The cold weight of the silver fox mask felt like a brand against my palm. As I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the diamonds that glittered like frozen tears in the mask's eyes, I finally understood Dmitri's game. This wasn't just a gift. It was a declaration of war. Lady Schuyler expected a girl in a ruined dress; Dmitri was handing me the armor of a queen. If I wore this, I was no longer just a scholarship student. I was his.
I took a shaky breath, the metallic scent of the forged silver filling my lungs. I knew that once I put this on, the shadows I had hidden in for years would vanish.
The following evening, a heavy, rhythmic thud echoed against my door. It wasn't the polite, tentative rap of a maid or a fellow student. It was the demanding strike of someone who didn't take "no" for an answer.
"Get your coat," Dmitri said the moment I pulled the door open. He didn't even look at me, already turning on his heel to lead the way down the dim hallway.
"Where are we going?" I hurried to keep up, my boots clicking frantically against the stone. "The Masquerade is in three days, Dmitri. I have to practice my piece for the music gala. I can't just—"
"You can play that violin in your sleep, Isabelle," he intercepted, his voice echoing off the high ceilings. "But you can't survive a room full of people who want to see you bleed. We're going to the Old Foundry."
The Old Foundry was a skeletal ruin on the far edge of the Academy grounds, a place where the air always felt ten degrees colder and the walls held a century of grime. When we stepped inside, the space was hollow and cavernous. Dmitri flipped a switch, and a single row of industrial lights flickered to life, casting long, jagged shadows across the floor.
"Rule one," Dmitri said, turning to face me. He began to strip off his blazer, tossing it onto a wooden crate. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms corded with lean muscle and a faint scar near his wrist I'd never noticed before. "In that ballroom, everyone is wearing a mask, even without the silk. You need to learn how to read the body, not the face."
He walked toward me, his movements fluid and predatory. "Defend yourself."
"Physically?" I blinked, taking a half-step back.
"Lady Schuyler isn't going to punch me, Dmitri. She's a socialite, not a brawler."
"No, she'll use words that feel like glass in your throat," he countered, suddenly lunging forward.
He didn't strike me; instead, he grabbed my wrists, pinning them against my chest with terrifying ease. "But if you can't handle a physical threat, your body will betray your fear in a social one. Your shoulders are hunched. Your chin is down. You look like prey, Isabelle. You look like a rat waiting for the trap to spring."
I struggled against his grip, my heart racing a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The heat radiating from him was a sharp, intoxicating contrast to the freezing air of the foundry. "Let go!"
"Make me," he challenged, his sky-blue eyes flashing with a dark, taunting light.
I twisted, trying to use my weight to pull away, but he was a wall of granite. He pulled me closer instead, until my chest was pressed flush against his. The tension in the room snapped like a high-tension wire. My breath hitched, my silver-grey eyes locked on his.
For a moment, the lesson, the foundry, and the Academy disappeared. The air between us was thick and charged, a magnetism that made my skin tingle and my knees feel weak.
"Your heart is racing," he whispered, his gaze dropping to my lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back to my eyes. "A hunter can hear that. You have to calm it down. Never let them know they've moved you."
"You're the one holding me," I breathed, my voice a mix of defiance and a vulnerability I hated.
He released me suddenly, the absence of his touch leaving me shivering in the cold. "Again. This time, we work on the 'dress.' You think Lady Schuyler's tailor is the only one who can craft a masterpiece? My family has been dressing the elite for generations. We don't just wear clothes, Isabelle. We wear weapons."
He walked to a large trunk in the corner and threw it open. Inside was a bolt of fabric that seemed to swallow the light, midnight blue silk, woven with threads of real silver that shimmered like a dying star.
"You're going to help me dismantle that 'special' dress she's sending you," Dmitri said, his voice dark and satisfied. "We're going to take her humiliation and turn it into a blade. By the time we're done, you won't just be attending the Masquerade. You'll be owning it."
He stepped back toward me, his hand reaching out to tilt my chin up. His touch was lighter this time, but the intensity in his eyes was even more overwhelming.
"I'm going to teach you how to walk, how to talk, and how to look at a Schuyler like they're the ones beneath your feet," he murmured. "They call you the 'Rat' because they think you're small.
We're going to show them that a rat can carry a plague that levels a kingdom."
The lesson continued for hours. He taught me how to deflect a verbal insult with a single, icy stare. He showed me how to move in a heavy gown without losing my grace, his hands constantly on my waist or my shoulders, correcting my posture until I felt like a statue of marble.
As the moon reached its peak, Dmitri stood behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders as we both looked at my reflection in a cracked, dusty mirror propped against a crate.
"Do you see it?" he asked, his voice a low rumble near my ear, his breath warm against my neck.
I looked at myself, my hair messy, my eyes burning with a new, dangerous light, and the silver fox mask resting nearby. For the first time since I arrived at St. Aurelia, I didn't feel like a scholarship student. I didn't feel like an outsider looking in.
I felt like a threat.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Good," Dmitri said, his grip on my shoulders tightening just for a second before he let go.
"Because once the masks come off, Isabelle, there's no going back to the shadows."
The words hung in the cold air, final as a verdict. He turned away, moving to gather his things, the lesson clearly over. But the space between us felt charged, unfinished. The ghost of his hands on my shoulders still burned.
I didn't think. I just moved.
My fingers caught the rough wool of his sleeve. He stilled instantly, his back rigid. I didn't pull, just held on, a silent question in the contact. Slowly, he turned to face me. In the dim, dusty light, his eyes were unreadable pools of shadow, his expression carved from stone.
For a long moment, we just stared. The only sound was our breathing, mine slightly too fast, his measured and deep. Then, his gaze dropped to my mouth.
He lifted a hand, his movements deliberate, and brushed a smudge of foundry dust from my cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. The touch was whisper-soft, but it sent a shockwave straight through me. His thumb lingered, tracing the line of my cheekbone down to the corner of my lips. I stopped breathing.
He leaned in, so slowly it was agony. I could see the flecks of grey in his blue irises, the faint scar bisecting his eyebrow. His breath fanned across my lips, warm and smelling faintly of mint and cold night air. He didn't close the distance. He waited, a silent offering, a challenge.
I rose onto my toes and closed it.
The kiss wasn't soft or sweet. It was a collision. A release of all the tension, the anger, the terrifying pull that had been building between us since the moment he'd grabbed my wrist over that velvet box. His lips were firm and demanding against mine, and I met him with a desperation that shocked us both. One of his hands came up to cradle the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, not gentle, but possessive. My own hands fisted in the front of his shirt, the fine cotton rough under my palms.
It was heat and cold, the taste of him, dark and sharp like black tea and the faint, clean scent of his skin. It was the gritty press of the foundry dust on his clothes against my cheek, and the shocking softness of his mouth. It was a claim and a surrender, all at once.
He broke the kiss as suddenly as he'd started it, pulling back just enough to rest his forehead against mine. Our breaths mingled in ragged, visible puffs in the cold air. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark against his skin. I could feel the frantic hammer of his heart where my hand still lay against his chest, a mirror to my own.
He didn't say a word. He just pressed his lips once, softly, to the corner of my mouth, a punctuation mark. Then he straightened, his hand falling from my hair. The mask of control slid back into place, but his eyes were storm-tossed and dark.
"Tomorrow," he said, his voice rough, scraping over the silence. "We continue."
I turned and walked out of the foundry, leaving him standing alone in the dusty silence, my lips still burning, the taste of him on my tongue, and the world irrevocably tilted on its axis.