It starts with a painting.

A large canvas, stretched across a wall of deep navy, the stark contrast making the scene almost leap from the frame. The subject: a figure wreathed in gold and shadow, a fallen Icarus, wings scorched and body collapsing into the abyss. The details are meticulous—the brushstrokes deliberate, the textures layered so intricately that I could almost feel the heat of the wax melting against his skin.

I never indulged in sentimentality. Art was an investment, a market to be understood, controlled, and mastered like everything else in my life. Yet, standing in front of this, I felt something unfamiliar coil in my chest. A pull. A fascination that I couldn’t dissect, analyse, or quantify.

I take a slow sip of my scotch, the ice clinking against the glass as I move through the exhibition. Mythological imagery saturates the collection—Persephone reaching for the pomegranate, Orpheus turning to face his doom, Daphne caught mid-transformation, her fingers extending into laurel branches. There was tragedy in every piece, but it wasn’t weakness. It was power—the moment before destruction, the breath before surrender.

Obsessed was too crude a word for what I felt, but it was the closest one I had.

I ask for the artist’s name. The curator hesitates, smiles. She’s here tonight.

And that’s how I find myself at the far end of the gallery, my grip tightening around my glass as my gaze lands on the woman responsible for my unraveling.

She’s… not what I expected.

There’s no pretentious air, no affected aloofness that so many artists adopt when their work gains traction in high society. She’s speaking to someone, hands moving expressively, the embodiment of passion and creation. There’s a smudge of paint on her wrist—a careless remnant of her process, something real in a sea of polished façades.

I feel it again, that sharp tug of intrigue. The need to pick apart her mind, to trace the lines of her art back to the thoughts that birthed them.

She senses my stare before I speak. Turns her head.