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The liquor leaves a burning trail down my throat, filling my belly with fire. Rose’s eyes are wide with a mix of surprise and admiration.
“You’re getting fucked tonight, Theodora?” she asks.
“Literally or metaphorically?”
She waggles her eyebrows. “Thoroughly.”
Weak laughter rises in my throat, strong enough only for a single exhaled chuckle. I’m shaking all over, I feel feverish and stripped raw.
“I don’t want to remember a single second of this night,” I answer, the bottle trembling in my hand. “I want to be so drunk I don’t even remember my own name. I want to find the kind of obliteration that will make me doubt my very existence.”
“Jesus, girl,” Rose says. “Doesn’t sound like you’re looking to have fun.”
“Oh, I’ll have fun.” I take another gulp. “Why shouldn’t I have fun?”
“You should,” Rose says, “but—”
“I want to have fun,” I assure her. “I want to stop feeling like this.”
Rose is frowning at me now. “Like what?”
But I’ve already turned and plunged into the crowd.
Alcoholmakesmeswayand burn and laugh.
Later, when the music becomes a loud, urgent beat and everyone gathers close together to dance, I join them. I dance with every girl I know and every boy who dares to approach me. I even let Luca Fletcher-Lowe, who has soulless eyes and laughs like the god-defying Satan of Milton’sParadise Lost, take me inside his arms and hold me a little too close, his fingers digging into my upper arm.
“Come outside with me,” he murmurs in my ear during a lull in the music. “Come on, mysterious Theodora, lonely ice princess. Let me rough you up a little bit.”
I lurch away from him in disgust, and he throws his head back with a feral laugh, melting back into the crowd of dancing bodies like a pale, nightmarish vision.
Fury fills me, but it’s not aimed at Luca. It’s aimed at Zachary. Because why isn’thethe one pulling me into his arms, whispering dirty, dangerous things in my ear?
He’s probably too busy finding a limousine in which to kiss Camille, that’s why.
The jealousy inside me sears like poison, and I know it’s making me sick. I’m well-read, logical and intelligent—I know jealousy, I know it’s a green-eyed monster which only mocks the meat it feeds on. A parasite that only ever harms its host. I need to get away, sleep it off, let it run its course and be reabsorbed back into the general ache of being alive.
But I’m too drunk and tired. I’m dizzy with a sort of bright, coruscating pain. My skin feels so brittle it might shatter at a touch. I’m freezing inside, so cold I ache, but my skin burns like I’m in the grip of a mortal fever.
And then, somehow, I’m standing in front of Zachary, simmering with anger. He’s drunk too, I can tell, and he smiles at me like he knows the real reason I sought him out.
We argue—I don’t even know what I’m saying. I angrily tell him I came to claim the kiss he promised me—but I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all.
I wouldn’t want to kiss Zachary Blackwood if I was cursed to die an endless, torturous death for a thousand years and the only way to break the curse was to kiss him.
“I’ve not forgotten,” Zachary says, with a hateful smirk on his angelic face, oblivious to my fury. “Claim it.”
Chapter 25
Glass Armour
Theodora
“Youpromisedmeakiss, didn’t you?” I ask. “Myfirstkiss, right?”
Zachary nods. His eyes glitter with hunger. Desire ripples through him; I see it in the tightening of his fists, the slight shudder that runs up his spine, and the sinking of his teeth into his bottom lip.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “Your first kiss.”
