A long chapter for you guys—enjoy!
**Chapter 43**
**Cossette's POV**
The days between the invitation and Saturday moved the way important weeks always do — too fast in the moments that mattered, too slow in the ones that didn't.
Work was relentless in the best possible way.
Betha and Alex had settled into a rhythm that somehow functioned despite everything — despite the tension that lived permanently in the space between them, despite the way Alex always found a reason to stand slightly too close, despite the way Betha always found a reason to move slightly away. They were professional. Mostly. Except for the three separate occasions I walked into a room mid-argument about pizza crust thickness with the energy of two people who were absolutely not just talking about pizza crust thickness.
I said nothing.
I was busy anyway.
The sales numbers kept climbing. Foody's frozen pizza line was outperforming every projection we had made, and the Nathalie Sterling effect showed no signs of slowing. Every morning I opened my laptop to new numbers and every morning felt the same quiet cold satisfaction settle in my chest.
*Frost built an empire. I'm going to dismantle it from the inside and he won't see it coming until it's already done.*
On Thursday afternoon I was crossing the main corridor, files in hand, mind already three steps ahead of itself, when I didn't see him coming.
Alaric.
We collided at the corridor junction — my files hitting his chest, his hand catching my arm before I stumbled, the two of us suddenly far too close in a space that had no reason to feel as small as it did.
"Sorry — " I started.
"Foxy."
His voice was low. Close. His hand was still on my arm and he wasn't moving it.
I looked up.
He was already looking at me — had been looking at me from the moment of impact, with that particular focused quality he had that made you feel like the only thing in a room even when the room was a busy corridor full of people with places to be.
"You've been so much on my mind these days," he said quietly. Just like that. Casual as weather. Like it was a perfectly normal thing to say to someone in a hallway on a Thursday afternoon.
He blinked once after saying it — as if the words had surprised even him slightly.
My face went warm. Immediately and traitorously warm.
I stepped back, straightening my files, arranging my expression into something that did not reflect what my face had just done.
"That's your problem," I said pleasantly. "Not mine."
I walked away.
Behind me I heard him laugh — quiet and genuine and slightly helpless, the laugh of someone who had just watched something they found completely inevitable happen exactly as expected.
I kept walking.
I did not smile until I was around the corner.
---
Friday evening my phone lit up.
Ray: *Heard the sales numbers and about the gala invitation. Congratulations, little thing. You're making history and they don't even know it yet. See you tomorrow — and Cossette? Wear something that makes them remember you.*
I read it twice.
Then I smiled despite myself and placed my phone face-down on the bed.
Ray had a way of saying things that landed warm even when they were just words on a screen. I didn't examine that too closely. I had enough things I wasn't examining.
Tomorrow was the gala.
I needed to sleep.
I did not sleep particularly well.
---
Saturday arrived quietly, without ceremony, pretending to be ordinary until you were already inside it.
By late afternoon Betha was in my room.
This had been decided without discussion. Of course she would be here. Of course we would get ready together — we had been getting ready for important things together since we were sixteen, standing in front of Betha's childhood mirror rehearsing for events that had felt at the time like the most significant nights of our lives.
Tonight was actually significant.
Betha went first.
She stood in front of my floor-length mirror in the midnight blue gown and for a moment neither of us said anything. The dress was everything it had promised in the boutique and more — fitted through the body, sleek and architectural, the subtle embroidery along the neckline catching the light every time she shifted. Her dark brown hair was pinned up, soft and deliberate, a few strands left loose at her jaw. Her green eyes were sharper than usual, dark-lined, serious in a way I rarely saw on Betha Kelman outside of moments that genuinely mattered to her.
She looked like old money that had decided to stop being polite about it.
"Betha," I said.
"Don't," she said immediately.
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to say something that would make me emotional and I refuse to be emotional before a gala. My makeup took forty minutes."
"You look extraordinary."
She blinked rapidly at the ceiling. "I said don't."
"I meant it."
"I know you did." She exhaled carefully. "Okay. Your turn."
I stepped into the forest green gown.
The structure of it settled around me the way good dresses do — not constraining but clarifying. Like it had quietly decided what shape the evening was going to take. The color moved differently under my bedroom light than it had in the boutique, deeper and richer, and my ginger hair against it looked —
Intentional. It looked intentional. Like I had been designed this way on purpose, specifically for tonight.
My hair fell in loose waves, the red of it catching against the green like something from an old painting. I kept my makeup clean — sharp liner, a wine-dark lip, nothing excessive. I didn't need excess. The dress made the argument for me.
I put on my heels and turned to face the mirror fully.
Betha was standing behind me, arms crossed, studying the complete picture with the focused seriousness of a woman who took this exactly as seriously as it deserved.
She was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "Yeah. They're going to lose their minds."
"Who?"
She gave me a look that said she was not going to answer that question and I was not going to make her.
I picked up my clutch. "Are we leaving or not?"
She smiled — slow and certain. "We're leaving."
---
The mansion sat at the end of a private road lined with warm lights, each one casting a gold halo against the dark. The building itself was something from another century — pale stone, arched windows, balconies draped in soft greenery, the kind of architecture that had never needed to announce itself because it had always simply been there.
Cars moved slowly along the approach. People filtered through the entrance in pairs and groups, the women in gowns that had clearly cost fortunes, the men in suits tailored carefully to suggest the same. The air smelled of night flowers and something expensive and the specific electricity that only exists in rooms where everyone present has decided to be impressive tonight.
We stepped out of the car.
A woman near the entrance glanced over. Then looked again. Then touched the arm of the person beside her.
We walked toward the doors.
I heard it before I fully understood it — a small ripple moving through the people nearest to us. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the particular shift in quality that happens when a room notices something it wasn't expecting.
Someone's champagne glass paused halfway to their mouth.
Two women near the left pillar stopped mid-conversation.
A man I didn't recognize turned and then very deliberately didn't look away.
Betha, to her absolute credit, betrayed nothing. She walked like she had been arriving at events like this since childhood — which she nearly had — and the midnight blue of her gown caught the entrance lights in a way that made it shimmer softly at the edges.
I walked beside her and felt something I hadn't expected.
Calm. Not performed calm. Actual calm — the kind that comes from knowing exactly why you're standing somewhere and deciding that the reason is enough.
We were handed champagne at the door.
We entered.
---
The interior stopped me for half a second despite myself.
The ceiling was cathedral high and strung with thousands of warm lights that made the entire space glow like the inside of a lantern. Long tables ran along the walls, dressed in white and gold, carrying arrangements of white flowers and silver candelabras with actual flame. In the center of the room a space had been kept open — already filled with people moving through each other with the specific choreography of elite social events, where every conversation was also a calculation and every smile was also an assessment.
The food along the far wall looked less like catering and more like architecture. Whole roasted things on silver platters. Towers of delicate pastry. Arrangements of fruit too precise to have been accidental. Servers moved through the crowd with trays of things that were small and perfect and almost too beautiful to justify eating.
A string quartet played in the corner — low and warm, present without demanding attention, the way good music at good events should always be.
The theme was royalty and the room had taken it entirely seriously. Gowns with trains. Men in jewel-toned suits. The occasional tiara that on anyone else might have read as excessive and on these particular women read as a completely reasonable personal choice.
I took it in and felt certain.
Not because of the dress or the invitation or the lights.
Because I had earned every single step that had brought me to this room.
I raised my champagne glass slightly.
*Let's begin.*
---
We had barely cleared the entrance when Emily appeared.
She was wearing champagne gold — soft and warm, understated in a way that suited the watchful quality she carried everywhere. She smiled when she saw us, genuine and slightly relieved, moving toward us with none of the careful social choreography everyone else in the room was performing.
"You came," she said.
"We came," I confirmed.
"You both look incredible." Her eyes moved between us honestly. Then she glanced toward the room. "Nathalie's already here."
As if on cue, Nathalie Sterling materialized through the crowd — white gown, dark hair swept back, that particular quality of beauty that made other beautiful women quietly reassess. She moved toward us with practiced ease.
She looked at me. Smiled — polished, warm, entirely professional.
"Cossette. Betha. I'm glad you're here."
Then she was gone again, absorbed back into the room.
Betha waited until both of them had drifted away before leaning toward me.
"She said hello," Betha murmured. "Just hello. Nothing else."
"I noticed."
"She's watching him. Alaric. From across the room. She has been since we arrived."
I said nothing.
Betha said nothing.
We both looked at our champagne glasses with great purpose.
---
I felt him before I heard him — that specific shift in the air that preceded Frost Thomas everywhere he went.
He stopped in front of me. Dark suit, perfectly fitted, that face that had never once given anything away.
He looked at me — one thorough controlled look from the green gown to my face.
"You look not bad tonight," he said.
*Not bad.*
I heard the words and felt something that was almost funny. This man. This specific man who had stood in a parking garage and watched me die without moving a single finger was standing in front of me at a gala telling me I looked *not bad.*
I smiled. Perfectly. Warmly. Empty of everything behind it.
"Thank you, Frost."
Anika materialized at his side with the silent efficiency of a woman who had very good instincts about when her territory was being approached.
She looked at me. Then at my dress.
Then she laughed — light, social, sharp underneath.
"Why all of this, Cossette? All this effort. You're not going to the royalty era, darling. Some things can't be bought."
Frost said nothing.
I was about to open my mouth when Betha got there first.
"Yeah, maybe," Betha said pleasantly. "But unlike you, she's considered to be born royal. At least in that era." She tilted her head. "You, Anika? Maid level. At best."
The silence that followed was the specific quality of silence that exists after something lands too accurately to be deflected.
Anika's smile dropped completely.
Frost's jaw tightened.
I looked at Betha with an expression that communicated both *how dare you* and *I love you* simultaneously.
Anika's mouth opened —
Frost's hand closed around her shoulder, firm and decisive, steering her toward the far corner before she could say another word.
Betha watched them go.
"They're not even trying to hide it anymore," she said flatly. "Those bastards."
"No," I agreed. "They're not."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
I considered it honestly. The man I had once loved enough to marry. The woman who had killed my father. Standing in a corner together, his hand on her shoulder.
"Not anymore," I said.
Betha turned and studied my face with those green eyes that had known me since the day we were born.
Then she smiled — slow and slightly wicked.
"Because you care about Alaric." She turned fully toward me. "Or maybe Ray too? Are you building a reverse harem? Because if yes I need to be included. Immediately."
I laughed — genuinely, loudly enough that two people nearby glanced over.
"Betha, shut up. You have Alex."
She waved her hand. "Alex and I are not back together. That was nothing."
"That was not nothing."
"It was nothing, Cossette —"
"Little thing."
We both turned.
Ray. Charcoal suit, that slow certain smile, his eyes moving over me with the warmth he had stopped bothering to disguise.
"You look gorgeous tonight," he said quietly.
My face did something warm and involuntary.
"You too, Ray," I said.
He stepped beside me naturally and we talked — the gala's reputation, Foody's visibility, the kinds of connections that only got built in rooms like this one. Ray understood it the way I was learning to. Not performing. Just operating.
Betha contributed occasionally and spent the rest of the time looking everywhere except in Alex's direction, which meant she was looking in Alex's direction every forty-five seconds.
I didn't point this out.
Across the room I was aware of Alaric the way you are aware of weather — not always looking directly at it but always knowing exactly where it is.
He hadn't moved from his spot at the edge of the room. Barely touched his drink. And I could feel — not see, feel — the weight of his attention from across the space. Fixed. Unwavering. The particular quality of someone watching something they don't know what to do with and have run out of pretending they aren't watching.
When Ray said something that made me laugh and I tilted my head back slightly I felt the attention sharpen.
When Ray's hand briefly touched my arm I felt it sharpen further.
I did not look at him.
I was very deliberately not looking at him.
Which meant I was thinking about him constantly.
*Stop it, Cossette.*
Ray was saying something about distribution networks.
I listened.
I was almost entirely listening.
A comfortable silence settled between us for a moment. Ray looked at the dance floor — the string quartet had shifted into something slower and deliberate, couples moving through the center of the room under the enormous chandelier that threw warm light in every direction.
He turned to me.
"Wanna dance?"
Author Note :
Hope you like it! It's a long chapter for you guys, so maybe it deserves a vote or a comment 🥹❤️ Thank you for reading!