Page 1 of Run, Starlight (The Royal Ballet Presents #3)

ENZO

We stand together in the back of the theater, two shadows melding with the darkness.

The director doesn’t see us, nor do any of the dancers.

If a tech were to look, they likely wouldn’t notice us either, though we could be spotted.

I watch her, and my brother watches me. The risk, the secrecy, her .

I’m so hard it hurts. It’s been this way all week, a luscious torture poised over the tip of her pointe like a knife to my heart.

“You’ve been watching too long,” Lucky, my brother, whispers.

“There isn’t enough time in eternity for such a thing, Lucciano,” I answer, using his full name to impress the weight of this moment on him.

Dark hair hits her mid-back as she moves to center stage.

Glossy strands glisten under the overhead lights.

How does hair shine like that? She narrows her eyes to the audience, almond-shaped and just as dark as her hair.

The near black is in perfect contrast with her golden complexion and the freckles scattered on the bridge of her nose like old blood spatter.

Everyone in the room stares, just as mesmerized as I am.

Her features take me far away to another world.

“This is becoming too much, Enzo, an obsession.”

It’s been an obsession for seven days now.

“You aren’t interested?” How could he not be? Look at her.

“Of course not,” he says, grinding his teeth beside me. The grating sound interrupts the rhythm, sparking hot fury on the back of my neck. There aren’t many things he does that truly bother me, but this is one. Respect the music .

“If you're going to lie, at least stop interrupting me.”

His warnings don’t interest me. They never do, so I tune him out in favor of her black pointe and matching leotard.

They’re a shock against the light pinks surrounding her.

The snake tattoo weaves down her arm and comes alive with every move.

The music starts, swelling and pooling saliva on my tongue.

God, what I wouldn’t give for a taste of her.

My heart drums with the first notes. I thought I lost that organ years ago.

Marcella Serra.

She gave it back to me.

“You know the things you grow fixated on never survive long.”

He thinks he knows me, but he cannot guess how I’ll act when this feeling is unprecedented.

I’m not hunting my Marcella; I’m captivated by her.

When I’m not watching her at the theater, I’ve taken to scrolling her social media.

She thinks her secret is buried so deeply, but she’s only been on my radar for seven days, and I’ve already uncovered almost all of them.

The Myrtha Queen as if she isn’t so obvious.

The last of her secrets are being gathered as I watch.

“You’ll come to understand in your own time,” I tell him. I can’t be mad at my brother for being trapped. He always has been. If I let him limit me, I would still be a scared little boy like him.

Marcella rotates her chin as she starts dancing, stretching her neck and rolling her shoulders with an athletic elegance that lights me up from the inside out.

Her body moves with a precision not many can truly appreciate.

But I can. I’ve killed and dismembered so many people I could pick a person’s musculature apart with nothing more than my eyes.

I do that now, scouring the muscles, tendons, and attachments that make the greatest dancer I’ve ever had the pleasure to set eyes on.

Marcella is exceptional.

The perfection she strives for glows in every move, every pirouette.

She lifts her right leg as she goes into a jump, and the left follows after in a perfect arch as she twirls to face the audience.

Her spine curves back, and she lunges forward; her hair flies loose around her like pitch-black liquid moving to the beat.

She surges with it, both controlled and free, evocative in her mix of classic training and new application.

Marcella is breathing art, which I have never in my life appreciated more than the dead kind, yet here we are. Ballet might be her chosen canvas, but all the world's her stage, just as it is mine. Why couldn’t we dance together, both divine players in this tragic comedy?

My knife is my paintbrush, her body is music itself, and we’re made for each other.

My eyes follow her as she moves. I’ve become addicted to deciphering her cues and understanding each element of her choreography as if it’s a love note she leaves me.

And that’s exactly what they are. Each move she makes upon this earth is for me.

What I wouldn’t give for her to perch beside me as I created my own art, for her to dance some macabre number to match them as they died .

Perhaps she would choose something more spirited.

For all her darkness, she seems kind, so she might like to give them something lovely and gentle to die by.

One day, I will ask her. An intense drumming interrupts the classical music and my little daydreams. Her steps become desperate, and she acts with every fiber of her being.

Her face morphs with the emotion of the music, letting it sink into her bones and change the fabric of her being.

She and I are bonded, so it affects me too, grabbing me by the heart and carrying me with her.

“It’s time to go. We have a job.” When did Lucky’s voice become so very tiresome? I used to care more about what he had to say. I’m sure of it. Maybe?

Marcella dances faster, scared and confused.

She’s so good that anxiety catches me in a chokehold, and I nearly forget it’s all an act.

Each emotion she asks me to feel bursts within me, and I’m not the type to be so easily affected.

I ball my hand into a fist, holding myself back from running to touch her.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of good reasons for caution, yet I resist lifting her into my arms and displaying her to the world.

My brother has warned me that could result in too much attention and things might grow unnecessarily complicated. Sadly, he’s right.

“Are you even fucking listening to me, Enzo?” he spits.

“No,” I finally answer. Why the hell would he think I would listen when Marcella is dancing?

Lucciano worries about the world around us.

I seek our true calling. Marcella does the same thing.

She inspires, and I appreciate someone who does what they’re supposed to.

I would love to put her in a pretty cage and hang her from the ceiling, but she’s where she ought to be.

It’s not time to pluck her out of her performance .

“I’m tired of arguing with you. Cygnus texted the next target. Come with me or stay here.”

“I’ll stay behind.” I barely spare my brother a glance.

I’m not going anywhere until the music's over, and she’s done showing everything she has to anyone who will watch.

It’s the same for all dancers; they need an audience to experience their art, but Marcella has so much more to offer.

I don’t acknowledge him, my eyes stay glued to the stage.

“Even if I'm the one to finish the job? She’s danced every night this week, Enzo. When did you last kill? I’ve never known you to be patient.”

I have no reason to leave until Marcella tells me she’s done.

My brother is clearly concerned about my lack of killing this week—I've been busy. Who knows what might happen if he doesn’t handle me properly?

The sarcasm is thick even within my own thoughts.

I may do things my own way, but that doesn’t make me what Lucky fears.

“I don’t live for blood, brother. I live for Marcella now.”

He scoffs like it was a ridiculous statement, and I nearly turn to punch him in the gut for his audacity. Lucky fails to realize that he spoils me more than he discourages me, and frankly, I’m fine with that. It means there’s more blood for me to spill.

“Enzo, no,” Lucciano warns me. I can practically feel his growing concern. His worry is a constant drain and nag on us both. He’s seen where this is going, and I’d prefer he not act surprised now when it’s been clear for days.

“è pirfetta,” I whisper back to him, not planning to be dissuaded by anything, especially Lucky’s negativity.

“And not for you,” he replies in Sicilian too, but what the fuck does he know? Sometimes people steal. I’ve spent days wanting her, and that’s more than enough to act .

The air leaves my lungs slowly as the music dies down.

Marcella turns on her last pirouette and falls dramatically to the floor in a heap of black.

She’s graceful even in her pile of black tulle, and the beauty in her stillness leaves a mark upon the world.

My cock hardens at the sight of her, the thought of slipping beneath that tulle and spreading her soft parts, this time in pink.

“Serra,” I tell him, finally facing his way. “It’s Sardidian. Beautiful, isn’t it? It will be a pity to change it. The children can hyphenate it, Serra-Bianchi.”

“Enzo, Cygnus is waiting,” Lucciano repeats as if he doesn’t hear me. Once again, I’m in my own higher world, and he’s swayed by earthly contracts.

“That’s too bad for Cygnus.”

I chase opportunities to express my art to the deepest extremes like my Marcella.

My pieces may be too gruesome for most tastes, but they are evocative, draw questions, and horrify—everything art is intended to do.

Cygnus is the local crime lord, and his need to remove dissenters gave me the canvas I needed until now.

A worthy ally and a fulfilling life in a dangerous city where people turn up dead every day.

I’ve gotten to impress my will upon the world.

But what is my will now when my eyes can’t leave her slumped form?

My choices made sense until Marcella. The life my brother and I built made sense.

The lifetime of pain and suffering we left behind for a life of power all made sense.

But nothing in the world matters now that I’ve seen her dance.

I can’t see one reason to follow Cygnus instead of her.

My will is my own; my art is my will. Her body is my obsession, and the breath she draws is my soul's one heavenly link.

“Do you even care if you make our lives unnecessarily difficult?” he asks. “Does it bother you at all that you’re fucking everything up?”

“No,” I tell my brother, not caring anymore about anything but the rising pile of tulle. That’s one of my favorite parts of the act, when she lies there unmoving until the audience grows truly concerned she might be hurt or unwell.

“We’re here to watch the prima ballerina, not the third row.”

“You’re not funny.” I caution him not to insult her. He’ll regret his own actions soon enough if he’s unkind to her.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, and I can hear the first hint of him backing down in his voice. If experience has taught me anything, he’ll be putty in my hands soon.

“She’s special to me, Lucky. I can’t let this go.”

“We can talk about it.” My brother softens to my whims just like he always does.

Despite us being ten months apart in age, his face is incredibly similar to mine, and both of us look just like our mama.

Dark brown hair and eyes, nose a little too big for western beauty standards, but quite handsome where we come from, and matching dimples that have gotten us out of years’ worth of trouble.

I prefer suits and slick my hair back, while he dresses casually with a buzz cut.

Still, most days I can’t tell us apart. Outside of our looks, our relationship is closer than most, and some days I’m forced to ask where does he end and I begin?

I lose myself looking at him. He has everything I need, everything I’m missing, and I don’t think I could live without him.

I wonder if there was some cosmic mistake, and we’re one functioning person split into two half souls.