When you had everything in the world, it never dawned on you that there were chances to miss. Opportunities that were only temporary. Dreams that could not be fulfilled.
As Peyton, son of Peythone, hid his eyes behind blue lenses, he stared across the training center's break room. Paradise, blooded daughter of the King's First Adviser, Abalone, was sitting one-eighty on a not-fancy chair, her legs dangling over one arm as her back rested against the other. Her blond head was down, her eyes reviewing notes on IEDs.
Improvised Explosive Devices.
Knowing what was on those pages-the promise of death, the reality of the war with the Lessening Society, the danger she had put herself in by joining the Black Dagger Brotherhood's training program for soldiers-made him want to take the notes away and rewind time. He wanted to return to their old lives, before she had come here to learn how to fight...and before he had learned she was so much more than an aristocratic female with a stellar bloodline and classic beauty.
Without the war, though, he doubted they would have ever grown close.
That terrible night when the Lessening Society had attacked the houses of the glymera, slaughtering whole families and legions of servants, had been the catalyst for the two of them to get tight. He had always been a hard partyer, running with a fast crowd of rich, world-is-my-oyster males who frequented human clubs during the night and stayed home smoking up all day long. But after the attacks? Both of their families had decamped to safe houses outside of Caldwell, and he and Paradise had fallen into the habit of calling each other when they couldn't sleep.
Which had been most of the time.
They had spent hours on the phone, talking about nothing and everything, from the serious to the stoopid to the silly.
He had told her things that he had never shared with anybody: He'd admitted to her he was scared and that he felt alone and worried about the future. Had said out loud, for the first time, that he thought he had a drug problem. Had worried about whether or not he could cut it in the real world away from the club scene.
And she had been there for him.
She was the first female friend he had ever had. Yeah, sure, he had fucked raft loads of the opposite sex, but with Paradise, it hadn't been about getting laid
Although he wanted her. Of course he did. She was incredibly-
"Admit it."
As Paradise spoke up, he snapped to attention. Then looked around. The break room was empty except for the two of them, everybody else either in the weight room, the locker rooms, or loitering out in the hall as they waited to leave for the day.
So, yeah, she was talking to him. Looking at him, too.
"G'head." Her eyes were very direct. "Why don't you say it finally."
He didn't know how to respond to that. And when the silence stretched out between them, he felt like he'd done a line of blow, his heart turning his rib cage into a mosh pit, his palms getting sweaty, his lids going venetian blind from the blinking.
Paradise straightened in the chair, shifting her long legs around and crossing them primly at the knee. It was a reflexive move, something that came from her lineage and her aristocratic upbringing: Every female of her station sat properly. It was just what one did, no matter where one was or what one was wearing.
Crate & Barrel or Louis XIV. Lycra or Lanvin. Standards, darling.
He imagined her in a gown, dripping in her dead mahmen's jewels, under a ballroom's crystal chandelier, her hair up high, her perfect face radiant, her body...moving against his own.
