Page 134 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
And if the music hadn’t suddenly sparked into a crescendo, she wondered in that moment what else she might have done.
After devouring every morsel on her plate (and some on Dimitri’s) she turned her attention fully to the orchestra below. She sat there, stunned, held by the music, listening as sound transformed into poetry, each note a word that seared against her heart, tugging on the strings in her chest. Each muscle and sinew bent beneath the weight of the music, unstitching and remaking her.
Yes, yes, souls are things,she realised, for something stirred beneath that endless rhythm, something deep inside her.
Her gaze slid to Dimitri.Souls are real, because mine feels yours.
Impossible. Ridiculous.
True.
But like the music couldn’t be rendered to word, she too lacked the vocabulary to give weight to anything she felt. It defied description, expression.
Well, maybe not one.
But she could never speak those words to him. It would destroy them both.
“Tell me of the guests,” she asked him, gaze staring down at them. “They’ve invaded the manor and yet I know so little about them.”
Dimitri snorted. He pointed to a plump woman in a peacock-coloured dress, dripping with feathers and gemstones. “That’s the Countess Von Trassel, and her daughter Alice. Wonderful harpist.”
“The mother or the daughter?”
“The daughter. Next to her is her sister, Lady Beatrice of Northdown Abbey, and her nieces, Penelope and Sophia. Penelope is very attached to animals. Had this little dog, Jasper, the last time she visited. Followed her everywhere.”
Adeline gaze fell to a woman at the side of the room, half seated in the shadows. Unlike the rest of her table, who were chatting animatedly to one another, this woman sat statue-still.
Even at a distance and cast into shadow, Adeline recognised her. The woman from the library.
Her heart stilled. “And what about her?” she asked, pointing, not sure what answer she was hoping for.
Dimitri paused for a moment, and then shrugged. “I’m not sure. Haven’t seen her before. But next to her is Lady Delphine…”
He cycled through the rest of the guests one by one, explaining their names, roles and families. He lingered more on the young women, telling Adeline more about them than their parents.
“You seem to know a lot of these young women,” she remarked, wondering why she felt a knot inside her.
Dimitri went silent for a moment. “After my father accidentally twisted the curse, after I became stuck like this, my mother and afterwards Minty used to invite these young women to come and stay here. I think they did it to try and lighten my spirits, but… it never exactly worked out that way.”
“Were they cruel?”
“Some. Most were just hesitant, and I never let them be anything else. I wasn’t kind to them. Lashed out at many. Hurt them before they could hurt me.”
He gazed out at the audience, as Adeline’s heart tightened in her chest. She knew that feeling. She might not have acted on it as much as he had, but she knew it. How badly she’d wanted to wrench the rest of the world away from her, once. She’d wished she’d been there for him at the start, but she doubted he would have let her in, or if she would have been ready to try with him, child she’d been herself.
Maybe we met when we were supposed to. Maybe there is good in the world, a guiding light. Maybe something brought us together when it was time.
Maybe, maybe...
She stepped up to Dimitri’s side and looped her arm into his. “I’m glad you letmein,” she said.
Dimitri leant against her. “As I am. More than you will probably ever know.” He paused. “I wish I hadn’t been as beastly to the other girls, though.”
“You were hurting.”
“They didn’t understand that, and I’m no longer fully convinced that pain is an excuse for hurting others. A reason, maybe.”
“How mature.”
