Page 36 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

And then, before the bartender could reply, he turned and shoved his way back through the crowd.

His pulse was pounding in his ears, drowning out even the sound of the music.

He willed himself to calm down before he reached Effy.

The last thing he wanted was for her to see him out of sorts. To see him enraged.

She had pressed herself against one of the far walls, kneading her gloved hands together. Relief blossomed on her face as he approached.

He handed her the gin cocktail and said, “Something sweet.”

Effy took it. They clinked glasses, and then each took a long drink. With only one sip, her cheeks had already begun to pink. “Now it’s a proper party,” she said.

“Better than Blackmar’s banquet, I’ll give you that,” Preston replied.

“Well, you do have a suit that fits this time.” She smiled over the rim of her glass. “And at least one friend.”

Effy tilted her head toward Lotto. He had already amassed a small crowd as he slouched against one of the busts of a previous college master, one arm thrown over the statue’s shoulder, wineglass in his hand.

He gestured animatedly, clearly telling some theatrical tale, and the men and women around him watched with transfixed stares.

“He better not be trying to steal someone’s date again,” Preston said, with a weary shake of his head.

“Did he really do that?”

“Yes. Last year. There was nearly a full-out brawl.”

Effy glanced up at him, then at Lotto again, then back to Preston. A smile played at the corner of her mouth. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Well—” Preston started. He looked over at Lotto, who now appeared to be miming some sort of rugby move, head down, shoulders raised and in a pouncing pose. “I suppose. Unfortunately. And against my will.”

“Unfortunately?” Effy echoed.

“It would be easier,” Preston clarified, “if I didn’t care at all. If I could choose... I certainly wouldn’t have chosen someone who was so determined to sabotage himself at every turn. So unable to hear reason.”

Effy fell silent, and it seemed, for a moment, that she had taken the music and the conversation with her. He couldn’t hear anything aside from the uneven beating of his heart. Reminding him, with every beat, that he was alive, and that one day he wouldn’t be. That all this would be gone.

“I didn’t realize it was so torturous for you,” she said at last. “Maybe I should just go.”

“No,” he said quickly. “Effy, no. That’s not—I would love you even if it was killing me slowly. Even if it ruined me. Don’t you know that?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor; she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t want to ruin you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it’s difficult to love me.”

“It’s not difficult. It’s the easiest thing in the world.” His voice lowered. “Sometimes it’s the only thing I’m certain about—that when I’m with you, it’s the right place for me to be.”

Effy brushed her eyes with the pad of her thumb, though Preston didn’t see any tears. At last she looked up at him again. “I don’t believe you. You’re always looking for the discrepancy. The exception. You don’t think that anything is so simple that it can be boiled down to an axiom.”

Preston had never really thought about himself that way. But he supposed that, in a sense, she was right. He had always needed an escape hatch. There were no universal truths. And it made him feel so very tired, tired of being in his own head.

“But perhaps that’s how I know that I love you,” he said at last. “Because it is simple. Because all the quibbling in my mind goes silent when I look into your eyes.”

And it was true. When he looked at her he knew— he knew— beyond the shadow of a doubt, even when everything he did was always couched in exceptions, in what-ifs—that it was exactly where he belonged.

Golden light danced in her eyes, and they gleamed like the green-fire torches in his underwater world.

In his palace, where he worshipped her like a saint. His fairy-tale girl.

“I mean it,” he said softly, when Effy still didn’t reply. “Can’t you believe me? You know what a terrible liar I am.”

She believed in fairies, in monsters, in magic, but she couldn’t believe that he loved her completely and without reserve? It made him tired, too. And mournful.

“I’ll try,” she replied finally, her voice little more than a whisper.

“All right,” Preston said. What more could he ask? He took the last sip of his drink and then set it down on a nearby table. “Will you dance with me?”

Effy nodded. She put down her glass, still half-full, the ice melting, and took his hand.

He led her out onto the dance floor, surrounded by swaying couples, sequins glinting in girls’ dresses and fabric swishing, wool against silk.

Preston braced his arm around her waist, and she curled hers around his shoulder.

For several moments, they danced in silence, keeping pace with the couples around them.

The music lulled and then swelled. It was a slow song, and a sad one, at least to Preston’s mind.

His face was so close to Effy’s that he could see the fluttery shadow of her lashes against her cheek, the single strand of golden hair come loose and now feathering against her jaw.

He could see the way the pearls gleamed against her skin, smooth and marble pale.

“Do you remember,” she said, “the last time we danced?”

“Of course. Blackmar’s party. After Marlowe...”

“You saved me,” Effy broke in. “I felt safe with you. It was the first time I realized—the first time I knew that I wanted... you.”

Preston smiled. “Then you were slower to come around than I was.”

“Oh?”

“I told you,” he said. “I wanted you since the very first day. Since I wrote your name on that paper.” He felt his cheeks warm. He knew it was silly, to be embarrassed by that now, but he went on, “I almost kissed you that night, at Blackmar’s.”

The corner of her mouth quivered. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was afraid, I suppose. Afraid that you wouldn’t want me to. Afraid that I could hurt you.”

“Well,” she said slowly, as the song neared its end, “you don’t have to be afraid of that now.”

She pushed herself up, onto her tiptoes, and Preston dipped his head, lowering his mouth to hers. All around them, other couples dipped and whirled. But in the filmy darkness behind his eyelids, it was only Effy’s face he saw, her golden hair, her wide, dreaming gaze.

She was sheltered here, in his arms, at least for the moment.

When he opened his eyes again, the candles on the wall seemed to burn faintly green.

He blinked, and the illusion vanished, but the sense of contentment remained.

Effy was safe in that underwater palace, in the realm where he was king.

He would keep her safe in this world, too. At any cost.

As the hours wore on, the crowd on the dance floor began to thin.

Couples instead lined up against the walls, the girls taking off their heels and wincing as they rubbed their sore feet, the boys offering their arms for balance.

Half-empty drinks were scattered around, and the air grew hazy with cigarette smoke.

The music played on, but conversation dulled to little more than a murmur.

He and Effy finished the night chatting with Lotto, who was the perfect amount of drunk to be buoyant and full of mirth. Just a bit more alcohol and he would’ve turned lazy and morose, and Preston would’ve had to sling his arm over his shoulder to ferry him home.

His own head was buzzing, the corners of his vision turned pleasantly blurry.

While Lotto recounted a story about being found in a compromising position with the Viscountess of Blount, a married woman twice his age, Effy put her hand to her mouth and giggled.

Preston realized it had been a while since he had heard her laugh so openly.

A relief settled in him, a sense of peace.

He leaned closer to listen to Lotto’s tale.

“—her husband was approximately five feet tall, even his heeled velvet slippers—”

“Hey! Héloury.”

Preston whirled around.

Southey was sauntering toward him, looking rather worse for wear.

His drunkenness was obvious—his face was bright red, with a sheen of sweat across his forehead; his bow tie was undone and his cummerbund was loosened, sagging from his hips.

He had two other boys trailing him, one of them the cuff link student from Gosse’s literature class.

Preston tensed. “What do you want?”

A lazy smirk emerged on Southey’s face. “No need to sound so hostile. I’m here to inquire about your well-being.”

“I highly doubt that,” Preston replied coldly. “Now leave me alone.”

“Yes, go away,” Lotto called, loudly enough that several heads turned. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Southey raised his brow.

“To tell me that I’m unwelcome here, when your friend has decided to show his traitor face.

” His tone was still maddeningly casual.

“You don’t have to bum about with Argantians, Grey.

I can’t imagine the Earl of Clare is very pleased with your choice of companion.

Though I suppose he’s not pleased by anything you do. ”

“Shut up, you twat,” snapped Lotto, who was far too drunk by now to have an eloquent rejoinder. “And piss off.”

Southey ignored him and stepped closer. Preston willed himself not to flinch.

“I am concerned about your mental state, Héloury,” Southey insisted, a smile playing at his lips.

“The Argantian front line crumbling, the government instituting a draft—you must be miserable, imagining the wretched fates of your countrymen. Unless, of course, you’re drinking yourself blind to forget. ”

Preston said nothing. He figured it would confound Southey more than anything, to be faced with passionless silence. But his blood was pulsing hotly and his heartbeat roared in his ears.

Southey was undeterred. “You don’t seem too impaired to me, though you pride yourself on your restraint, don’t you? But you’d have to be potted and mad to think that you deserve her.”

Very pointedly, Southey’s gaze slid over Preston’s shoulder, to Effy. She had one hand clasped in her pearl necklace, anxiously twisting the strand. Her face, which had been ruddy with laughter, now turned utterly pale.

Preston’s voice came out in a rasping whisper. “What did you say?”

“I said, you must be delusional, if you believe you’ve the right to bed a pure-blooded Llyrian girl,” Southey said.

“What does her father think of you defiling his precious daughter?” He gave Effy a languid, lecherous stare.

“You’re too beautiful to waste yourself on him.

Come on, then—I’ll show you what it’s like to lie with a baron’s son. ”

He took a step toward her, arm outstretched. What overcame Preston then was beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond even articulation. It was pure, white-hot rage that rose like bile in his throat. A single beat passed, the tick of blood behind a bruise.

And then he had his hands at Southey’s throat.

His fingers bunched the front of Southey’s shirt, forcing him backward. He slammed him into the wall, hard enough to make the paintings rattle on their hooks.

Southey was at first too bewildered to fight back, too drunk.

He started to claw at Preston’s grip in a clumsy way, only managing to nick him with his fingernails.

But he was spitting, choking, foaming with fury.

He swiped the side of Preston’s face, hard enough to make his skin sting, and that was enough—enough to make Preston’s rage rise and consume him.

With his hands still grasping the front of Southey’s shirt, he hurled him to the ground.

The other partygoers—Southey’s friends—leaped out of the way. With Southey supine on the floor beneath him, Preston raised his fist and brought it down fiercely upon Southey’s face. Southey howled.

The impact reverberated through Preston’s own arm, but he couldn’t feel the pain. He couldn’t feel anything except the surging, nauseous pulse of adrenaline. And anger. And hate. The thought flitted through his mind, like a bird thudding against a windowpane.

I could kill him.

But he was snapped quickly from that preoccupation. Southey had managed to get his arm up and strike him back. It was not a solid, knuckled punch—instead, he jammed the flat of his hand under Preston’s nose.

His glasses shattered, and blood spurted everywhere.

Vision rippling, shards of glass crunching, blood making his own skin and Southey’s slippery, Preston struck him again.

And again. In the slightly removed part of his consciousness, he heard Effy screaming.

He heard Lotto cheering. And then, at last, two strong-armed porters, who had been supervising the ball, gripped him by the shoulders and hauled him off Southey.

Southey remained moaning and twitching on the floor, while the porters heaved Preston to his feet. He didn’t realize how hard he had been breathing until he was upright again, coughing and spluttering, and still shot through with the bitterest, blackest hate.