Page 182 of Feed Your Fiends

“Sounds like I can never leave,” she whispers.

“Cult, maybe?” Etienne offers.

“But I don’t want to,” Elle says, wrapping her arms around me and leaning against my chest. “I’ve found my home, and I’m never leaving.”

Elle

Christmastime.

Two months later…

“It’s almost time to say I do.”

I turn to Gant as he slips beside me. We’re tucked in the shadows of the stage’s wings. The hum of the orchestra vibrates around the theatre, through the stage, up my pointe shoes, through my stockinged legs and to my heart. It’s thrumming in anticipation of my big moment when I finally get to dance en pointe again. There’s no fear coursing through my veins as I watch the leaping shadows and feel the aftershocks of the jumping dancers on stage. The bright lights don’t feel like an inferno but a warm welcome back, given the last time I graced the stage, because I finally, wholeheartedly feel safe.

Andloved.

“I do?” I arch a brow. “There is no wedding. I’m not Cinderella.”

Rin twirls through the bluish spotlight with Sylo as they perform their grand pas de deux with all the grace and elegance expected of the leads. I guess Rin’s overcoming her frigid emotional stuntedness.

Gant and I were cast as wedding-goers, bystanders in someone else’s fairytale. But that’s just it. Life isn’t a fairytale, and despite hours of physical therapy and private lessons with Gant, re-starting just a month ago, I’m still behind. But at least I’m still here.

Gant shouldn’t be here, though. He should be in Sylo’s position, front and centre, with the audience transfixed on him instead. He’d skipped the auditions, claiming he had no time as he wrapped up Bart’s death investigation and the following legal procedures of his inheritance of Bart and Marisol’s estates and business proceedings. Most of it will take years to complete, given the headaches of boards, egotistical directors, loopholes, red tape and court system wait times. But despite the heaviness of that load alone, I know it’s only a half-truth. I could fantasise that his step back in ballet was largely for my sake too, a guilt trip after the rigged pointe shoes, but I know better. I know the other reasons he’ll never say out loud.

Like the fact that his forgoing the audition meant Sylo was next up. And if Sylo was the lead, Silas wouldn’t miss the play. He wouldn’t miss the chance to see one of his sons on the stage while his other son sat in the crowd beside him. But even then, that still doesn’t feel like the largest reason. The biggest reason is Hale’s grin from the front row as he watches both of his brothers perform with the father he’s always wanted at his side.

But not everything is wrapped up so neatly in a bow.

Delphine is on the run.

“And I’m not Prince Charming,” Gant says with far more self-awareness than I’d expect.

“I don’t think anyone was confused about that.”

“But it doesn’t mean you aren’t still my princess,” Gant says, pulling me close, his voice laced with seriousness. “I want that.”

I follow his gaze to Rin and Sylo spinning in synchronized perfection in their pearlescent wedding attire. They look so pure, so perfect…so unobtainable. A fairytale that’s come to life.

“What?” I ask, the question catching in my throat because I think I already know.

“Happily ever after.The end.”

His words linger heavily in the air between us, and a gnawing, longing ache swells in my stomach.

“How are you going to get it?” I ask breathlessly, waiting for him to tell me what I so desperately want to hear.

He leans into me, his warm breath skimming the tip of my ear. “First with a new setting. I got rid of the penthouse.”

My brows furrow. “I know it held some bad memories.” The death portrait. His father’s death.Hisnear death. The weight of all that history and more. “But you were raised there, too, with Marisol, weren’t you?”

“We had homes all over Europe,” he says, his voice suddenly ghost-like as if he’s travelling to each in his mind, remembering them all. “I still own most of them, but the penthouse was our constant base.”

“It must have been painful and a relief to get rid of it,” I muse as the finality of his decision hits me. We had memories in the penthouse, too. Good memories. Nights of being his little doll. Becoming a puppet up top his cars. Watching movies tangled in his limbs. Dancing in the studio and on his cock, my leotards hopelessly shredded. Self-care in steamy showers, and long late night into early morning dinnfasts or brunches on the balcony overlooking the glimmering city below.

“We can still visit it,” he murmurs into my hair as if he’s reading my thoughts.

“How?” But the question barely leaves my lips as realisation washes over me. “Wait, you didn’t say you sold it. You said you got rid of it.”

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