It Started with a Kiss

-- Seraphine --

A deep breath in and a wince as the bones tightened around her waist. Did she make that pained noise? A tsk from Florie, her lady’s maid, told her yes. She held her breath as the maid deftly tugged and pulled her already slender frame into a shapelier silhouette. Her chin tilted down to inspect what she could and was met with a view of her chest she had never quite seen before. Too tight. A hiccup of breath was all she was allowed as Florie finished with her task, moving to the front to inspect her handiwork with narrowed eyes. "You surprised me. So much time you have rejected the corset.  What is this now?"

"I just...wanted to try something new." A weak explanation, but one Florie accepted as she brought forth the dress they had picked earlier and tossed it over Seraphine's head, drowning the girl in silk. Once it smoothed over her trappings and skin, she turned to look at the mirror and was shoved gently back into place by the maid.

"Not yet. You must see it all together." Florie didn't attempt to hide her suspicion but was still pleased to be dressing her mistress as a woman, and not as the tomboy that the young miss Astmill preferred. Rarely was she included on an invitation to a ball or party and even less often did she accept, being of the age and confidence that she was. She fidgeted more as the buttons were done down the length of her back.

The worst was over, and also yet to come. Getting dressed was only the first step. Florie moved quickly to her hair, pinning and ironing a piece here, another there. Seraphine swore her head was heavier than before, or that she would be missing hair with the military regimen her maid was employing on her scalp, something that rarely saw more than a brush.

She was poked and prodded and only put up a fuss when Florie went to paint her face, shaking her head at the beautiful powder in a jerky motion that alarmed the maid, afraid for her creation. 

"Well, just the eyes. Add a bit of smoke and mystery." 

Seraphine agreed slowly, judging her maid to be the expert here and remembering that the goal of the night was to step out of her comfort zone.

Finally, she was allowed to move, Florie beaming at her and moving her to the mirror. As she turned, her first thought was that the mirror was a trick. That was not her in the reflection. It couldn't be her. The girl staring back at her was barely a girl at all. Dressed in a shimmering gown of deep blue and silver, a thin layer of gossamer over silk glittering with each subtle movement, like stars in the night sky. The neckline was nothing like she was used to, deep and mature, displaying inviting swells of skin she hadn't known could look that impressive on her frame. Short sleeves flowed over her shoulders rather than grasping, stopping just above her elbow with an arrow point slit. And further up—what couldn’t possibly be all her hair. What should have been a wild mess of shoulder-length auburn hair was now an elegant up-do, swirls of dark red with brown mixing in with her actual hair. A scorching gradient. Florie had been gentle with the face-paint and added slight black lines to her upper and lower eyelids, making the shape of her eyes seem hooded and sleepy.

She looked...delicious. Mysterious. The type of woman to have rumors about her. The very kind of person Seraphine never ever was. 

Fiore gently placed a small, Colombina demi-mask into Seraphine's palm. The silver shimmer glowed up at her. 

"They won't even recognize you, miss."

She smiled, nervously. "No....they won't."



-- Delosir --

It was a marvel to Delosir, the young Marquis of Lochburn, that balls were still so popular among high society. They were considerably more boring than a party, and yet it was the premier event from which one was supposed to pick their lifelong companion? Delosir scoffed, taking a swig of the sherry he’d been swirling in hand for the past twenty minutes. He’d decided long ago that humans—no, all mortal creatures alike, were very peculiar beings with equally odd customs. The rituals they lauded as tradition made little to no sense at all and were quite often counter-intuitive to their very purpose. How could one night of formal dancing help to determine a who one should spend the rest of their fleeting lives with? As though through epiphany- 'Ah! Yes…this is the person for whom my life has suddenly found meaning. I was made for them; they are the very air I breathe!'

Heavens no. Such sweet, ridiculous fantasies were just that: fantasies. And ridiculous. Both equally. And yet, each month, someone from the ton was hosting yet another one of these crazy events.

“Lord Lochburn.”

Delosir nearly choked on his drink from the sudden intrusion on his thoughts. He was quick to recover, righting himself and turning with a renewed, almost languid interest in whomever it was who cared to feign interest in him. 

It wasn’t that the young lord of Lochburn wasn’t impressive. It was just that not many cared to think he was or to find out. And the truth was, Delosir quite preferred it that way. A simple lord, with a surprisingly if not scandalously, long rakish record wasn’t the type to have needling meddlesome mothers and their daughters poking around in his life. And the gentle-bred men were more likely to avoid him than not, given what his company could do to their reputation.

Yes. Delosir was a bit of a black sheep, among the ton as he was to his own family. But…that didn’t require his attention just then. What did, however-

“Brighten.” Delosir’s voice flattened coolly as he feigned indifference at seeing whom he addressed, but the twitch at the corners of his mouth betrayed him, spreading slowly to reveal a feline smile.

Evren Brighten, the young Earl of Davendell and an old friend to the Marquis, was the last person Delosir expected to see at the night’s ball, especially given how he’d recently removed himself from the proverbial marriage market. Engaged, as it were, to …well, what was her name again? He really ought to have known. What kind of person didn't know the name of his closest friend's fiancé? 

“Caster,” the tall blonde’s expression quite matched Delosir’s own. It was evident the two shared more than familiarity with one another name. Such was confirmed when the earl clapped his hand heavily down on Delosir’s shoulder, giving him a light shake. “What are you about, looming here in the shadows like a thief in the night?”

The irony of that statement was not lost on the marquis.

Delosir returned the gesture with perhaps a bit more force than was necessary, making Evren cough in surprise. “Here in the shadows is exactly where I am expected to be, my lord,” he teased, making Evren frown with disapproval. “As the rumors go, here I wait…ready to pounce on any number of young, vulnerable ladies that might cross my path.”

“That isn’t an entirely unfaithful description, though, is it?” Evren eyed the brunette beside him evenly, a small smirk on his lips.

Delosir feigned consideration of this, appearing to wonder about it if only for a moment before shrugging with a snicker. “No, I suppose it isn’t.” 

They shared a short, quiet laugh before turning to watch the bodies on the ballroom floor float and twirl into a blur. There wasn’t anything quite like a ball to remind one of everything else they could be doing with their precious time. Given that Delosir wasn’t dancing, he could think of plenty of other wheres, or whoms, with which he could be entertaining himself.

When the sun lowered, and the moon crested the night sky with glimmering white light…that was when he truly came to life.

“Tonight might be the night, you know.”

Delosir acknowledged his friend’s statement without turning to look at him, keeping his eyes instead glued on the mixing colors and shapes of the ballroom. “The night for what?”

“The night you finally meet the one, you know…love and all that.” Evren said this with a surprisingly calm composure, as though it were inconsequential to him. As though he hadn’t just fallen for a woman, head over heels, and proposed to her only a fortnight after meeting her.

Love. Another human ritual that Delosir thought ridiculous and complete nonsense. He scoffed at his friend, finally turning to look at him with an arched brow.

“Tonight you say?” a glib response, not so much as attempting to hide his doubt. There was very little faith that ‘the one’ even existed for someone like Delosir. Not that he hadn’t looked. He’d been alive for nearly 400 years. He’d not only not found ‘the one’, he’d scarcely any evidence whatsoever that the concept was more than a figment of mortal imagination. Leave it to creatures of clay and dust to conjure such grandiose notions of devotion—leave it to a mortal who cannot fathom eternity to conjure a concept of something rumored to endure even death. 

He turned back to the crowds mingling just a few short yards away, watching the way the men fawned over the painted ladies, and as women pretended to be coy and meek. It was—well, it was all very boring.

“Not likely.”



-- Seraphine --

Anxious didn’t begin to describe how she felt, standing there at the edge of the ballroom, not having yet mustered the nerve actually to step in. When she did, she’d be forced to socialize and no doubt, to dance, and doing either of those things was hard enough as Seraphine Astmill. But tonight, she wasn’t Miss Astmill, the quiet, careful girl she’d known herself to be. Tonight, she was an entirely different woman, she was the woman transformed—a woman of dreams and fantasies. Recalling how she’d looked in the mirror’s reflection, Seraphine steeled herself and took another step. Any woman who looked like that was capable of conquering the ballroom.

But would that same woman be able to conquer a man's heart? ­­­His heart?

Seraphine took a steadying breath, her small frame rising as she inhaled deeply. Immediate regret fills her. Breathing deeply only served to further constrict an already too-snug corset. With a glance down, her head begins to feel a little light.

Lord, wearing a dress with this broad of a cut…what was she thinking? Her hand moved to cover her chest in a bashful gesture, and for a fleeting moment, there was only a strong desire to turn on her heel around and walk back out the way she came in. She couldn’t do this. She knew she couldn’t do this. Why then had it seemed such an excellent idea to her earlier that day? She’d not expected to be invited to the McGovess Ball, but since she was, and no one expected her in attendance, it felt like such an ideal opportunity to execute a plan she’d long since began to devise in her head.

Standing there, on the edge of the large finely decorated room, as though she were standing on some precipice, she wasn’t so sure she could do it. And she might have left, in fact, one daresay she would have. But she saw something just then, in the corner of her eye, a flash of color and movement, followed by the sound of a laugh which made her insides flutter, like tiny butterflies hammering against the sides of her caged breast. That sweet, velvety sound of his laughter, though not nearly as unrestrained as she knew it could be in his element.  Oh, but the sound of his laugh rendered her mind utterly blank. 

Delosir. He was there. Of course. It is for that reason she made this ridiculous trip at all. Where else would an unattached young lord be with a night like tonight? 

Seraphine tried to fight the warmth she felt as it bloomed across her cheeks. She could think of several places he might have been, other than here. She was innocent…not ignorant.

But he was at the ball, standing toward the back of the room, with someone Seraphine recognized as the Earl of Davendell. She was suddenly thankful that she hadn’t attended the ball as herself, as the young miss Astmill. It wasn’t so long ago that it was the ton’s opinion that she might be betrothed to the young earl Davendell. This rumor spun up somehow, likely the result of his frequent visits to Delosir’s home, Ambeliss Manor, the same home she’d grown in and still remained as his ward. It seemed to have escaped notice to everyone that Ambeliss was the home of the lord Lochburn, and that he and Davendell were quite close.

It was as funny as it was sad, how focused the ton was on any prospect of marriage. The young unattached and desperate men and women, they’d even go so far as to conjure up one such rumor for Delosir and Seraphine, even for her mother, for the sake of having some gossip.

Another breath passed her lips to steady her nerves, which, surprisingly felt rather cemented now. There had been a reason for this night, and she would see it through to the end, no matter the outcome. She knew, deep down in her bones, she wasn’t leaving this ball tonight without achieving her goal.

She wasn’t going to leave without stealing a kiss from the Lord of Lochburn, Delosir Caster.