“Holy smokes, your dress!” Jade squealed as she entered the room.
Corvina gave her a grin in the mirror, fixing her long, raven hair up in a fancy high ponytail, a style she’d never tried before, one that absolutely rocked with her entire look. She’d gone all out for the Ball – exfoliation, waxing with the homemade wax she used, deep skin moisturization with her lightweight oils. After her shower, she had returned to an empty room, taken out the breathtaking dress, and put it on. Then, she’d started to brush her hair, over and over and over, until her arms hurt and it was falling in a sleek curtain, ready for the updo.
“Your dress is gorgeous,” Corvina complimented her friend’s reflection. A light pink color that brought out the popping green in her eyes and melded with her white shock of hair, Jade’s wispy strapless corseted gown made her look like a fairy princess, exactly like she deserved to feel.
Jade twirled, her laugh a tinkle in the air. “Isn’t it perfect?”
Corvina agreed, clasping the star pendant around her neck and starry danglers from her ears, swiping a smudge-proof (she’d tested this one) lipstick the same shade as her dress on her lips, winging her black eyeliner to make her tilted eyes pop even more. She stepped back and looked at herself, amazed. She looked good, really good, so good she was going to test her man’s patience after their week away from each other. She couldn’t wait.
Jade did her makeup as well, both of them ready, and put on their masks, hers a white and pink feathery half-mask, Corvina’s a shimmery silver.
“Your mask is going to blind everyone,” Jade said wryly as Corvina clasped it carefully under her ponytail. “It looks so expensive.”
Corvina didn’t say anything to that. She had no idea about the cost of any of this. She didn’t want to think about it, not knowing the thought behind his actions.
“Should we go?” Corvina asked instead, looking out the window at the clear starry night, a huge dark grey full moon rising steadily to the sky. The Ink Moon.
“We’re actually a little late,” Jade laughed, taking her hand as they exited the room and locked the door. “Don’t forget, we all stay in visible sight tonight.”
Corvina nodded, focusing on going down the stairs in the heels that made her feel tall. Hopefully, she would stand closer to his face in these.
They walked out of the tower into a throng of masked students on the cobblestoned path, all heading to the Main Hall, laughing and chattering excitedly. The air of the castle was pulsing with celebration for the night, and for that Corvina was glad.
The students didn’t know about the body found at the shack. Since the investigative team had already been there, they all thought nothing of them staying a bit longer, writing it down to the Black Ball.
Corvina tilted her head back and looked up at the castle building, tearing the sky with a looming silhouette lit with yellowed lights from the ground that faded into darkness higher towards the roofs, the moon a big orb hanging behind it. It was a vision, a moment of realizing how small everyone was in the space of time, that these walls had been exactly as they were today hundreds of years ago, that they had seen many dances of death.
It was a chilling, sobering realization.
Corvina shook off the gloomy thoughts and focused on walking the cobblestoned path in heels, which was trickier than heels in the lawns, the split in her dress allowing ease of movement, exposing her leg to the thigh with each step. The wind was cool on her half-exposed torso, her nipples slightly hard but thankfully hidden by the color and thickness of the dress.
The Main Hall building was more lit up than she’d ever seen it before, actual fire torches stuck on slots in uniform distance, lighting up the entire area around the square building.
As they met with their friends outside, all of them dressed up and masked, of them complimenting each other, Jax’s eyes lingering a little too long on her cleavage, Corvina kept swiveling her eyes around, trying to find the one man she wanted in the crowd.
Not many people towered over the others, and those who did didn’t have that very distinctive streak of grey in their hair.
Curbing her disappointment, she turned to her friends. “You guys wanna go in?”
They moved to the wide open doors. The dining hall was redone, all the tables and chairs lined against the wall with a buffet of food on one side and a space for sitting on the other. The door to the Vault was locked from the outside. A giant bronze sculpture of two embracing lovers stood on the side of the staircase, their hands holding multiple lamps. It was glorious to see.
She and her group made their way upstairs, stopping to greet a few people on the way, girls from their tower, people from their classes, others.
And finally, they entered the Main Hall, one that the building was named after but one that had remained locked for years.
“Fuck,” Ethan looked around the hall, his eyes wide behind his golden mask. “This is some grand shit.”
It was.
It was a ginormous open space, with a row of arched windows on the opposite wall with a direct view of the woods, the lake, and the mountains. The biggest chandelier she had ever seen, one with at least two hundred candles, hung from the high ceiling, wooden slabs, and thick pillars supporting the weight of the roof in an architectural marvel. Fire torches stuck out from every pillar, from iron stands that looked so ancient she wouldn’t have been surprised if they were hundreds of years old.
Looking around, it dawned on Corvina all over again that this was the legacy of her lover, that his ancestors had been the one to create all of it. Up until a few weeks ago, it would’ve made her feel small. Her legacy was mental issues and a possibly tough future. She had nothing to give to him.
But she had changed. Her outlook had changed. She didn’t have anything to give him but herself, and he seemed to want nothing more. A man with everything material and nothing emotional wanted her nothing material and everything emotional. They were an odd but perfect fit.
A grand piano, the one from the Vault, the one she’d been spread open on many times, took one corner of the room, top up.
But he was nowhere to be seen.
A few musicians besides the piano played music on violins, and couples began to gather in the hall, pairing up for dances.
Corvina moved her eyes all over the room and over the various masked people, lingering on the men, trying to find him. Her eyes scanned the room once, twice, and on her third round, she came to a stop on a man standing in an alcove beside a window, wearing a black cape over his black attire, glass in his hand, watching her.
He was wearing a crow mask, of all the things.
One with a long, crooked black beak, holes for eyes, and a tall forehead that covered his head.
Corvina grinned. “I’ll see you guys in a bit,” she told her friends, weaving her way through the crowd towards the man standing alone, knowing no one would recognize him.
She came to a halt in front of him, a wide smile stretching her lips. “A little too on the nose, isn’t it? Literally,” she indicated his mask.
He tilted his head in a move that was so him. “I wanted to leave you breadcrumbs.”
Corvina stepped closer a bit, taking a hold of his free hand. “I missed you.”
He leaned closer a bit, touching her lips with the beak of his mask deliberately. “And I missed you. But I hear from the rumor-mill that you’re secretly dating Ajax. Should I be worried?”
Corvina chuckled. “Oh yeah. In the one week we’ve been apart, I’ve had to settle.”
His fingers trailed up her hand. “It would be settling indeed. You told him I’m your mountain?”
Her breath caught at the deep rumble of his words, his silver eyes warm behind the mask.
“He told you?”
“He told me,” Vad stepped closer, tilting his head to the side so the beak didn’t touch her as his lips did. “And this mountain would crack before it let anything happen to your castle. Remember that.”
Corvina swayed towards him, wanting his taste, feeling his lips so close but so far.
“Things are going to heat up very quickly tonight. Don’t let anyone else touch you,” he breathed in her ear, his wording sending a delicious shiver cascading through her. “Now go to your friends. They must be wondering what you’re doing.”
Loathed to leave him but having to, she returned to her friends.
“Where did you go?” Jade demanded.
Vad moved across the room.
Corvina shrugged, watching as he went to the piano in the corner. He pushed his cape behind him and slid on the bench with more grace than his big body should have been capable of. The violinists behind him fell silent, and the room came to a standstill as the music stopped, everyone turning to see what was going on.
And he began to play.
Corvina leaned against the wall for support, a glass of drink in her hand, heart expanding in her chest as the melody drifted to her. It must have been a known composition because the violinists chimed in, playing a symphony together. Her eyes stayed on the man she loved, watching his fingers dance over the keys in a way so familiar, his eyes closed, his body curved, his posture devoted to the music.
He had spread her open on that piano and eaten her for the first time. He had pushed her flat on her back on that piano and fucked her in the quiet of the Vault with people right outside in the hall landing. He had let her kneel between his legs as he played, the race between his fingers and her mouth, and she had won.
That piano held so many shared memories and secrets of the two of them, and as he played it, Corvina felt her entire body reacting to it. He had always existed between the black and white when he played, and now he had brought her in that space with him, no longer alone in his existence.
One song weaved into another, melodies shifting, changing, increasing in intensity as people danced, watched, drank, and the night got a little wilder. Corvina stayed in the corner with her drink while her friends danced, watching him with such pride swelling in her chest, a pride that this man was hers as much as she was his.
Slowly, as the night wore on, something shifted.
Maybe it was brought on by the masks, maybe it was brought on by the anonymity, but a vivid shift happened in the crowd on the first floor. The music got darker, the hall filled with more and more couples until there was barely space left on the floor, the musicians hidden from the view.
The candlelight slowly dimmed.
Tension crackled in the air.
Corvina felt her nape prickle as she watched the way people swayed together, closer than before, with deep sensuality that made her breath catch. A girl in the corner began to make out with the man next to her. Another man held her breasts, kneading them over her gown. Many people simply watched, a few others began to come together, dancing, kissing, fondling each other, most probably not even aware of who they were doing it with.
Inhibitions ran low.
The music stopped, and for a moment, all she could hear was loud breathing. Some people clapped and cheered, enjoying the party, some didn’t bother, lost in their own space.
Another song began, and she spied his tall form finding her, indicating her to come on the dance floor.
Corvina looked around, surrounded by uninhibited masked bodies, and felt a sudden thrill go up her spine.
She found herself in the middle of the crowd and felt him come up behind her. She turned, the top of her head reaching his mouth in her heels. He pulled her by the waist, slowly swaying them and moving towards a more shadowed area behind a pillar, still surrounded by people.
She looked to her side and found herself staring at a girl in a red mask having her breasts sucked by a guy in a gold mask, right in the open for anyone to see.
Corvina kept her body loose, letting Vad guide her, curious to see what he would do as her body got aroused with the sex running rampant in the air.
“You want to play with the devil tonight?” he asked her in her ear and her breathing hitched.
“Yes,” she gasped.
He made her stand against the side of the pillar, a clearly visible portion from anywhere in the hall, and turned her out to face the room, with the view of all the dancers and spectators and lovers, much like in her dream.
He pressed against her back, kissing her neck in a way the beak of his mask fit into the V of her dress. From a distance, it probably looked like she was standing there alone, the man behind her all in black in the shadows, his mask a part of her costume.
Her nipples pebbled hard, her breathing growing rapid.
“Did you like the music?” he asked her, his hand falling to her thigh, right over the slit of her dress.
“Yes,” she replied, her heart pounding, eyes checking to see no one was looking. More people were busy pairing off, some in multiples, all in various stages of undress, uncaring about anything as long as their identities remained hidden.
“Last Black Ball,” he whispered in her ear. “Ajax and I shared Zoe right under that chandelier,” his hand caressed her slit. “I never cared if she had his cock in her pussy when I fucked her mouth.”
Corvina was turned on by the picture he painted while hating that it was him in it.
“But you,” he told her softly as she watched a girl fall to her knees in a corner and take a guy out, taking her deep in her mouth. “I won’t ever share. Not your body, not your sounds, not your expressions. You can watch them all but they don’t get to see you. Understand?”
The possession in his voice ratcheted up the heat all over her body.
His hand ventured in from the slit, finding the line of her pussy. With the panty line on this dress, she had chosen to go without one for the night, hoping he would find it hot.
“Did you remember when I fucked this pussy on the piano in this very building?” he kissed her shoulder, his fingers probing her wetness. After weeks of being fucked twice every day, then going without for a week, her pussy was weeping at the familiar touch of his hand, at the beloved heat of his body, and at the scene around her.
“Yes,” she breathed, barely able to form the word.
He slapped her pussy once and she bit her yelp back, her heart throbbing everywhere in her body.
“If you make a sound,” he told her, his deep voice laced with sex, “someone will turn. They will look and see you getting finger-fucked by a stranger in the shadows. Do you want that? Do you want them knowing I have access to this pussy anywhere, anytime I want, however I want?”
She was breathing hard by the time he finished speaking the words, her legs slightly spread to accommodate his large hand as he pushed two fingers inside her aching walls, her body on fire at the words, the visual he was depicting.
She didn’t want anyone to turn around and see her. Neither did he. But the threat that they could, that she was doing something so forbidden right where anyone could just turn their heads and see, sent liquid heat through her veins.
She was turned on, more turned on than she’d ever been in her life, and he knew it, the devil. He knew the depth of her desires, how to play them, how to deliver them and leave her satiated.
She bit her lip as he pressed his palm into her clit, inserting another finger inside her, stretching her wide open.
“Look at you, so wanton, standing in the middle of a hall, drenching my hand under your dress,” he licked her neck. “It gets so wet for me, just for me. You missed me so much, didn’t you?”
“So much,” she groaned at the pressure, her legs quivering. She locked her knees, gripping the side of the pillar for support with one hand, the other holding her glass tight, as he wreaked havoc with his hand.
Erica looked at her in the middle of dancing with some guy and waved, and Corvina clenched hard around his fingers. She somehow managed to smile and lift her glass to Erica, relieved when the girl turned back around.
“Mine,” he growled against her neck, scoring his teeth over her fading hickey under the dress.
“Please,” she begged shamelessly as a fine sheen of sweat broke out over her skin, knowing she couldn’t take the buildup much longer with the silence. “Make me come. Please, Vad.”
Thankfully, he took mercy on her, increasing the pressure of his palm on her clit, rotating it while squelching his fingers in and out in a rhythm her body loved, her inner walls holding him tight as he pulled out and accepting him deep as he pushed in, his other arm wrapping around her waist for support, to keep her upright.
It climbed and climbed and climbed, and all of a sudden, her mind blacked out.
In a hot flash that started to shake her body, she came, biting her tongue hard to keep from screaming out, somehow muffling the sound down to a groan, her heart beating so hard in her chest she could feel it pounding in her ears, her limbs jittery. The glass broke in her hand silently, cutting it open as her blood dripped to the floor, shards falling amidst them.
“Fuck!” he turned her around, taking a look at her hand. A jagged edge of a small piece of glass was lodged in the middle of her palm, dark red blood covering her fingers and dripping.
Corvina winced as he took the piece out, freeing a small gush of new blood.
He tore the edge of his cape, and wrapped it around her hand tightly, stemming the flow.
“The glass could have slit your wrist,” he said gruffly, his jaw clenching.
Corvina gave him a little smile through the pain. “Then I would have died in your arms while coming, and what a beautiful death it would’ve been.”
He gave her a glare as he finished wrapping her hand. “The night will get wilder here. You want to stay and see the show? Or get out of here for a bit?”
Corvina glanced back at hall, her friends all busy either dancing or making out with someone, more and more people around the hall finding dark corners to engage in.
“Take me somewhere else.”
“Meet me outside.”
Corvina entered the throng to find Jade standing alone in a corner, watching her approach. She told her she was going for a walk with someone, and a fleeting look crossed her face before Jade smiled.
“Come back soon.”
Corvina left the hall and went downstairs, slowly making her way through the crowd towards the front entrance, dodging a few hands that tried to grab her, finally emerging out into the night to her silver-eyed man in the crow mask.
He swung her up in his arms with a yelp from her. “What are you doing?”
“Taking you to my lair,” he gave her a roguish grin, a mysterious man in a dark cape, carrying her into the woods on the night of the Black Ball.
She recognized the path he took her down immediately.
“Did you repair the piano?” she asked him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he sturdily took her down the incline towards the ruins.
“It’s a work in progress,” he commented wryly. “I was more focused on getting the thesis done in time.”
“Have you ever wanted to go out, teach somewhere else?” Corvina mused.
He gave her a questioning look in the moonlight. “Why would I? Verenmore is mine. I want to slowly fix it and make it a safe haven for people like us, the ones with troubled pasts.”
“What if someone disappears tonight?” she worried her lip.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get there, Corvina,” he sighed, settling her higher in his arms.
Soon, a familiar crumbling wall came into view under the gorgeous moonlight, the eerie gargoyle-like sculptures, and the one-eyed tree their audience as he headed to their spot.
“This is what you call your lair?” Corvina chuckled, looking around the ruins and the empty gravestones under the moon.
Vad deposited her on the now mostly-repaired piano, and she leaned back on her hands, watching him as he took his mask off, revealing that sculpted face and the streak of hair she loved. He took off her mask and put it on the side, going to his knees in front of her, his hands trapping her on the piano. Pulling her leg over his shoulder, he kissed her inner thigh.
“Show me your mother’s bracelet,” he told her, pressing light kisses to the soft skin.
Puzzled, Corvina showed him her left hand where the multi-crystal bracelet gleamed in the moonlight, warm against her skin.
He took her hand and placed something in her palm.
A ring.
Corvina’s heart stopped. She’d read too many romances not to recognize the similarities, and they scared the hell out of her.
“Are you… are you proposing?” she whispered, her anxiety climbing.
Vad chuckled. “No, little crow. Not yet.”
The relief inside her was immediate. She wasn’t ready yet, neither was he. They were just discovering each other, discovering themselves, and while she hoped they would get there one day, it wasn’t the day yet.
“But I saw this ring when I was getting your dress,” he ran a thumb over it. “And while we’re not ready yet, one day we will be. And that day, I’ll give you another ring. This one is simply from me to you, so you have something of me on you always, like with your mother’s bracelet. I want you to look at it in moments of stress and know that I’m here.”
“And it had nothing to do with shooing off other men?”
A side of his lips twitched. “You should’ve known my motives could never be completely selfless. I am selfish, and I want everyone who looks at you knowing you belong to a very selfish man.”
Corvina blinked back her tears, looking down at the ring.
It was an exquisite high-quality teardrop amethyst – she knew because of the way it refracted the moonlight – the same shade as her eyes, set in silver metal, the same shade as his eyes. The ring was both of them together in substance.
“Thank you,” she whispered, looking into his eyes.
He pressed a kiss to her knee. “There’s an inscription.”
She turned the ring.
‘I will not let you go into the unknown alone.’
“Dracula,” she breathed, recognizing the quote from the book they’d studied.
She turned her hand for him silently, and he slid the ring on her finger, tying another knot into the threads of their bond, making it stronger, more enduring for the tests of time.
He stood upright and she held his face, looking at him with all the love she felt in her heart, thanking the universe with the whole fiber of her being for this man.
“You’re the mountain I build my castle on, brick by brick,” she whispered to him, her eyes stinging. “You stand, I soar. You crack, I crumble.”
He crushed his lips to hers, kissing her with the fierceness she would never be able to tame, that she never wanted to tame, and she kissed him back, in middle of ruins that had witnessed unspeakable horrors, the girl with the soul of the moon – blemished, darkened, ephemeral – finally finding a man with the soul of the night to shine with.
