I glanced around somewhat wildly—it was all soft light and scarlet gauze, and the gleam of skin on marble floors, with the smell of roses working really hard to disguise the smell of disinfectant. Guests, in various states of dress and undress, streamed endlessly across the entrance hall, and up and down the wings of the staircase, masks and outfits blurring into each other like a trying-too-hard carousel until I lost track of what I was seeing.
Oh no. “How the fuck am I going to find Caspian in this?”
“Well”—George drew my arm firmly through hers—“I recommend we start by looking.”
She was right, but it already felt like an impossible task, and the gathering was just diverse enough that two men together wasn’t, on its own, identifying. We passed between interchangeable rooms and between interchangeable bodies, and sometimes I thought I recognised him, in the curl of someone’s hair or the set of their back, but it was always a stranger, the idea that I could ever have thought they were him rendered crushingly absurd the moment they turned around. Everyone kept moving—shifting, drifting, joining—caught in some ceaseless, incomprehensible dance. And everywhere was the same, a gaudy labyrinth of chaises and cushions, red on red on red, like a too-eager mouth. I mean, I’m sure it was a perfectly okay party if you were into that kind of thing. But it came at me with all the chill of a Hogarth painting. Leaving me half-sick with the smell and the heat, the hiss of silk and the rasp of breath, the shadows of sex writhing on the walls, and the fear I wouldn’t find Caspian.
And then I did…or I thought I did. Pulling free from George, I ran, slipping on marble and getting tangled in velvet, pushing my way through guests suddenly as unreal to me as mannequins, chasing a glimpse of probably fucking nothing. A butterfly of wishful thinking. On the stairwell, a glimmer of gold hair. Nathaniel? At the far end of a corridor, a backward glance—blue eyes imprisoned behind a dark mask.
And gone.
Fuck.Fuck.I searched. Rushed, frantic, from room to room. Ground floor. First floor. Same again.
Nothing. Nowhere. Vanished. Imagined?
Finally, I crashed headlong into George. “They were…I saw them…I did…but…I don’t know…”
She gently wiped the sweat from my nose. “They must have gone into one of the private rooms. Wait here. Remember to breathe. I’m going to have a word with the hostess.”
I nodded. Waited. Didn’t do so great with the breathing. The passing minutes wrapped around me like the coils of a boa constrictor.
“The red room.” George appeared in front of me, pressing a key—such an ordinary key—into my hand. “Second door on the left.”
I gaped at her. “How did you—”
“Intense personal charisma and promises I don’t intend to keep. Now go. And if you need me…” She paused, evidently reflecting on the fact we’d had to leave our phones behind. “Yell really loudly?”
“What if you need me?”
She gave one of her wickedest laughs. “Poppet, I never need anyone. In fact, I’m fully intending to collect the most attractive people I can find and take them home with me. I don’t fuck in places like this. Takes all the fun out of it.”
“Um…have a nice time?”
“If nothing else, it’ll reunite me with my personal electronics—meaning I’m easier to contact if something goes wrong after I’ve left. Or for that matter, if you’d like to join us.”
I gabbled my thanks and fled, key folded so tightly in my hand that the teeth bit into my palm. Found the door. Didn’t dare stop. Didn’t dare think. Just unlocked it and burst inside.
The seconds stretched out like treacle.
I saw red hangings. A four-poster bed with red sheets. Walls hung with whips, chains, floggers, crops. Nathaniel, arm raised. And Caspian, my Caspian, hands cuffed to a metal grid, eyes closed, back bare.
And then I was moving. And time seemed to remember itself, racing to catch up, as if the world had buffered and overcompensated.
I think I shouted “Don’t.”
But only because words were a habit. The truest instinct, the deepest, was to cover Caspian’s body with mine.
His skin was soaked with sweat. Alive with minute tremors.
Something cut the air. Then cut me. A cane strike, landing with a pistol-sharp crack, across my naked shoulder blade. It was an ugly pain—hot and jagged, like rusted metal—and I made an ugly sound.
I heard Nathaniel give a choking gasp behind me. “What the—”
“Arden?” Caspian’s voice was as raw as my scream had been. “Oh God, what have you done?”
Pain-made moisture was slipping slowly from the corners of my eyes. And I could feel a few drops of something viscous sliding down my spine. Blood? The yellow stuff that sits on top of blood? “What haveyoudone?”
Suddenly he went wild beneath me, rattling the cuffs against the grid with such force that I thought he was either going to lift it off the wall or break his wrists. “Get these off. Get them off me. Get them the fuck off me.”
