A fine tremor had come back into her hands. Tucking her fingers under her armpits, she took a steadying breath, trying to clear the last of the fog that had netted her thoughts since her light had landed on that mirror.
And she’d seen Mallory’s name smudged in the dust and grime.
She closed her eyes for a second. “Mariana did,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Just for a second.”
A muscle ticked in Dominic’s jaw as he turned to the belligerent, wary boy. “It’s not a joke. It wasn’t funny. Don’t you ever do something like that again.”
The child stuck out his lower lip, darted out from behind the statue, and took off. Sylvie heard the echo of his footsteps on the stairs a moment later.
Her arms were still crossed tightly. “A kid’s prank. I completely freaked out. That’s really embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
Dominic stood still; then, as if in the passing of mere seconds, he’d come to a decision, he crossed to where she stood. Their eyes locked as their chests moved with ragged snatches of breath. His hand lifted to touch her cheek, the lightest, softest heart clutch of a caress. Trembling again, she reached to fold her fingers back over his, and he exhaled.
And then his hands were slipping under her hair, lifting her lips to his own, and Sylvie’s whole world shrank to that warm bubble where nothing existed but them.
In a sound almost like a tiny sob, her breath hitched again as he kissed her—nothing tentative or exploratory this time; it was hard, hot, deep, his tongue a silken stroke around hers. Her hands fisted against his ribs, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.
It was an intense kiss, but not a long one. Neither his hands nor his lips had traveled lower than her collarbone. Yet, when he lifted his head, her mind was swimming and her stomach was clenched. Her heart had jumped into thumping beats, pounding so hard it was almost painful.
Powerful chemistry was quite a ride.
With his thumbs under her chin, voice husky, he repeated, “It was a repellent thing to do. The kid’s a nasty little shit.”
She reached up and held on to his wrists. “I just—I was already thrown, and . . . in the dark, when I saw Mallory’s name—”
“I know.” His gaze very steady, he traced his thumbs in circles over her cheeks.
Sylvie could feel heat creeping into the skin under his touch. Suddenly, ridiculously, shy, she lowered her eyes to the base of his throat, where his pulse beat quickly.
A thread of renewed tension etched into the air between them, and Dominic released her, his hold dropping away.
“You made it out of traffic,” she said at last, foolishly, to his top shirt button.
“Eventually. They’re almost ready for us downstairs.” That same sense of constraint had come into his body.
“Oh, good.”
“Your favorite contestants were holding hands when I left the ballroom.” A flicker of amusement broke through the complicated, conflicted expression in Dominic’s eyes. “I think you just bounced up and down without moving a single muscle.”
She couldn’t help the return smile. “I have a text bet with Pet. She says they’ll be living together by Easter. I’m slightly less optimistic. My money’s on June.”
Dominic shook his head, but the amusement was still there. “My sister’s texting the enemy now, too, is she?”
Her smile faded as she asked, quite seriously, “Do you mind?”
He was, as usual, difficult to fully read. But there was nothing uncertain in his response. “No. I don’t mind.”
They were still standing very close. Suddenly, impulsively, she reached up and kissed him again. Just a soft, dancing press of her closed mouth against his.
“I suppose we should go down, then,” she murmured, and he moved his head, a slight gesture of assent.
As they walked back through the artworks, she stopped, her attention fixed on a wooden cabinet. Behind the display panel was a selection of smaller pieces of blown glass.
One in particular—an exquisitely rendered little sculpture of a deer.
And in the space of a blink, a heartbeat, the indrawing of her breath, it was fifteen years ago. In a room that was a sterile blur in her memory, but for the oddly specific details of a crack on the wall that looked like a butterfly and the blue-and-white star-print curtains. Someone had hand-sewn those. A valiant effort to introduce some cheer into four walls where hearts were inevitably going to break, over and over and over again.
A machine beeping, so familiar that her blood seemed to be pulsing in rhythm with the sound. And on the bedside table, amidst a jug of water and an array of medication bottles, a few scattered items. Beloved objects, a small piece of the home that would never echo with her aunt’s laughter again. A doll, the last remnant of Mallory’s childhood, a present from a doting older brother. The doll’s rosy cheeks had a dull sheen, worn away by years of kisses, but her hair and clothes were still immaculate. Mallory had kept his gift safe.
As she had later kept his child safe, and so very loved, for nineteen years.
There were well-worn copies of her favorite books. The necklace she’d never taken off until drugs had left her skin so sensitized that the friction of the chain was unbearable. And a tiny glass sculpture of a deer. During a trip to Paris for Sylvie’s sixteenth birthday, they’d visited the studio of the renowned animal sculptor Arielle Aubert, and Mallory had fallen in love with that one little deer. It was utterly beyond her reach financially, but Arielle herself had seen the look on the face of her visitor. As they’d prepared to leave, the artist had appeared from the private room out back. Vivid features, shining white hair, sparkling light-gray eyes; Sylvie would always remember her as looking like the spirit of a midnight star. She’d silently taken the little deer from his companions and placed him into Mallory’s hands.
Arielle Aubert had been killed a month later in a random act of violence on the streets of Montmartre.
Sylvie remembered curving over with her cheek resting against her aunt’s bed on that last night, her eyes parched and tight with exhaustion, staring at the little deer. La Belle Étoile, Mallory had called it. The Beautiful Star. In that dim, airless room, with the weight of the coming hours pressing down upon her and dread a sick clawing at her gut, the deer had seemed to be standing guard over them as they lay in the dying light.
Mallory had been largely drifting by then, heavily medicated, already a step departed from Sylvie’s world. With their fingers entwined against Mallory’s chest, Sylvie had watched as the taut, grayish skin over her aunt’s high cheekbones seemed to pull tauter as the sun slipped away. So quiet and still, as the disease raging through her blood and bones made its last advance, and her tired body rallied for the final, futile stand. She had been unwavering since the diagnosis, relentlessly strong, ever cheerful, keeping her sense of humor until the end.
But in those last hours, her hand had suddenly tightened on Sylvie’s, with a strength Sylvie hadn’t known she still possessed.
“I don’t want to go,” her aunt had said fiercely, her feverish eyes fixed over Sylvie’s shoulder. “I promised him. I promised him. I promised him.” The words low and urgent, a refrain of anguish. “She’ll be alone. I don’t want to leave her alone.”