Chapter 33: There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.

It’s true, after all. He’d never believed it before, but now he can’t deny that the director of his ballet school in London had been right when he said that even fame can become tedious.

Aidan is sitting in his dressing room, face framed in his vanity mirror, applying far too much rouge to his cheeks, chest and shoulders. Anything, really, to counteract the ghostly cast of the stage lights.

He curses himself for being so naturally pale. Lilliana is fair-faced and Aures maintains a golden glow from her days as a farm girl by staunchly refusing to be indoors for any longer than absolutely necessary. But Aidan? He’s always looked like a spectre.

Unbidden, a warm memory settles over him, of a night a thousand lightyears ago, on an utterly different planet.

“But under this light, you become otherworldly – so beautiful…”

Aidan smiles to himself as he dips his brush into the rouge one last time.