Page 15 of Run, Starlight (The Royal Ballet Presents #3)

MARCELLA

The seamstress ties the corset, and I gasp, feeling like I can’t breathe.

I don’t say a word. She’s torturing all of us, one by one, as we try on our costumes.

She grumbles under her breath as she laces mine.

She’s fighting against my chest, and I’m afraid my boobs will win once again. They usually do.

“She’s extra grumpy today,” Connor whispers to me when she moves away.

Connor is one of the dancers. He’s new too and not very into gossip, so he's one of the few people who doesn’t look at me like I’m a ticking time bomb. Rarely do people care to talk to me, but his face is so open, and his smile is so sincere. I nod and smile back.

“If she thinks my chest will get smaller because she wants it to, I’m afraid she’ll be disappointed.”

That was okay. A normal interaction, right? Connor looks down at my chest. It’s quick before he looks up again.

“No one wants that.”

Oh. So Connor is also straight. That’s nice.

I smile shyly. Not that I don’t have enough on my plate right now, but I like that he’s being kind and just talking to me.

I keep the conversation going, feeling normal for the first time.

He’s nice and funny, a real charming character, and I end up giggling a lot.

The seamstress fusses over many of us. It’s the final costume fit, and she knows it needs to be perfect for opening night. We have a packed house.

I drag my feet to the dressing room once she’s done.

The girls hang around, but I don’t pay them much attention.

I’m getting used to their eyes following me around.

Anna made sure to tell them all how much of a nightmare I am as a roommate, and they are all speculating what made me this big of a nutjob.

Humming the song to myself, I climb the stairs knowing that a beautiful room is waiting for me, and it doesn’t matter what anyone says to me. They can’t rob me of that. Like me, they probably don’t even know it exists.

I’m almost on the last flight of stairs when a hand covers my mouth, and I’m pulled against a hard chest. I try to scream. My feet lift from the floor and dangle midair, but I can’t fight back. Whoever has me is at least three times my size.

“Are you crazy?” he growls in my ear.

It’s a bold statement from the man who just jumped on me in the middle of the stairs. I don’t get to tell him that, though, since he has my mouth firmly shut.

“Fucking walking target,” he complains and shuffles with me in his arms before taking us both the rest of the steps up.

His voice is low. A growl from deep in his throat as if he doesn’t use it much.

His tone is nothing like my usual stalker.

The sentence sounds insane as it echoes around my brain, but I don’t have time to judge myself.

I’m small, but my legs are strong. I use everything in me trying to shake away his hold, yet he can easily drag me wherever he wants.

My kidnapper opens my door with a key he produces from his pocket, and a cold takes over my body.

This is bad.

I try to scream, but his hand firmly covers my mouth, and all I can do is rethink every one of my decisions. I never should have played this game. Now a stranger has me in his arms with a free pass to my room.

He closes the door with a kick, and I'm tossed to the floor without any ceremony. Scrambling to my feet, I make sure to stand as far from him as possible, brushing my hair out of my face and breathing hard. This is a horror movie in the making. I press my back to the wall and gulp a breath while I take in every inch of him. He's tall, with black tattoos down to his knuckles and a mean face. He sneers at me like I was the one doing the kidnapping. If I wasn’t so fucking scared, I’d call him on that.

“What are you going to do with me?”

It’s a bold question because I’m not ready for that answer.

I don’t want to know if it’s too graphic.

I hope he just kills me quickly. I don’t want to suffer for too long.

His black T-shirt clings to his muscles and dark jeans.

I don’t see a gun anywhere, so maybe he has a knife?

Stabbing sounds like a slow and painful way to die?—

Knife!

My eyes whip to the bedside table where I store the strange knife I found on my first day here. His muscles look big enough to break that knife, but it’s the only defense I have. He steps forward, and I find an excuse to angle my body, finding if I calmly make my way there, he won’t be so alarmed.

“I’m trying to save your fucking life!” he roars and steps forward again.

I respond by running backward until I hit my bedside table. I’m here. Now I just need to remove the knife from the drawer before he makes it all the way here. I’m concentrating so hard on how to stab him that I almost miss his words.

But they ring in my ears demanding attention.

“What?”

He snorts, shaking his head. “I saw you talking to him. Are you fucking crazy? Do you want his death on your conscience?”

I shake my head, but it’s not in denial but rather in absolute confusion. “Are you sure you kidnapped the right girl?”

The question is so stupid, but I can’t stop my own mouth. I have no idea what he’s talking about, and if he was never meant to be here, I’d like him to leave as quickly as possible. I can show him to the door and all.

“Kidnapped?” He moves my way again, and I slap my hand over the drawer. He looks at my hand and laughs. “Grab the knife. Go ahead. Grab it.”

He knows I keep my knife here. That’s bad, and the fact he’s telling me to grab it feels like a trap. But I open the drawer, still looking at him, and my fingers close over the wooden handle. I remove the leather case from the blade and point at him.

“Better?” he asks.

“No, there’s still an asshole in my room.”

He looks around and nods. “Yes, how’s this a kidnapping? I kidnapped you to your room?”

I don’t lower the knife. “You took me from one location and brought me to another.”

He opens his mouth to argue but ends up closing it with a snap. I grip the knife harder, trying to think where I can stab him just once and be effective enough to run without him catching up with me. I don’t want to kill him or anything. Just fuck him up enough so I can escape.

“Like I said, you’re fucking insane. You’re playing with fire.”

I’m becoming more frustrated than I am scared, and that’s saying a lot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The words barely make it out of my lips, and I regret them already. He reacts quickly. Someone that big shouldn’t be so fast, but he is. It takes a second, and he’s on top of me, the knife between us and against his hard chest.

I was so wrong a million times over. I never had a chance.

“You were flirting with the dancer just now. What if he sees it? What happens then?”

My cheeks burn. I wasn’t flirting with Connor. I was being nice to the only person in this theater who doesn’t think I’m insane. I don’t explain myself to him, though it’s irrelevant.

“Who is he?” I ask instead.

He steps closer, not worried whatsoever about the knife between us. It pierces his T-shirt, and a second later, wet blood spreads over the fabric. My arms falter. I don’t like blood very much. Not mine, not my kidnapper’s.

“You’re playing with fire. A man who watches your every move and thinks of you as his. So I ask again, do you want that dancer’s death on your conscience?”

My eyes don’t move from the fresh wound I’m creating. I’ve never hurt someone before. If someone were cutting my stomach like that, I’d be screaming, but he doesn’t even look bothered.

“Marcella?”

The way he says my name snaps me out of it. He has a soft accent when he says it, as if he knows how the name should be pronounced. I look up at him. The words taste bitter in my mouth. “Nothing is going to happen.”

A lie. He knows it’s a lie. “He made you a knife out of bone. Do you think he’s sane?”

I blink and look down at the knife. I never could tell what material it was made from, but now that he says it’s bone, it makes complete sense.

“Animal bone?”

He shakes his head, and the fear grows in my chest. Embarrassment too. I let this go for too long. I ignored how much I was in real danger, and now I have another stranger here letting me know.

I look down at the knife I’m pressing on him, annoyed and impressed at the same time. “Doesn't it hurt?”

He follows my eyes and shakes his head. “It’s sharp, but he’d never give you something lethal.”

The hand holding the wooden handle shakes as I take in his words. Of course it was my stalker who got me the knife. It was here in the bed waiting for me. This man knew about it.

“Anything can be lethal if used right,” I tell him with my chin up as I apply more pressure to the knife.

I could sink it all the way to his stomach. He can say whatever he wants, but I could defend myself with a fork. The knife is small, yes, but frighteningly sharp. Maybe he doesn’t know my stalker that much.

“Do you work with him?” I ask next.

“You think you’re worth the two of us?” he mocks.

He comes closer, and my hand trembles. He knows I can push the knife the whole way, but he’s playing chicken with me. It’s not the knife that's the problem. It’s me.

“I don’t think I’m worth much,” I reply honestly, but my eyes are between us and the blood soaking his shirt.

Bile rises up to my throat. He’s braver than I am, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself to prove that.

I don’t need this lesson to know I’m scared of everything.

I feel it every day of my life. My knees are wobbly, sweat coats my skin, and my mouth is so dry my lips crack.

My vision blurs at the corner, and suddenly, it’s just me and the blood.

His T-shirt is black, so I can’t tell the red color, but the metallic smell sends shivers down my spine.

“He thinks you are. He thinks you’re worth a war.”