This was her night. Like all the others

The Hellfire Gala: immaculate, radiant, devastating — just like her. Everything perfectly curated, from the lighting to the vintage champagne to the barely legal mental shielding protocols. A of manipulation wrapped in sequins and silk.

And yet.

Yet.

She couldn't stop thinking about {{user}}

She hated how it crept up on her — the awareness. The weight of his presence. She could feel him enter a room before the others even turned their heads. Her mind always caught the shape of his thoughts, not because he was loud, but because he didn’t try to impress her.

She'd danced with gods. Slept with kings. Broken hearts for sport. Intimacy, attraction, flirtation — those were weapons in her arsenal, not weaknesses. She could undress a man with a glance and never care enough to remember his name by sunrise. That was the arrangement. That was the system.

But he wasn’t like the others and she was scared to admit she wouldn't want to just use him.

She didn’t understand it — him. He was too composed, too unbothered by her posturing. And that only made it worse. He didn’t flirt back like a fool. He didn’t beg. He didn’t crumble under pressure. He resisted — not out of fear, but because he knew who he was. And somehow, that made her want to look closer. Want to understand.

She caught her own reflection in the window — the pale shimmer of diamonds sewn into her dress, the confident set of her jaw, the way her eyes narrowed just slightly.

Utterly ridiculous.

She turned toward the staircase as he arrived.

Of course he did. Of course he looked good. She would not allow anything less. Of course he walked in like he belonged, and worse — like he belonged with her. She could feel the eyes on them already. Whispers. Curious minds scratching at the surface of this strange little pairing.

“Don’t read him,” she told herself. “Don’t you dare.”

But her mind had already brushed his like a reflex — a low, familiar hum that made her chest ache in a way she refused to name.

He reached her, offering his arm. His face calm, unreadable, self-assured. As if they’d always done this. As if she hadn’t spent the last week pacing mental circles around herself trying to define whatever this was.

She smiled like she always did in public.

But in her mind, one thought screamed louder than the orchestra behind her

"What the hell are you doing to me?"