Page 12 of Dark Night Golden Dawn
Harlow left the double doors to the terrace open, letting the chilly spring air fill her lungs as she blinked tears away. It was pouring again and the rain made the view of the city below and the bay look like a painting. She climbed in bed, knowing she couldn’t escape the looming loneliness that crept in, filling her with grief. The witchlights that floated above her bed went out with a quiet word and Harlow stared into the dim darkness of her nearly empty apartment.
Mark hadn’t wanted anything that reminded Harlow of her “old life” when they’d moved in together, emphasizing that they were building a life together outside of the Orders. When he kicked her out, she hadn’t had much to take with her except her clothes. Keeping Axel had been his cruelest move though. Mark didn’t even like the feline; he’d kept him to spite her, and she’d been too ashamed to tell anyone that she’d left her baby behind.
Harlow couldn’t escape the knowledge that the emptiness of her apartment was a half-hearted punishment for failing with Mark, as was her general failure to dress in ways that made her feel good, or feed herself nourishing food. She hadn’t been taking care of herself, because when she’d chosen Mark, that was supposed to prove to everyone that she could do things differently than the other sorcière, and that she would succeed at it. That the years she’d spent wasting herself at uni were over, and she was making a new life for herself.
Except nothing worked out the way she’d planned. Things ended with Mark. She never applied to grad school. Her magic never deepened or grew. She was lost, adrift in all the things she’d done wrong. Every time she tried to make things better, it seemed like they just got worse instead. So she’d opted to do nothing for herself. She was practicing what she considered neutral neglect, trying to keep her head down and not make anything in her life worse than it needed to be.
She’d seen a therapist for exactly one month and when they’d asked her to name something she’d done right since she was seventeen she came up blank. Harlow knew the therapist was trying to help, that they thought this question might help her see that she hadn’tactuallydone everything wrong. But her failure to come up with a satisfactory answer sent her into a spiral of shame that lasted for weeks. She’d never gone back. What was the point?
Harlow tossed and turned for a few minutes, trying to get to sleep, but she couldn’t relax. It felt like beetles were crawling under her skin. She opened up her phone and scrolled through Section Seven until she found posts that would prove she deserved the punishment she was doling out to herself. There they were, both of them, fortuitously grouped together, one right after the other.
Mark Easton Leaves the Antiquity Row Dud Behind For Good. There was a photo of Mark helping Olivia out of a black town car. Olivia’s dress was so short that Harlow could see her panties, which was probably the point. Jealousy roiled in her gut. It was the worst kind of jealousy, because it wasn’t even that she wanted Mark back.
No, she genuinely wanted Mark to move on, and quickly. Just not with someone who looked likethat. Everywhere Harlow had curves, Olivia was lithe and sensual in a way Harlow knew she couldn’t pull off. In the last days of their relationship, Mark had made many comments about how unattractive he found her, saying she’d “let herself go,” more than once. It stung that he’d found someone so easily that fit every qualification that Harlow could not. Even now, as much as she resented him, she wrestled with the fact that she wanted him to want her back, for her to be the one who rejected him, not the pathetic way things had ended.
She took a deep breath, trying to interrupt the spiral of shame she was headed down.Next.
She’d already caught sight of the telltale stormy eyes, but as she scrolled up her stomach did somersaults.Illuminated Playboy Finbar McKay Returns to Nuva Troi With Prize. Harlow snorted; apparently the “prize” was Petra Velarius. At the very least it pleased her that Petra would be absolutely horrified not to have her actual name published alongside Finn’s, but Section Seven was alarmingly sexist at times, to provoke people into loudly complaining, sharing stories on all their socials about the publication’s retro attitudes. It was all an act to get more engagement.
Neither Finn nor Petra looked dressed for a night on the town. In fact, they were both wearing jeans and sweaters, as though they’d been to a coffee shop together. And she knew for a fact that he hadn’t returned to Nuva TroiwithPetra. She’d been here all along, working at her parents’ investment firm. Still, it grated Harlow’s nerves to see them together.
She did the thing she was always promising herself she wouldn’t and started to scroll through the comments on the post. Most were humans, speculating that Petra and Finn would be the season’s “it” couple. People talked about them like they were characters in a TV show or book, saying they “shipped” them together.
A text came through from Meline that blessedly blocked her view of Petra’s sour expression.If you’re reading Section Seven, don’t believe everything you read. Finn and Petra were at a family dinner at Umbra. They cropped Alaric out of the pic.
I wasn’t looking at it,she typed back.
Indi says to tell you that you’re a big liar-liarface and that you wouldn’t’ve texted back so fast if you weren’t. CAUGHT!
Mind your own business, sillies.
You ARE our business,came a text from Indigo, popping up in front of Meline’s.Get off socials and go to sleep.
Harlow sent the twins both a series of black heart emojis and then tossed her phone aside, resisting the urge to go back and read the posts she’d skipped earlier about the protests in Nea Sterlis. There had been more pushback from humans as of late against the restrictive laws that treated them as objects, rather than people. She couldn’t say she blamed them, but she wasn’t sure what to do; the Illuminated proved time and again that they were too powerful to resist. Harlow groaned into her pile of pillows, angry that she’d let herself get so worked up. There was no way she was going to sleep now.
“Lux,” she muttered and the soft witchlights illuminated.
Harlow got up to look at the clothes she and Enzo had hung together. Her pallyra was ready for tomorrow evening and she couldn’t help but feel excited to wear the embroidered, floor-length robe. She stroked the soft, heavy black fabric, tracing the dark flourishes that bled into the cranes and wolves that represented her family’s lineage. Tomorrow wouldn’t be so bad, as the opening night of the season was more about the ritual than socializing, as she understood it.
The Statuary party gave her pause though. She stared at the dress Enzo had picked out for her to wear to the party held in one of Nuva Troi’s many elegant public gardens. As an outdoor event, it was expected that the attendees would dress casually, but what that meant was hard for Harlow to tease out, especially when she looked at what she’d be wearing.
She ran her fingers down the decadent fabric of the dress for the Statuary party. It was a deep, dark blue, with a high neck and a buttoned bodice that she was to leave slightly undone to reveal the lace trim of the vintage bustier she would be wearing underneath. The hem of the dress fell to her knees, and there were a pair of tall black stack-heeled boots that tied with satin laces to wear with it. It all seemed the opposite of casual to her, especially when combined with the gorgeous slate-grey wool frock coat she was to wear over the dress.
But Enzo had assured her that this was what was considered a “casual” look for the season. That the tailored high-waisted pants and blouses were suitable for morning and early afternoon events, but nothing after two o’clock. After two, day dresses were the only acceptable option, and between five and nine, cocktail dresses, and after that only evening gowns. The additional rules about colors, jewelry and ornamentation were baffling to her, despite her love of clothes.
The ritual of it all was mysterious, and she had to admit she was feeling a bit lured by the siren song of jewel tones on the racks in front of her. She ran her hands over the luxurious fabrics. When she’d unpacked the rest of her clothes, ones that had largely had Enzo’s touch in one way or another over the years, she saw that her wardrobe was one she recognized as a sorcière of the Order of Mysteries.
“Not frumpy at all,” she whispered to her wardrobe, thinking of the terrible Section Seven post.
No, now she would finally feel like she was dressed asherself, rather than dipping into human trends, or the other Orders’ fashions. She couldn’t help but feel proud. She’d always loved her people’s ways, their deep commitment to using their magics to enrich the arts and academic pursuits. The Order of Mysteries made the world a more beautiful, more intelligent place, and she loved that aspect of her heritage, even if she wasn’t directly contributing to it yet.
Completely unwelcome thoughts about Finn began to creep back in now that she was idle. She pushed away thoughts about him and Petra and instead considered what Enzo said about him changing, about the way he’d looked today. Older, but still beautiful in that perpetually mussed way he had, his eyes glowing, if faintly, with immortal power. And the dangerous pull of him was the same as it had ever been, wicked in its intensity.
She flopped onto her bed and closed her eyes, feeling his hands on her, steadying her. Feeling their slick skin slip against each other, further in the past. The feel of his mouth on her neck so long ago as they’d kissed in his car. The way the backseat of the Woody, his sturdy SUV, had felt like the whole world as they’d ground against one another in a feverish wave of lust that had been building between them for years. Her fingers slid into her pants at the memory of his hands in the same spot, her pleasure mounting as she remembered the way his face looked when his fingers had stroked the crotch of her panties, finding them drenched with her desire for him.
It was no different now, but instead of remembering the teenagers they’d been, her mind supplanted the people who’d run into one another on the street today. The memory of that night mixed with the fantasy of fucking him now. Her body heated, responding to her touch as her imagination replaced teenage Finn with the adult she’d been so furious with this afternoon.
Her breath came in short gasps as she rubbed tight circles around her swollen clit, imagining Finn pushing her dress up as she straddled him in the backseat of the SUV, pushing her panties aside as he slid effortlessly inside her. The thought of him filling her so easily was incongruent with the memory of how they’d fumbled through their single sexual encounter, but she didn’t much care. That night, awkward as it had been, had been perfect, a promise of learning together, that their passion would carry them into the kind of sexual prowess that would leave them both satisfied for centuries. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had good sex after Finn; she had, perhaps even better. It was that she’d never felt quite as deeply for a lover as she had for him that night—she neverletherself feel that way.
