Page 24 of You Only Love Twice
Dmitri was here. Somewhere.
He had to be.
The staircase opened up into a wide hallway, the floors a ripple of shadow. Black and white marble tiles, she guessed, though chipped and pitted and scarred by signs of fire. Wallpaper hung in strips from the walls, and someone had slashed the paintings that still hung there, marring the aristocratic faces she caught a glimpse of.
She slipped into the massive foyer of the mansion, moonlight gleaming through the open panes of the door, reflecting back off the broken shards of glass that hung there. Inch by inch Gemma crept toward freedom, easing her weight forward onto her toes so the faint heel of her boot made no sound.
She was almost there when instinct lifted the hairs along the back of her neck.
"Going somewhere?"
Heart leaping into her throat, Gemma spun around, settling into a defensive stance as her gaze darted through the shadows.
She hadn't heard a damned thing.
A whisper of movement caught her attention. There. In the shadows by the staircase.
"Who are you?" she breathed.
Obsidian, he'd said. But he looked like her Dmitri, and she desperately, desperately needed to know the truth. Had it truly been him? Was her mind playing tricks on her?
The silver gleam of the moon marked a bar of light across the floor, separating the pair of them.
All she could see were shadows rippling as someone moved in the darkness. A mocking laugh breathed into the air. "You pretend not to know me?"
"Step into the light," she whispered, the drum of her heart hammering a pulsing rhythm upon her ribs.
"Why?"
"I want to see you."
Moonlight gleamed off the polished toe of his boots. She caught a glimpse of the wet shine of his leather breeches as the shadow stepped forward.
Gemma held her breath, taking a half step backward.
Light spilled over his tall frame and his sculpted face, delineating the fine arch of his nose and the harsh slash of his cheekbones. He'd always been dangerously handsome; his mouth a touch full, his eyebrows thick and intense, and a faint scar slashing across the corner of his mouth.
It was him.
It was truly him.
Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the muscled strength in his forearms. His hands were covered in the liquid-black of leather. A trim waistcoat fit him like a glove, nipped in to display that narrow waist, though it strained over the broad planes of his chest. He'd dyed his pale hair and brows brown, as if to try and blend into a crowd of humans, but this man would never be able to fade into the background of a crowd. Not with that face. Those cheekbones. She'd seen his face a thousand times in her dreams, but she'd never truly believed she'd see it in the flesh again.
Gemma's heart skipped a beat as Obsidian tilted his head slightly to the side in a move she'd seen a hundred times before. His hair brushed against his collar. An eyebrow arched mockingly, as if to say,did you miss me?
There was nothing of the man she'd loved in his cold, arctic gray eyes, but every inch of that gesture pulled at her heart.
"You died," she whispered.
The explosion that rocked the Winter Palace had killed him, according to all of Malloryn's reports.
"Apparently you didn't try hard enough."
A faint frown tugged her brows together, and then Gemma realized what he meant. "I didn't set the explosion. I thought that was your side!"
"Why the hell would we try to destroy the palace of the Tzarina who'd just signed our treaty?"
"Well, someone did. I wasn't even in the country anymore. I was aboard an airship, far to the west."
