Chapter Text
think i like you best when you're just with me
and no one else.
— cigarettes after sex, “k”.
*
1913
Eve stares at her reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror, lips pressed into a thin, dissatisfied line. The eyes that gaze back at her are tired, accentuated by fine web-like wrinkles; hers are eyes that have seen too little, that long to swim with more than the cool-grey streets of London and the same egg wash walls she comes home to each day. It’s boring, her face tells her, and, how much longer can you keep living like this?
Against her temple there’s a single strand of silver hair shining under the fluorescence. It’s not the first one she’s held taut between two fingers: forty-five is slowly creeping up on her with the same quiet ferocity as forty-four and forty-three and forty-two. She knows that when she plucks it and feels the sharp sting against her scalp another one will eventually take its place. One day, all of her hair will be grey.
It’s fitting. This is what she thinks while she stands and stares and waits. That her whole being will soon become as plain and wasted as the city she’s beginning to despise.
“Eve!” Niko’s voice through the door is not the reprieve that she wishes it was. She can picture him there, one hand poised to knock, impatient but never honest enough to show it. Or maybe he thinks that she doesn’t like that; no part of him has ever been harsh with her. “We’re going to be late.”
By the time she steps out of the bathroom the smile she’s wearing is almost entirely believable. The shimmery grey hair is left resting on the counter with all of her long-forgotten prayers. The last time she sank to her knees for anybody she wound up here, drifting aimlessly through a marriage that’s almost loveless. Niko, at least, never notices that the marks on her hands are from her own teeth, that she drives the flesh between her lips and bites until her mouth swims and spews copper red.
It is the price of this, she thinks. It is the price of ill-fitted disdain masquerading as matrimony. She didn’t always tire of him; once, in fact, she might have been glad to hang off his arm in the company of strange people and their money. Twenty years ago she buckled under his gaze, gasping, imagining that the future was as bright as the promises he laid bare between them. Maybe she really is too old to play pretend, now.
Or maybe every goddamn promise he made was never going to be goddamn enough. Eve bit the apple first, after all. She is only as strong-willed as her namesake.
“Here,” she says, now, winding her arm around his. “Ready.”
“You look…” Niko blunders, as expected. Gestures to her like she’s a mannequin whose had all of her limbs arranged to suit him. “Nice. That’s a nice dress.”
Oh, how she hates it. “Thank you.”
“You should wear the necklace from my mother,” he adds. His finger reaches for her throat and never connects. “It might bring some colour to your cheeks.”
Eve wishes she could cut her tongue on her incisors. “Good idea. Do you know where it is?”
“God, Eve, what would you do without me?”
Niko’s voice is light, the closest he ever comes to joking. So much, is what she thinks when he steps behind her to clasp the chain around her neck. There is so much I would do if you only disappeared.
“That’s better,” Niko says. She feels his lips somewhere over her curls and ducks before they find her skull. “Right. We should go.”
Eve grabs his arm again. She tries to remember the part of her that liked being tethered like this, if it existed at all. If she found out that the last half of her life was nothing more than a fever dream she’s been forced to sludge her way through then she’s not even sure she would have the energy to be mad anymore. Whose fault is it, anyway?
The serpent only offered. And Eve—stupid, tired Eve—took and took and took.
*
In Eve’s honest opinion, there is nothing more monotonous than royalty.
Niko’s job has paid well; teaching young princes will get you into ballrooms before it makes you known. Eve doesn’t care for the dizzying heights of the ceilings or the jewels that sparkle in the corners of her eyes. She likes the wine. She likes watching the dances. Or, more to the point, she likes watching people. The way they talk, the way they speak and smile without teeth, each mannerism something she can collect like pebbles to line up on her windowsill.
“Having fun?”
Eve lifts a shoulder, sips her wine. “Where’s your royal brat?”
“C’mon, now,” Niko huffs. He’s never enjoyed her bluntness and she suspects he never will. “They sent him to bed.” He pauses, considering his next words. Eve wishes she knew how to do it herself. “He’s not well.”
“Lucky kid,” Eve mutters. “I can’t imagine this would be much fun for children.”
“They’re used to it,” Niko replies. “You should come and meet Princess Mary. She’s a very bright young girl.”
“I don’t think she wants to talk to me.”
“You might be surprised who wants to talk to you, Eve.” At her silence Niko just sighs, and instead indicates the elaborate waltz happening on the ballroom floor in front of them. “Care to dance?”
“I don’t dance,” Eve reminds him. Especially not dressed like a little girl’s fucking dolly, she adds in her head. “Gemma might like to, if she was invited.”
Niko stares at her. “She wasn’t.”
“Shame,” Eve mutters.
“You have to introduce yourself to someone,” Niko presses. He never wears his desperation as well as he thinks he does. “This is about my image. To even be invited at all is a huge honour and I can’t have them think my wife—”
Eve pulls out the smile with no teeth, nodding as though she’s ever emphasised with his tiny dick complex. “You’re right, sorry. I can speak to one or two people.”
Niko’s relief grates against every last one of her nerves. She turns her gaze back to the ballroom, ghosting over the faces of people Niko points out to her as the soft, delicate music from the orchestra fades into white noise around her. Something sharp chills down her spine and the room pinpricks into a muted abyss of grayscale; she turns, almost against her will, to face the opposite direction.
There’s a woman across the vast expanse of marble floor staring at her. And Eve, for whatever ungodly reason, cannot find it in herself to look away.
“Who is that?” Eve hears herself ask.
Niko follows her line of sight. His expression tightens at her interruption. “Oh, Lord Burnett mentioned that she is with the Russians. Not exactly someone to write home about, but—”
“But she’s here,” Eve says. The confusion she shrugs into is her own. “So, do you know her name?”
“Oksana Astankova,” Niko says. “You should say hello to her. Maybe introduce her to Lady Regan.”
“Why?” Eve frowns.
“She was asking about you earlier.”
Eve’s eye roll finally breaks the spell. The orchestra swells around her again, stifling. “Emily Regan only cares about me when she can degrade me.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Eve,” Niko murmurs. “You… You always think the worst of people.”
“We’re going to do this here?” Eve asks. “I can do it here, Niko. I don’t care about my image.”
Niko blinks, deflating before her eyes. “Your image is my image.”
Stupid, pathetic man, Eve thinks. “Emily Regan believes I besmirched you by not giving you a child.”
“Eve—”
“And further to that,” Eve huffs, clenching her fists around the frill at her waist. “She is a bigot who single-handedly turned the entirety of my own book club against me because I chose The Complete Claudine over the Bible.”
“Maybe you should let the other women contribute their own novels,” Niko suggests. “You could… take it in turns.”
“The Bible is hardly a groundbreaking work of literature,” Eve hisses. “And I’m sure Emily Regan does more than pray on her knees.”
Niko moves as though to grab her arm, and she almost wishes that he would. Eve wants the fight. She wants to gnash her teeth and spill blood that’s not her own for a change. If Niko threw her down right here she might even find it in herself to love him beyond her nostalgia again.
“Why don’t I introduce you to Professor Jackson, from the University?” Niko relents. “We could probably leave before midnight, considering the Prince and—”
“I think I will go talk to her,” Eve says. She tilts her head towards the woman wearing the couture black gown across the room. “Maybe Oksana wants to start a new book club.”
Eve ducks around faceless bodies and simmers her frustration into something that she might be able to corral into politeness. Oksana stays leaning against the wall, watching, lips pursed as one long, slender finger runs around the rim of her champagne flute. Eve doesn’t crumble under the weight she feels behind her gaze, but it makes her feel something unfamiliar.
“Hello,” falls from her mouth before she can think of something more succinct. “Are you enjoying your evening?”
Oksana raises an eyebrow. Then, her eyes drop to Eve’s waist, where her hands have settled against her stomach again. “Did your husband tell you to say that?”
Eve pauses. The curl of Russian is not unexpected, but the deep headiness behind her voice is. Oksana is tall, elegant; her gown is bejewelled, with a high-neck and net-sleeves, expensive in its abnormalness. She looks as equally out of place as Eve feels and yet wears it with sophistication. The expression on her face blurs between boredom and hunger.
Something jolts deep within Eve’s belly. She wonders what it would feel like to gather the inky black material of her dress in her hands and rip it to shreds.
Oksana continues, unabashed. “Does your husband tell you to say everything?”
Eve blinks herself back into focus. “No. He doesn’t tell me to say anything at all.”
“He told you to come over here, did he not?” Oksana’s lips twitch and her gaze returns to meet Eve’s. “Say hello, make me feel welcome?”
“I’m the wrong person to make anyone feel welcome,” Eve tells her. “But I caught you staring at me.”
Oksana grins properly, teeth sharp against plump red lips. “I caught you staring first.”
Eve isn’t sure it went like that at all. “What are you doing here, Oksana?”
“Well that’s not fair,” she pouts. “Your husband told you my name and I do not even know yours.”
“Eve. My name is Eve Polastri.”
“Eve,” Oksana repeats. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Eve says, because she thinks it would be the appropriate response. There is nothing appropriate about the way Oksana’s eyes drop back to her waist, however, and she feels her cheeks warm in response. “So, to answer my question..?”
“I like parties,” she shrugs. “There is food and champagne and very nice dresses. Don’t you agree?”
Eve hates her dress. She hates the frill and the length and the corset that cinches her waist and the fact that she looks like every other stupid woman forced to smile and dance for men with too much wealth. Oksana is the only one who looks even mildly comfortable. Eve feels her envy claw at her throat.
“I don’t notice the dresses,” is what she settles on saying.
“Hmm, no,” Oksana agrees. “I much prefer what they are attached to, as well.”
In the dim lighting her pupils are huge, intense and dark and impossible to look away from. Eve matches her stare, chin tilted, trying to decipher if she is the one being challenged or the one doing the challenging. A backwards, regulated part of her understands that the tension Oksana is dragging out from deep inside of her is wrong.
And yet, Eve feels wide awake.
“Did you come here with anyone?”
“Yes,” Oksana nods. She briefly glances at the ballroom, as though only just remembering the people around them. “And I expect to leave with someone else.”
Eve snorts. “Does monogamy not exist in Russia?”
“Well, that depends,” Oksana says softly. “Do you believe in soulmates, Eve?”
“What, all of that crap about seeing colours for the first time, or hearing music in your head from across the globe?” She runs her tongue over her bottom lip, then shrugs, watching Oksana’s throat bob as she swallows. “No. I don’t.”
“I did, for a while,” Oksana admits. “I thought they might write to me on my skin. I thought I might slice myself open and feel their pain in turn. It would have to be violent, I think, for it to be real.”
“And why is that?”
She grins lazily. “Anyone can fall in love, Eve. But brutality must be matched.”
Eve lets her gaze dip for just a moment. “Not many ladies would admit to their cruelty.”
“That is where I am different,” Oksana says. She leans forward and tugs a curl loose from the tight updo Eve wrangled her hair into before she left the house. “I understand that I am monstrous.”
“Soulmates are merely inventions,” Eve whispers. “Figments of a lonely imagination.”
“You have a husband,” Oksana points out.
Eve nods. “Yes. I have a husband.”
Something new settles across Oksana’s face, now. A kind of curious type of bewilderment, as though she is only seeing Eve for the first time right at this very moment. Her hand drops heavily to her side, fingers curling into a loose fist. Eve wants to peel her skin back to watch the cogs turn in her mind.
It is a strange enough thought that she briefly steps back, forcing new air between them.
“I should probably find him,” Eve says. Avoidance is an art form that she mastered long before Niko was receiving invites from Kings. “It must be getting late.”
“Yes,” Oksana says. She steps forward and Eve feels her breath catch on something tight in her throat; their shoulders just touch, and then Oksana is twirling her way towards the ornate double doors at the end of the room. “It was lovely to meet you, Eve.”
It was lovely to meet you, as though she believes that they are not going to meet again. Now that she can breathe properly, now that the music has come back to life around her, Eve can think clearly. She can see, once more, the glitz and the glamour and the little wave of her husband’s hand from the corner she left him in. It drags her feet back to the ground from wherever she had been hovering with Oksana.
Eve steels herself and—without the slightest inkling as to what she’s wanting to achieve—turns away from Niko and follows after Oksana.
*
The bathroom is as elaborately decadent as the rest of the palace. Eve smiles politely at the woman she passes in the doorway, then rounds the corner to find Oksana inspecting her face in one of the gold-edged mirrors. She stops beside her, looks into a mirror of her own. The person looking back at her is so intrinsically different to the reflection she was confronted with hours ago that for a moment all she can do is stare at herself.
“Beautiful,” Oksana says. Eve turns her body to watch her, taking in the sharp angles of her side profile. “You know, Eve, you should really wear your hair down.”
“It’s easier this way,” Eve answers. Easier for what, she isn’t entirely sure. She leans against the vanity and folds her hands in front of her. “All of those things you were talking about earlier—”
“It was awfully boring, wasn’t it?” Oksana mirrors Eve’s position, slender fingers entwining together over her stomach. “I hate existentialism.”
Eve blinks. “I don’t mind it. I enjoyed our conversation, actually.”
“You’re welcome.”
She fights the urge to roll her eyes at the smugness that buries itself into Oksana’s features. “You’re much smarter than anyone else I’ve spoken to at one of these events.”
“This is the first one I have been to.” She leans in and winks, gesturing to her outfit. “Can you tell?”
“An interesting choice, definitely,” Eve agrees.
Oksana is closer, now, almost without Eve realising it. She’s aware that she should step away, that the implications of their closeness will not be easily explained if anyone else were to enter the bathroom, but she can’t. Or won’t, maybe; there has always been a different kind of person living inside of Eve, waiting for someone to poke her back to life. She can feel it now, thrumming calmly beneath her skin.
She takes a deep breath, and plunges headfirst into the unknown. “But it’s very pretty, Oksana.”
Oksana’s lips part and she moves in again, one arm on either side of Eve’s hips as she pins her against the vanity. There’s still time for Eve to say no. There’s still time for Eve to go back to her boring husband and the boring party without altering the course of her boring life.
“You are very surprising,” Oksana murmurs. The warmth of her breath fans across Eve’s face and she closes her eyes against the sensation. “Do you want this?”
Eve wants. Oh, how she wants. “We’re in a public bathroom.”
“I have a thing for bathrooms.”
Eve leans in first, closing the last of the distance between them to press her lips firmly against Oksana’s. She tastes of champagne and vanilla, and she kisses Eve back instantly, pushing her body forward until their chests are flush and she can grip the back of Eve’s dress for balance. Eve is never one to do things by half.
She grabs a fistful of Oksana’s black gown and swallows the moan that’s fed between her lips.
“Have you been with a woman before?” Oksana asks. She kisses Eve’s jaw, works her way down the bone with little nips and sucks. Eve’s head swims as she drags her closer, not caring to understand the new feeling that’s ignited within her.
“I’m married,” Eve pants. She feels more than sees Oksana’s grin against her skin, teeth working her pulse point now. “It’s not—”
“You need to forget what people have told you is wrong,” Oksana tells her. “Do you think about women?”
“I think about a lot of things.”
Eve tilts her head so she can capture Oksana’s wandering lips again, slipping her tongue over the sharp points of her teeth until she can lick into her. It feels like taking, and so she does it again; deepens it until her legs shake and her lungs burn and Oksana has to force her off. They stand forehead to forehead, breathing heavily, a string of saliva tethering them to each other.
“What things, Eve?”
Eve presses her palm over Oksana’s breast, watching the way her eyes widen as she drags her thumb over a hardening nipple. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“It’s okay,” Oksana whispers. She moves slowly, stepping back only to drop to her knees a second later. Eve’s breath hitches as the bottom of her dress is pushed up her legs. Oksana takes her hands in her own and makes her hold the fabric there before rocking back on her heels to admire the sight. “I know what I’m doing.”
She settles between Eve’s legs, slender fingers slipping beneath her chemise and reaching up until she can rub her over the top of her knickers. Oksana moans again, a ragged sound that shoots straight to the centre of Eve; she presses her back harder against the vanity and hisses at the pressure in her spine.
The knickers are tugged down to her ankles and Oksana dives back in with her mouth this time, pressing hot, sticky kisses to the insides of Eve’s thighs. Eve groans, slapping her arm over her mouth to stifle the sound as Oksana licks into her wet cunt. She stays there a moment, working her mouth over every inch of sensitive skin until Eve is writhing above her, and then she pulls away and gazes up with hooded, delirious eyes.
“I want to hear you,” she rasps. Her lips are slick and pink and Eve wants her to take her apart, will gladly let her do whatever she wants as long as she doesn’t stop. “Please, Eve.”
Eve lets her arm fall away. She clutches her dress between tightly closed fists and steps her legs further apart. “Okay.”
Oksana brings her fingers alongside her mouth, sucking on Eve’s clit as she teases her with one digit pushed inside far too slowly. Eve whines for more, wishes she had the words or understood enough of what she wants to be able to tell Oksana. Niko has always been too soft. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if it stung a little, sometimes.
The first finger is joined by a second. Oksana swirls her tongue around her clit, then licks through wet heat in broad strokes, curling her fingers and moaning at the sound of Eve above her. Eve lets her head fall back as her release coils tight in her belly; she makes some kind of noise that she’s never heard from herself before, then comes with Oksana’s mouth pressed tight against her cunt.
Eve’s knees tremble as Oksana drags her knickers back up her legs. She rises and smooths her dress down, too, and Eve can only lunge forward and kiss the taste of herself off her slick lips.
“This isn’t something I do,” Eve reminds her. “I’m married.”
“I know,” Oksana hums. She takes Eve’s hand and brings it down to the juncture of her own thighs, pressing through her dress and whatever else she has on underneath it. “Touch me.”
“What are we doing?”
Oksana’s head falls to rest on Eve’s shoulder as she ruts against her palm. “Saying goodbye.”
“I don’t want to,” Eve says. She can’t feel much through all of the material in her way, but she imagines that Oksana is as needy and wet as she is. “I want—”
To take, she thinks. I want to take all of you. And after I’ve taken that, I want to take more.
Oksana comes quietly, a shuddering gasp into the skin of Eve’s neck. She pulls away after a lingering kiss and steps back to check her reflection in the mirror. Eve watches her dab her lips and smooth stray hairs back down.
“Leave after me,” Oksana says. “We do not want to raise any eyebrows.”
And then she’s gone, and Eve is left to wonder how exactly she had planned to finish her sentence.
*
She feels empty.
It isn’t an unusual emotion these days; Eve has spent far too many hours trying to fill up with anything to take the edge off the hollowness that echoes in her chest every time she’s reminded of her existence. This is different. This feels like something she’s not sure how to crawl out of. Seeing Niko’s face does not help in the slightest.
“There you are,” he says when she comes to stop beside him. She prays that he doesn’t notice the tinge of red that still lingers on her neck. “I thought I had lost you.”
I wouldn’t be so lucky, she thinks, then smiles. “No, I was just mingling.”
“Ah, good,” Niko says. “I’d like to introduce you to Lord—”
Eve tunes out again. She scans the room and finds Oksana immediately, because it would be too easy for them to never see each other again. She’s not sure she wants it. Or, she’s not sure she wants something, anyway. A part of her is almost angry, and that makes her angrier.
Oksana beckons her closer with one finger. Eve, without saying another word to Niko, marches herself right across the room.
“Dance with me, Eve,” Oksana says.
Eve grabs her by the waist. “What are we doing?”
“Dancing, obviously,” Oksana grins. “In front of the King of England, to be precise.”
“I don’t know you,” Eve says. “I don’t know—I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you do not have to. Maybe you should just feel.”
Eve closes her eyes. “I don’t feel anything. Most days, anyway.”
“We are the same,” Oksana whispers. “Is that not enough?”
The two of them sway, hands clasped together and hips flush. Eve can picture the look on Emily Regan’s face and it makes her smile even wider. Niko would be watching, too, stumbling over a reasoning as to why his wife is in the arms of another woman. She hopes he’ll ask her, when they get home. Hopes he’ll raise his voice and make her insides crawl with guilt for what happened in the bathroom.
Oksana’s body is warm. Eve presses closer. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”
“No, Eve,” Oksana replies. “I think it is for the best.”
“And why is that?”
Oksana tilts her head. “Well, you are married. But I meant what I said, about us being the same. I think my monster will only feed yours.”
“What if I want it to?” Eve asks.
“I guess we will never know.”
Eve huffs and opens her eyes, gazing at Oksana. “I think I hate you for all of this.”
Oksana shrugs. “You came over to me, remember?”
“So, you’re really going to let it go?” Eve pushes. “Just disappear into the streets of London, never to be seen again?”
“Paris,” Oksana corrects. “I am going to Paris in the morning. And you will go home, Eve. It will be too hard for me to say no if you don’t.”
“Okay,” Eve relents after a beat, and she knows that she will hate herself for it. “I can forget, too.”
Oksana’s eyes shine under the crystalline chandelier. “Shall we stay for one more dance?”
“Yes,” Eve says, and swallows her disappointment. The hand around her own tightens and she squeezes back. “Right. Are you leading or am I?”