Dance, Sugarplum: A Dark Nutcracker Christmas Extravaganza by Aurelia Knight & Amy Oliveira

Author:Aurelia Knight & Amy Oliveira [Knight, Aurelia & Oliveira, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

MIKHAIL

ACT 2

My studio surrounds me, and though it’s not dusty from being abandoned, it feels like a tomb to the old Mikhail. Everything is glossed and perfect, just like it was the last day I closed the door myself.

Part of me wants to go and find my housekeeper to scream some more about the importance of keeping certain rooms locked, but that wouldn’t help anyone in this situation, especially given the positive reputation I’ve managed to maintain with my staff.

I look at everything, images of an old life flashing before my eyes. My jaw aches with an intensity of pain that seems unfair after all this time. We’re made to believe modern medicine can fix anything, set right any broken bone, but even with all my money, that’s just not true. There is no true escape from the pain.

I’m not even a man as I stand here. I’m a patchwork of my past. I spend my life ignoring what this room meant for me. I no longer compose at my grandfather’s piano, for fuck’s sake.

A noise of rage and pain echoes from the back of my throat, and my fist snaps out, colliding with one of the walls of glass. Pain shoots up my knuckles, taking the worst of the sting out of my jaw, and a spiderweb fracture forms across the mirror. God-fucking-dammit.

The accident took my entire sense of self, a life without constant pain. The young man who danced and composed in this studio may as well have died in that car because he isn’t me. It’s hard to imagine I was once an eighteen-year-old with dreams that ended at once because of that car crash. The memories were forgotten, abandoned in a fog of my new reality. It feels like pain, and a poorly healed jaw have been my entire life.

This room is proof that Mikhail existed, and she had no business being there. A part of me sees how perfect they would have been for each other—Lyla and that Mikhail I no longer am. The sting in my knuckles worsens, and I look down to find them bruised, bleeding, and decorated with small bits of glass. The old Mikhail certainly wouldn’t have done that.

Of course Lyla would find a way to dance even away from the main stage, but I didn’t expect her to open every damn door in the place just to piss me off and then wind up here. Since I’ve brought her home, I’ve been checking in on her through the cameras, and this is the first time I’ve had any issue with what I’ve found.

Maybe I get her frustration to some extent. I’m not sure I’d respond well to the same treatment.

I stare at the floor beneath me, unable to face myself in the now-broken mirror. I’m a fool and too old for this behavior. I know better. My good hand works to pick the larger pieces of glass out of the cuts as I swallow and bury down the feelings coming to the surface.

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