Demetrio's POV
The study door clicked shut and the lock turned and the noise of the party became something that belonged to a different world entirely.
She was standing in the middle of the room with her chin up and her shoulders squared and her eyes burning, and she was not afraid, which was the thing about her that had dismantled every framework I had for managing my own reactions to people. Every person I had ever put in a room alone with me understood, within approximately thirty seconds, the full weight of what that meant. They went careful. They went quiet. They measured their words and their movements and they made themselves smaller until the situation resolved.
Cellie made herself bigger.
"You want to explain to me," she said, her voice steady and clipped and aimed at me like something thrown, "what gave you the right to drag me across that courtyard in front of everyone? In front of our parents?"
"I told you about the Russian threat," I said.
