Olivia Atwater

“Pleasant-mannered people are simply the worst sort of people. Decent people become properly angry when presented with miserable injustice, but pleasant-mannered people never do.”

You are correct, of course,” Elias told her. “I despise these silly balls. I did not come here simply to dance.” He cleared his throat slightly. “I have again had little success today. I found myself sitting alone in the dark, tired and bitter. And I suppose I could have stayed like that. But I promised Albert that I would be kinder to myself. And so I tried to think of where I would want to be, if I were not so bound to this hopeless task.”

Dora knitted her brow. “You cannot have thought of Lady Cushing’s ball,” she said sceptically.

“I did not,” Elias said. “I thought of you, Dora. But you are here, and so here I am.” Those golden eyes held hers, and a flustered heat pooled against the surface of Dora’s skin. “I did not come here only to dance. I came here only to dance with you. It is quite a different thing.”

A few of those gathered in the ballroom began to turn their attention towards Dora at that. If she had been anyone other than herself, she might have been embarrassed at the sudden attention. But Elias was smiling at her with a whimsical pleasure, and she was swimming in stars—and as the musicians slowly found their beat again and he took her back into his arms to dance, Dora could only feel the brightest, most wonderful lantern warmth she had ever known before.

“I am a doll sometimes, and not a human being at all.”

Elias pressed gently at her back, leading them aside from the other dancers. He paused there for a moment, and she felt his gaze hot on her face. “Surely, you cannot think that of yourself,” he murmured. “Or has someone else said it to you, perhaps?”

Dora stayed very silent. She did not want to admit that she had accidentally plucked the words from that pile of misery at the bottom of her mind. It would be too much like admitting that Auntie Frances had won some battle over her.

Elias leaned down towards her, probably closer than was proper. “It may be true that you have only half a soul, Dora,” he whispered, with a surprising abundance of empathy in his voice. “But that does not make you half a person.”

A scattering of stars swept up as he turned her past the corner of the dance floor, and Dora glanced behind them, watching with awe. When she looked back at Elias, there was a new warmth in his expression. “You are smiling,” he said softly.

Dora blinked slowly. “I suppose I am,” she murmured, dimly surprised. And in fact, she could feel a distant, serene sort of smile on her face. “This is very nice, isn’t it? Just for the moment.”

A similar, contented smile blossomed across the magician’s lips, and the warmth in Dora’s chest grew with it. “It is very nice,” Elias told her. He searched her face with a gently curious expression. “Are you happy just now, Dora?”

Dora blinked slowly, thinking on the question. “I am... very content,” she said. But the trickling warmth in her chest increased as she continued to look at his smile, and she sighed suddenly. “No. I think I am happy. What a lovely feeling. I am dreaming, and I don’t want to wake up.”

The music fell, and they came to a pause along with the other dancers. Elias leaned closer towards her under cover of the dim starlight. Dora stared at him, entranced, as his forehead pressed lightly to hers.

“I don’t want to wake up either,” he whispered.

She felt his breath along her cheek as he said the words. The whisper shivered its way into her heart, and Dora thought: Oh dear. Because she was now quite sure that she was in love. Every remaining ragged fiber of her half-soul shivered with the awareness of it.

“You will have to dance another time with me,” Elias murmured. “You did promise.”

“I could not imagine dancing with anyone else,” Dora said honestly.

She did not, however, keep very good track of just how many times they did dance, as the night went on. Dora knew that it was far more than was proper. But as the stars scattered away, she could only hope that everyone had quite lost track of who was dancing with whom at any given time.

For years, Dora had not bothered to wonder why it was she had been singled out—why she had been cursed, instead of anyone else in the world. It had always seemed irrelevant, insubstantial, irreversible. But today, she felt the unfairness of it all like a corset laced too tightly.

blinked. “But you never go to faerie,” she said. “I was going to ask if you could draw us back from here, or ask your advice on escaping. I didn’t mean to imply that you should—”

“Of course I am coming for you!” Elias told her hotly. His gold eyes burned at her. “I have tried everything, Dora. Everything. When I had no ideas left, I even prayed, for God’s sake. You have slept for a full day and a half since your cousin found you, and I have counted every awful second of it!”

“I do not believe in such a thing as love,” Elias scoffed. “Perhaps attraction, or companionship, or friendship. But so many men act as though love is some special sort of magic. I feel that I am qualified to say it isn’t so.”

“Well, but you have just described love, I think,” Albert replied in bemusement. “Attraction and companionship and friendship. Is there nothing special about those things, especially if they are all together at once?”

Elias reached up to brush his thumb over her cheek. “There is only so much time,” he said softly. “And I will not let you die. You once told me that your cousin was a warm lantern to you, Dora. I know what you mean by that now. Of all things, you have become my lantern too—and I cannot bring myself to let you go out.