“So troubling. So very, very troubling.” Callum reached out to brush her cheek and she shrank away, repulsed. He laughed. “So it’s me you hate, then?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t want to hate me,” Callum replied, “because you suspect me of committing terrible crimes with such silly things as hatred.”
He stepped into the ballroom, holding out a hand. “Shall we?”
She glared at him. “You want to dance?”
“I want to see if you can keep up,” Callum assured her.
She rolled her eyes, but took his hand.
“I assume you think you’re winning,” she remarked, beginning an uncannily perfect waltz once he set his hands upon her waist, though he would have expected no less. Somewhere, music was playing. He assumed that had been her work.
“You tell me,” he said. “You’re the one who can supposedly read my thoughts.”
“You spend most of your existence in the singular belief that you’re winning,” she said. “To be honest, Callum, there’s nothing so very interesting to read.”
“Oh?”
“There’s not much going on in there,” Parisa assured him, her neck beautifully elongated as she carried out the waltz’s steps. “No particular ambition. No sense of inadequacy.”
“Should I feel inadequate?”
“Most people do.”
“Perhaps I’m not most people. Isn’t that the point?”
“Isn’t it just,” Parisa murmured, glancing up at him.
“You’re so very guarded with me,” Callum told her disapprovingly. “It’s rather starting to hurt my feelings.”
“I wasn’t aware you had any feelings available to hurt.”
He spun her under his arm, conjuring a little flash of color to marinate the walls.
“Was this it?” he asked, gesturing to the crimson. “I’m not quite sure I have the precise hue.”
“For what?”
But he could feel her stiffen in his arms.
“Your wedding dress,” he replied, smiling politely, and for a moment, she froze. “How is your husband, by the way? Alive, I assume. I imagine that’s why you changed your name, went to school in Paris? You don’t strike me as the career-oriented type, so I assume you were fleeing something. And what better place to hide than within the walls of a magically warded university?”
He felt the low undercurrent of her rage and felt keenly, acutely blissful.
“Oh, it’s not the worst thing,” he told her. “Plenty of teenagers have run from their tyrannical husbands before. Did your brother try to stop it? No, of course not,” he sighed to himself, “he never forgave you for turning from him, and this was your punishment.”
Parisa stepped back, dazed, and Callum held out a hand to her.
“You’ve been running a long time,” he murmured to her, brushing a loose curl from her cheek. “Poor thing.” He pulled her into an embrace, feeling the low swell of her misery greet him like a wave inside his chest. “You’ve been running for your life since the moment you were born.”
He felt her sag against him, drained slightly, and he angled her shoulders beneath his arms, guiding her out of the ballroom.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he told her, adjusting his arm to fit her waist as he led her up the stairs, up past the bedrooms and to the terrace on the top floor. She was gradually deflating, sentiment beginning to bleed out of her as if he’d sliced a vein. “People think beauty is such a prized thing, but not you. Not yours. Your beauty is a curse.”
“Callum.” Her lips were numb, his name slurred. He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, half-smiling.
“Do you hate them?” he whispered to her, lightly kissing her cheek. “No, I don’t think you do. I think, quietly, you suspect you deserve this, don’t you? You drive people to madness; you’ve watched it happen. You see them set eyes on you and you know it, don’t you? The way it looks, the way it feels. Perhaps you consider yourself a monster for it. It would explain your fear of me,” he told her softly, taking her face in his hands. “Secretly, you believe yourself to be far worse than I have ever been, because your hunger is incurable. Your wants are insatiable. You never tire of making people weak for you, do you? The perversity of your desire scares you, but it’s easier to think I might be worse.”
They reached the terrace, Callum nudging the doors open for their entry. Parisa’s feet met the wet marble, nearly slipping as the London rain fell. It splashed over the Greco-Roman farce that was the Society’s decor, droplets sliding like tears from the marble cupids, the white-washed nymphs.