I bit my lip, refusing to look over at them in an attempt to give them some privacy. I’d never harboured delusions about my parents getting together again, but I knew they still longed for each other.
I also knew longing wasn’t love.
“Let me do your hair,” Giselle ordered, pushing me into the chair before my vanity.
I liked seeing her in the reflection where I used to see Mrs. White. It made the memory of sitting there all the less painful. It made me realize this was exactly what Alexander had predicted when he invited my family to visit. They were the only ones who could perform an exorcism on the many poltergeists in the Hall without even whipping out the Bible and sage sticks.
God, but I loved that man.
“I’ll miss you so much,” Giselle said as she dragged the gold brush through my hair. “New York won’t be the same for me without you there.”
“I’ll visit,” I promised.
She bit her lip, her eyes finding Sinclair in the reflection. “Cosi, I have my own alpha male, so I speak with authority when I say, I don’t think that man is going to willingly let you out of his sight for a very, very long time.”
She was undoubtedly right, but I still said, “He’ll let me visit my family, bambina. He knows how much you mean to me.”
“Um, would it be cowardly of me to request you don’t use me as an excuse. Honestly, the man kind of scares me.”
I’d laughed so hard, my stomach cramped.
Even now, walking down the hall by myself in search of my mysteriously disappeared family two hours later, I chuckled at the wide-eyed look on my sister’s face.
I couldn’t blame her. Alexander was an extremely terrifying man.
It was just one of the many reasons the dark side of my heart adored him.
The familiar strains of a Verdi symphony tickled the inside of my ears as I swept through the Hall of Mirrors and down the corridor to the ballroom. I frowned as I drew closer, the clatter of feet on the tiles and the low hum of chatter underscoring the swell of music.
Riddick appeared beside me so silently, I startled.
“Allow me, your grace,” he said formally, dressed to the nines in a perfectly tailored suit that made the somewhat crudely constructed man look entirely dashing.
I nodded, so many questions on my tongue, it felt cemented to the bottom of my mouth.
He stepped in front of me and pushed open the wide double doors to reveal the secret of the cacophony inside.
The ballroom was transformed.
For once, the drapes were tied open, the windows glimmering black mirrors in the night, reflecting the fragments of light from the many chandeliers like constellations of stars. The warm light made the gold leaf glow like luminous vines covering most of the room’s tall walls and my beloved mural of Hades and Persephone seemed to spring forth from the ceiling in a three-dimensional rendering.
It was gorgeous and so completely contrary to my history in the space, I felt momentarily bedazed and bamboozled. Had this loveliness been lurking in the dark of my cage the entire time? Had I been kept captive in a place of beauty, like a ballerina trapped in a closed music box, unaware of the gorgeousness around her, too haunted by the dark?
I blinked, wondering if I was imagining the warmth, hallucinating the many loved ones punctuating the space as I had in my loneliest hours being broken by Xan and Noel on the cold, hard black marble floor.
I wasn’t. Giselle and Sinclair stood in gorgeous refinery, his hand on the back of her neck in a claiming hold, Sebastian beside them with his head tipped to me but his suit-clad body angled toward my old friend Erika Van Bellegham’s stunning figure. Salvatore and Mama stood close but not touching, their hands both loose and twitching slightly at their sides as if drawn to each other by some invisible magnetic force. I caught sight of Agatha Howard holding Simon Wentworth’s hand, Jensen Brask standing beside Willa Percy, both peering at me with slight, smug grins as if they knew this would be my life all along. The staff were there too, in their humble finery, their smiles wide as they watched their lord and master carve a path through the crowd to collect his duchess.
To collect me.
My mouth went dry and my sex wet as I took in Alexander’s long, powerful gait eating up the floor, his stride purposeful, but somewhat unhurried as if he couldn’t wait to get to me, but he knew he had all the time in the world to reach me. His silver eyes caught in the warm light and reflected like diamonds from his golden face, one of Hephaestus’s perfect automatons come to life.
As he stopped before me, his face stony with tender solemnity, and took my hand, I felt for the first time ever as if my life was a fairy tale. Not one of the Grimm brother’s gruesome stories without optimism and filled with monsters, but something pure. A Bildungsroman meant to inspire hope, with the lesson that if you persevere through your times of trouble, you can come out the other side with a spine of steel, the heart of a worthy man held in your palm, and wisdom around your shoulders like a royal mantel.