Page 75 of Seduced

She did not turn her head to see.

Everything was a blur, and she preferred it this way.

She went straight to Rania’s rooms, which Rania shared with two other dancers. At that moment, it was the only safe place Poppy could think of, the place where she had spent the only few fun, easy hours of the last five years, with girls her own age, who had been kind to her. There and Dante’s rooms, but she did not want to go there, in case Dante was in. She did not want him to see her like this.

Rania’s chambers were empty of people, of course, but they were filled with things. Dresses, paints, nettings, undergarments, patches and wigs were strewn about wildly, as if the rooms had been attacked by a pack of wild, albeit extremely fashionable, gazelles. A little serving maid approached her, but Poppy’s ears must have popped, because she couldn’t understand a word the girl was saying. She heard the maid speak as if from underwater, and it sounded like a blurry, indecipherable sound. The young girl finally bowed and left, and Poppy quickly stripped out of her silk gown, now thoroughly wet with snow. Then she chased down Rania’s old, plain dress and put it on.

She had washed it herself yesterday, and Rania or one of the girls must have hung it up to dry. It was dark and plain, and now a little rumpled, but she did not care. She undid her braid, brushing the icicles out of her curls, and sat on the edge of the vanity, staring unseeingly at her own reflection in the mirror. She stayed like that, immobile, for an indeterminate amount of time, until the loud music coming from the upstairs rooms penetrated her consciousness. She got up, as if in a trance, to follow the sound.

She found it, eventually, in the great hall.

In the small hours of the morning, it had been transformed into a ballroom. Well, it did not look like one of society’s ballrooms: It was all color, smoke and loud music instead of the usual pastels and genteel clinking of glasses. But it was teeming with people and there was dancing, among other things, so, a ballroom it was.

There were card tables set all around its perimeter, but the rest of it was revamped for dancing. The hall was resplendent with chandeliers and candelabras, and a large orchestra of violins and flutes played furiously the melody of every dance known to humanity. Members of the ton, curious card-players or regulars of the Hell Club had escaped their proper salons and Almack’s, or had simply had enough of being proper for the night, and had congregated here to laugh, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and generally be as improper as they liked.

And oh, how they liked.

In the middle of the great room, a group of exotic dancers, Rania presiding over them like a queen, provided the club’s guests with a beautiful, if a bit inappropriate, spectacle.

The entire affair looked to be only now beginning—it would no doubt last until morning, but these people had nothing to do until midday, where they would wake up bleary-eyed in their beds, sip hot cocoa, and pretend to sneer at Hades’ establishment to their peers. The hypocrisy would be an affront if it wasn’t a matter of course. The same people who were here today, had been reproaching the Hell Club and Hades’ supposed lack of morals all over town these past five years.

It was enough to turn one’s stomach.

Thankfully, Poppy couldn’t concentrate enough to think any of this.

She sat in a gilded chair covered in damask velvet—there were several positioned about the room in a circle—and let the music and the pandemonium distract her from the darkness that was pressing into her skull, threatening to splinter it. She affixed her gaze on Rania, who was dancing gracefully with the other girls. She was draped in sheer silks and moved with mesmerizing grace and elegance, her earlobes and throat glittering with diamonds, her skin glowing in the garish light, her body toned, supple and mesmerizing.

Poppy watched her, her eyes following her every movement, until the dancers all blurred together, in a sea of color and music. Hopefully, she would be entirely numb by the end of this number, or the next one.

She sat absolutely still and focused on Rania’s beautiful features and the swishing of her long, black hair, and how she—

Suddenly, as she was in the middle of a crouch, Rania turned to look directly at Poppy, and her face was transformed into a mask of horror. Abandoning the steps of the dance and the two dancers who were reaching out their arms elegantly to twirl her, Rania let her ribbons drift to the floor and started running towards Poppy, pushing through the bewildered crowd.

“Why have you stopped?” Poppy tried to say, but there was something in her mouth and she couldn’t quite speak.

She couldn’t breathe either, now that she thought of it.

She appeared to be quite out of air; she tried to open her lips and draw in a breath, but that made things worse. There was something blocking her mouth, something liquid and thick, and she was drowning in it.

Something heavy was pressing down on her lungs, making them cave inwards, and everything was going dark.Poppy had never learned how to swim, but she had the sudden, desperate thought, as the last of the air left her lungs, that even if she had, she would still meet her death this way.

Suffocating on dry land, choking on pure air.

Her vision went away, completely, suddenly, and everything went dark.

Sadly, she could still hear.

And what she heard was Hades’ voice, frantic, swearing a blue streak.

Then hands were on her throat, his hands, she would know those long, cool fingers anywhere, and he was saying:

“Jesus! Wyatt, can you hear me? Poppy? Dammit.Dammit!”

She had slipped under; his words were coming through a thick wall of water.

Hades cursed, then his hands were on her face, on her lips, opening them, wiping her brow, her chin.

What if there was a God for people like us?Poppy remembered a thought she’d had a few hours ago, as if in a dream.What if there was a God for someone like me?

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