Promised To The Devil On Ice

Chapter Two

Elowen

"Someone slipped this into my hand at Ivo's memorial."

"Elowen, not now..."

"Read it, Mom."

"I don't have time for..."

"Someone thinks Ivo was murdered. Make time."

That gets her. My mother goes still in the middle of the kitchen, a clipboard in one hand, a swatch of pale gold fabric in the other, and for one second I actually think I've broken through.

Then she sets both down, takes the note from me, reads it in about two seconds flat, and hands it right back like it burned her fingers.

"This is somebody's idea of a cruel joke."

"It's not a joke."

"People do horrible things when they're grieving, Elowen. They want someone to blame. It doesn't make it true."

"So you don't even want to consider..."

"There is nothing to consider." Her voice is calm way too calm for my liking. "The police ruled it an accident. I need you to let it go."

"He was my best friend."

"I know that."

"Do you? Because it's been three months and everyone just wants me to move on like he was a ... a stranger, like he didn't matter..."

"Elowen Rose Bellrose."

My full name. She only breaks that out when she's completely out of other tools, and normally it stops me cold, except today I'm too angry to care.

"I need your head in the game," she presses on, before I can say anything else. "Regionals are in three weeks. You're head cheerleader. Coach is already worried you're..."

"Are you serious right now."

"I want you to be safe." Something flickers across her face ... there and gone so fast I almost miss it. Almost. "Today especially."

I stop cold. "Why today especially?"

She doesn't answer right away, and that's when I actually look around the kitchen for the first time since I stormed in. Really look. Extra flowers on the counter. The good china pulled down from the cabinet we only open twice a year. A caterer I don't recognize steaming something in the dining room like this is a normal Tuesday and not the day I buried my best friend.

"Mom. What is all this."

"We have guests coming."

"What guests need a florist, Mom?"

"I need you upstairs, showered, changed, and back down in forty minutes." She's already turning away from me, already back to arranging things on the counter with hands that aren't quite steady. "And I need you on your best behavior. Can you do that for me? Today, of all days?"

"Not until you tell me who's coming."

The doorbell rings.

My mother's whole body goes tight.

"Mom."

"The Sterlings," she says, already walking, already smoothing her blouse, already putting on the face she wears for people whose last names mean something. "Come on. Now. Please, Elowen."

I don't get my forty minutes. I don't even get four.

…

She opens the door and there they are, arranged on our front step like a photograph nobody asked for.

Darius Sterling first ... tall, silver at the temples, handsome in that expensive, unbothered way. Behind him, Nikolai's mother, elegant and untouchable in a coat that costs more than our car.

And behind both of them, hands shoved in his pockets like he didn't just watch a man break apart in a chapel six hours ago ...

Nikolai.

I almost throw up right there in the doorway.

He looks straight at me and smiles. Warm. Easy. The exact smile you'd give an old family friend, the exact smile you'd give an old family friend, which...technically, horrifyingly...is what he is. Our families have been tangled together since before I could walk. Christmas parties. Summer boats. A hundred dinners I don't remember because I was too young to know they mattered.

"Elowen." He says my name like it tastes good. "You look well."

"I looked better four hours ago. At a funeral."

"Elowen." My mother, low, all teeth.

"It's fine," Nikolai says, easy, unbothered, still watching me like I'm the only interesting thing in the room. "She's had a long day."

"You'd know," I mutter.

….

We end up arranged around the good china nobody's actually drinking from. My mother laughs at something Darius says that isn't funny. Nikolai sits across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee, entirely too relaxed for a boy who buried his teammate this morning.

I watch him instead of drinking my tea. I want him uncomfortable. I want someone in this room uncomfortable besides me.

"You're staring," he says, without even looking up.

"I'm memorizing your face. In case I need to describe you to a detective later."

"Elowen." My mother's voice cracks like a whip.

"What? I'm being pleasant." I smile at her, all teeth, the exact smile she gave the door twenty minutes ago. "Isn't that what you asked for?"

Nikolai's mother ... Vivienne, I remember now, from a hundred Christmases I didn't want to be at ... laughs softly into her cup like I've said something charming instead of something loaded. "She has spirit, Rosa. You didn't tell us she had spirit."

"She has something," my mother mutters.

"I have a dead best friend and a room full of people who won't tell me why they're here," I say. "That's what I have."

"We're getting to that," Darius says, unbothered, like I'm a toddler who needs redirecting rather than answered. He sets his cup down with slow, deliberate precision, and something about the care of it makes my stomach drop before he even opens his mouth again. "But first ... Elowen, how are you finding your last year? Cheer, I hear, is going well."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't small-talk me. Not today." My hands curl in my lap. "You didn't bring out the good china for cheer updates."

"She's not wrong," Nikolai says mildly, and it's the first thing he's said in five minutes that isn't aimed directly at unsettling me, which somehow unsettles me more.

Darius almost smiles. "Direct. I appreciate that in a..." his gaze flicks to Nikolai, deliberate, unhurried, "...daughter-in-law."

The word drops into the room like a glass shattering on tile.

"I'm sorry." My voice comes out strange, thin. "What did you just call me?"

"You heard him," Vivienne says gently, not unkindly, like she's breaking news about the weather.

"I heard words. I want someone to actually explain them."

"Our families," Darius continues, like I haven't spoken at all, "have been connected for three generations. Business. Loyalty. Trust, back when trust was worth something in this town. Your grandfather and mine built half of what this university stands on, side by side. It's time that connection became permanent."

"Permanent," I repeat. "That's a very specific word for a business partnership."

"It's not a business partnership."

"Then what is it?"

Nobody answers right away. My mother is very interested in the pattern on the rim of her teacup. Vivienne watches me with an expression I can't place ... pity, maybe, or something closer to recognition, like she's watched this exact scene play out before and knows exactly how it ends.

"Mom." I turn to her fully now, and my voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "Mom. Look at me."

She looks up. There's something in her face ... fear, I think, though I don't understand yet what she'd have to be afraid of, sitting in her own living room with her own good china out ... and it's gone almost as fast as it appeared, folded back under the calm she's spent my whole life perfecting.

"It's already been decided," she says quietly.

"Decided what." My voice shakes. "Say the actual words. I want to hear you say them out loud, not dance around them like everyone else in this room."

Silence.

Then Darius speaks first, and whatever Nikolai was about to say dies behind his teeth.

"A marriage," he says, when no one else will. "Between you and my son. The engagement will be announced by the end of the month."

The room goes silent.

I stare at him. At my mother, who still won't meet my eyes. At Nikolai, who hasn't moved, hasn't blinked, like he's been sitting on this for hours and simply waiting for it to land.

"What?"