The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us 3)

So tonight, we needed two things: to find out what this object that contained the next clue was, and to get hold of it before the initiation tomorrow, without the Circle knowing.

Stellan cleared his throat. I brought my attention back from scanning the crowd to find his hand extended to me. “Dance?” he said.

“Why?” I said through my forced smile.

“Because we appear to be on a dance floor, and it would look strange not to.”

He was right. While I hadn’t been paying attention, we’d ended up in the middle of a group of dancing couples.

I glanced behind him, saw Jack’s eyes on us. With what I hoped wasn’t too obvious a sigh, I put my hand in Stellan’s.

“Have you seen Lucien?” he said, looping one arm around my waist. So that’s why he’d had us wandering the party. Even though Stellan was technically the head of his own Circle family now, I wasn’t sure he’d ever stop protecting Luc. “He was going to take Colette and see if they could find anything, but they’ve disappeared.”

Stellan’s usually light accent was a little thicker these days, his ths softening almost to zs. Zey’ve disappeared. It was because he’d been spending more time in Russia than he usually did. His little sister, Anya, was part of the thirteenth bloodline, too, which meant plenty of people might like to get their hands on her. He had her stashed somewhere safe, and went back every few days to move her to a new town in case anyone was looking for her.

“Luc’s fine,” I murmured, still watching the rest of the party. “This is a harmless way to let him feel like he’s involved.”

Stellan sighed and pulled me tighter against him. Some of the Circle didn’t believe our relationship was real. That mattered because they still thought our “union” was what fulfilled the mandate, and to them, union meant marriage. There were whispers that we’d lied about having completed the marriage ceremony already—since we were so young, and I was an outsider, would I really have agreed to it like that? It was part of the plan tonight to show them just how very in love we were and put those doubts to rest, because they were completely right about the objections I’d have. Even if we had to be initiated, there was no way I’d go through with the marriage ritual, so we needed them to accept that it was already done.

We certainly looked the part of the perfect, pretty power couple: Stellan in a classic tuxedo, having perfected the look of I’m too good for this place, his blond hair mussed just enough to keep up the illusion. My dark hair contrasted with his, and my four-inch heels brought me just a little closer to his height, though he still towered over me. I was wearing some designer or another— Colette and Elodie had taken care of it. The dress was high-necked and black. It was beautiful, I supposed. A month ago, I would have had fun putting on something gorgeous and coming to some fancy party. Now my mom was dead and nothing else mattered.

“You doing okay?” he said. “I know being here is probably—”

“I’m fine.” Maybe I was feeling a little tense, but nothing that was going to get in the way of what we were doing here.

Stellan twirled me. We’d rehearsed for tonight—for the politics and the Circle business and exactly what we needed to find out. But the dancing didn’t require practice. Stellan always knew just how to guide me in the direction he wanted to go, and I knew just how to respond to his touch. I wasn’t even that good a dancer, but I fell easily back into his arms at the end of the turn.

He brought my hand up between us, and his fingers skimmed my knuckles. They were red and raw. Hitting something was the only way I’d found to blunt the sharp edges of the things that lived in my chest. It turned out that wrapping my hands with athletic tape didn’t work very well.

I snatched my hand back.

“We could find you something softer than a heavy bag to hit when you don’t have gloves.”

“Or you could mind your own business,” I said with a sweet smile, but I wasn’t surprised that he knew what I was doing. At least it wasn’t Jack who had caught me. He would have posted guards outside my room so I could no longer leave at night, just in case I got murdered on the way to the hotel gym.

“Having your hands look like you’re part of a back alley fight club doesn’t exactly go with formal wear,” Stellan said. “Next time, tell me and I’ll hold some couch cushions for you to hit.”

When I said nothing, he pressed, “Or you could get a new hobby. Knitting? Crossword puzzles. I bet you’re a crossword puzzle girl. Or”—his eyes flicked to my mouth and his lips curled up in a sly smile—“I could help you release stress another way.”

In the past, that might have gotten a rise out of me. Now I was just annoyed that he thought he had license to hear my innermost thoughts because we’d made out once. We’d twirled too close to some cousins of the Wang family, so I giggled like I was playing along. “If you really want me to punch you, I’ll punch you,” I murmured. “Can you please drop it?”

“Actually, no. You’ve hardly said more than ‘pass the salt’ for weeks, and now I have you here and you can’t run off.” He curled a hand tighter into my waist to prove the point. “I’d like to at least know that inside that pretty little head you’re not planning to murder me.”

“Not currently.”

I pushed away from him, following the steps of the dance, and he caught my opposite hip. “Kuklachka—”

“While we’re at it, don’t do that,” I said. “The little doll thing. I’m not. Not yours, despite this arrangement, and not the Circle’s, either.”

“Avery,” he said pointedly.

Over the past weeks, I kept thinking I’d pushed him away enough that he’d stop trying to draw me out, but he was persistent. Jack knew how it felt to not want to talk. Elodie was distracted and busy lately. But Stellan had zero boundaries. I pulled him down like I wanted to whisper something sweet and romantic. “If you have a problem with how I’m playing the role of your wife, tell me. Otherwise, I don’t care, I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t need your help.”