.”
It wasn’t uncommon for Élites to do such things, based on what I knew about this culture. But uneasiness settled inside of me; I was prepping for an endless week. Winter solstice fell on Saturday, but there would be veladas, a parade, and interviews with the Canciller.
A nauseating iciness came with thoughts of the Canciller and Antonio’s mother. They were equally intimidating to me. She, after all, had been the first person to warn me away from Antonio.
I nodded slowly. It was only two hours to the capital palace from here. “Having a team might be nice,” I said.
Antonio gave me a sour look. “Don’t lie to me. I know you hate all the pomp and circumstance.”
My jaw tightened. “Well, don’t let anyone else know that.”
More shared truths merely between the two of us.
I didn’t have time to put my defenses up before Antonio walked to my bed and picked up the one backless red dress. “I know we’ve branded you as golden, but I think I like this one best.”
That familiar gleam flickered in his eyes as he looked back from the dress to me, and for a second, all the air was sucked out of the room.
My voice was barely more than a whisper when I said, “That sounds an awful lot like something a friend would say.”
All of his attention focused on me. His eyes trailed from my face, to my neck, and down to my bodice, less like he was trying to guess the cut of the dress, and more like he was trying to remove the clothes I was currently wearing so that he could slide the silk ensemble across my skin. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I stared at my mentor.
“I’m not your friend,” he practically growled.
Goose flesh rippled across every inch of my skin and heat spread throughout my core.
Unspoken words flowed between us, and for a moment, the possibility of him seeing me as something other than a candidate, as the girl who had put him through hell, didn’t seem like a dream. It was as real as the sweat collecting in my palms or my dry throat.
He had lost his wife to a horrific accident. We were of a vastly different social class. He was favored by the commonwealth.
Take away the false image that happened to me by an accidental audition, and I was no one. I needed to find someone suitable and unattached. Who that would be now that I had given up hope on Isaac, I did not know.
But one thing always had been, and always would be clear: Antonio was off limits.
I cleared my throat, trying to clear the gilded magic from the room. I needed his eyes off of me. “If you want me to finish packing, maybe send for Isolda and leave me alone?” My voice was way weaker and breathier than I intended, but it worked because the spell broke.
