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I give him my hand, and he helps me up, even though I don’t need his help. For a moment, we just stand near each other, his hand still on mine, our fingers brushing in a delicate touch. His presence is bright and warm next to mine, the heat of it thawing the ice of me.
Zachary finally releases my hand, and we cross the pebbled path back to the French window we escaped through.
Right before we step through it, Zachary turns to me and says, “Since we’re both stuck here alone and it’s too early to leave, shall we dance together?”
Now that we’re standing in the violet and silver lights of the ballroom, the darkness can no longer conceal the flush in my cheeks, so I answer quickly, giving him no time to search for an answer on my face.
“Yes.”
He leads me inside to the dance floor. The string quartet has moved on from the more formal waltzes of earlier and is now playing scintillating renditions of modern songs.
Zachary wraps his arm around my waist. He holds me close but not close enough to press my body into his. My senses are full of him—his presence, his warmth, his intensity, his scent. We dance, and the moment is soft and unusual and special.
We dance, and although I would sooner have died than admit it to him, Zachary was right.
I should have said yes to him when he asked me to the dance.
Chapter 9
Ice Queen
Theodora
InYear10,everybodyis dating.
The fumbling awkwardness, the coy giggles, the furious embarrassment—all seem to be a problem of the past. Everyone seems older and bolder. Everyone wants attention and affection. Everyone, in short, is touch-starved and horny.
There are a few exceptions to the rules, like the most erudite students of our year—the students I can only assume are under immense pressure from their parents to excel academically—or the unwanted outcasts, like Sophie Sutton, whose parents work for Spearcrest, or a couple of scholarship boys.
The final exception is girls who are in the same boat as me. Girls whose parents are religious or strict or consider the future of their families and businesses. At first, I assume those girls are just like me, sticking safely away from boys and dating.
Then, one day, completely at random, I walk into an empty maths classroom to look for a workbook.
Two students are sitting at a desk: a boy I don’t know and Camille Alawi—whom I know quite well. Like me, she’s strictly forbidden from dating. Like me, she has strict and religious parents. She even wears a small golden cross at all times. She’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s not allowed to date and that there’s not a single good-looking boy in Spearcrest anyway.
But when I enter the classroom, she stands up so fast her chair falls, clattering back. Her cheeks are bright red, half-hidden by the black curls framing her face. Eyes wide with panic, she looks from me to the boy and then runs out of the classroom.
The boy, as red-faced as she was, stands as soon as she leaves. Still frozen by the door, I watch him as he fixes himself and buttons up his trousers. The bulge underneath the fabric is obvious to anybody who might look, so I raise my eyes to the ceiling as he mumbles incoherent apologies and sidles past me.
The door clicks shut behind him.
This is when I realise that not everybody who’s saying they’re not dating is, in fact, not dating. It’s of no comfort to me—if anything, I feel more isolated than ever.
My group of friends are the most popular, and therefore desirable, girls in the year. Giselle Frossard, the French flirt, flits from boy to boy with blithe indifference and becomes the first one of us to have sex. Kayana Kilburn, who’s arguably the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life, ends up in a long-term relationship with the Montcroix heir, one of Zachary’s best friends. Camille Alawi, for all her claims of innocence, seems to have boys following her around like puppies.
Even Seraphina Rosenthal, who is the most immature of us all, is going on dates in private places and coming back full of giggly, naughty stories.
The stress of keeping up with them is a problem I never thought I would ever need to deal with. For a while, I consider taking a page out of Camille’s book, except in reverse: telling everybody I’m dating while I’m really doing anything but.
But the fear of my father finding out—somehow—is too paralysing to allow me to pursue such a reckless plan. So I endure the endless questions and gentle mockery from my friends and eventually earn my title of ice queen.
Thankfully,inYear10,I make a new friend—a real one, this time.
During the summer, my father informed me in an imperious tone that my uncle would be sending his daughter, Inessa, to Spearcrest. When my father refers to someone as my uncle, I’m never quite sure what it means. Both relatives and friends, so long as they are close to him, are referred to as my uncles, and since I can’t quite bring myself to speak to him, I never find out whether or not Inessa is my real cousin.
And then I meet her, and it doesn’t matter at all. Because Inessa doesn’t feel like a friend or a cousin.
She feels like a sister.
