And I recognise the woman as Giovanni’s executive assistant, Gudrun. The tall, handsome man seated beside her, with reflective, rock-star aviator sunglasses on, wind-ruffled hair and the barest hint of golden stubble along his jawline, takes me a second longer to place.
When I do, I feel my blood freeze.
I recognise his clothes before I recognise him, because I hadn’t been expecting to see him here, or maybe ever again. He’s in a sharp, narrow-cut, single-breasted, three-piece navy suit with a thin navy pinstripe running through the weave, a Windsor-knotted tie in iridescent colours like the sheen on a dragonfly’s wings. The whole ensemble only emphasises his snake-hipped, broad-shouldered, long and lean form. He lifts one hand to remove his sunglasses and light glances off the giant faceted sapphire he’s using as a cufflink. As he tucks the glasses into the top pocket of his suit, his pale blue eyes — like broken water, like living ice — burn into mine. And he makes a gun of the fingers of his right hand, the muzzle pointed in my direction, before he laughs and runs the hand through his golden hair.
Luc! I cry, for his ears alone. You’re alive!
Did you expect anything else, my love? he replies in my head, laughter in his warm, rich voice. When you’ve always been the prize?
I don’t know what I’m feeling. Hope? Love? Anger? Confusion?
And I can’t help my gaze from flying from Luc back to Ryan, from Ryan to Luc. Many in the front-row seats on both sides of the catwalk catch my movements, and a small murmur starts up around me that seems to spread out into the crowd like wildfire. People point and stare.
The video cameras pick up both men’s faces for the benefit of those further back in the audience, projecting them onto the banks of video screens — and the room bursts into an open speculation that’s audible above the volume of the music. Though Luc and Ryan couldn’t be more differently dressed, and one is so fair, the other so dark, it’s clear that they could be twins, so physically similar are they.
Gia’s eyes widen in shock as she looks across the circular platform at Luc. The look is mirrored on Gudrun’s face as she studies Ryan’s features with her enormous, sapphire-blue eyes.
Seeing them together like this, in a way I never thought would happen, it’s a shock to me, too, that I so evidently have a ‘type’. That out of all the mortals in this teeming world I could have fallen for, I had to go and find someone who is the spitting image of Luc.
Only a few feet separate Ryan and Gia from Luc and Gudrun. And the antagonism Luc and Ryan are radiating at each other is so strong I can feel it from where I’m standing, caught in the middle. It’s like a poisonous cloud hanging over all of us, so strong I can almost see it.
The tension doesn’t go unnoticed, and camera flashes go off in the press gallery located at the end of the catwalk as photographers strain forward for shots of both men. I can see the headlines now. Luc will show up as a smear of bright, white light, if they’re lucky. If he shows up at all.
‘Irina!’ Gia hisses as the jarring techno track makes way for a smoky jazz standard that has nothing to do with the dress I’m wearing and everything to do with look number two.
I look down at her dazedly.
‘Keep walking,’ she says. ‘Time. Time’s getting away from you. We’ll sort this mess out later. Move.’
Her words send my heart into overdrive and I tear my gaze away from Luc, away from Ryan, and lurch up the catwalk in my dress of molten gold. I stare down the barrel of all the lenses of the world’s fashion press with my haunted, fearful eyes, then sweep back up the catwalk and behind the blank white wall at the catwalk’s end, without pausing.
Juliana grips my sleeves tightly and says fiercely, ‘Tommy’s waiting, go, go. Lila and Kirsten can make up the time — I will send them together. Go.’
I stumble into Tommy’s waiting arms, and feel hands reach out to strip me of my golden armour, because I can’t seem to make myself move any more.
When I emerge onto the catwalk in my second look — the jaunty, black tricorn hat and face veil atop that sinful black dress with the barely there bodice and full skirt lined in shocking pink, those black wings — I look at no one and nothing but the bright white line of the catwalk, clutching the black leather horse whip they’ve placed under one arm like it’s a life belt. I pass beneath the dome and I don’t look around and I don’t stop walking.
They’re both still there, I can feel it. That, and my building terror.
I pause for the delectation of the world’s press, then pivot sharply and head back up the catwalk towards the dome.
All I can think about is Luc’s plan, back before he somehow managed to get a lock on my position in Milan. Luc had said: find the boy, give the Eight the slip, get back to Paradise and wait it out for him.
But Ryan isn’t needed any more, because Luc’s found me. Somehow he got away from Nuriel. Luc’s here.
Ryan’s here, too. And Luc’s seen him.
My kind think people like Ryan are disposable.
Luc has the power to crush Ryan like an insect.
The thought makes me falter, visibly, and I have to pause on the circular platform beneath the twinkling dome.
The moment I do, thunder loud enough to shake the glass and iron roof of the Galleria suddenly booms in the sky above us, drowning out the driving soundtrack. It’s quickly followed by lightning so bright that the glassed- in roof — in the shape of a vast cross — turns an eye-searing white for an instant.
Talk immediately ripples through the well-heeled audience, and continues as I stagger back into the marshalling area.
They don’t know, you see, that the storm that was promised, that storm for the ages, it’s here. It’s finally come.
Just as Luc has.
First fire, then flood. He never does things in small measures.
Juliana squeezes my forearms and says in her thick Italian accent, ‘Magnifico. Now you must think the happy thoughts, the thoughts of the bride, okay? Think of light, of love. It is almost finished.’
Love?
As first the wings then the black dress are taken off me, piece by complicated piece, and hands tug the lacy, fitted white bodice of the bridal gown down over my head, I think: It is almost over.
And when the last of the players arrive, there will be fear and pain, reprisals and death. An accounting.
18
Orla takes her time coming off the catwalk in her strapless, silver screen-siren dress, and bumps into me deliberately as I stand in the wings clutching a bouquet of gardenia, white rose and lily, a small sparkling tiara set forward on my crown, my long, toffee-coloured hair wrapped into a smooth and complicated topknot. The happy bride. That’s what I’m supposed to be.
Orla just ends up hurting herself, because I do not yield. She just glances off me — a moving force hitting an immovable object — and almost loses her balance, coming down out of one shoe again. ‘Bitch!’ she shouts, rubbing her bare shoulder, her usually pale complexion almost as violent a red as her dyed hair. There’s a large bruise already forming upon her skin where we made contact.
She limps away, holding one shoe, and I walk out of the wings with my head held high.
Think light and love. Right.
Then that song bursts forth out of the speakers and I begin to tremble.
The Flower Duet, impossibly lovely, so moving that people immediately begin to clap and whistle when they see me. Some rise to their feet.
I curtsy gracefully — the way I was taught to do, like a dancer — and begin to walk slowly down the runway, holding my bouquet lightly in my clasped and shaking hands, looking straight ahead despite my tension and the weight of the white snowy wings upon my shoulders.
