22. Silva

Silva

"Darling, now don't forget, Moralei was able to get you right back on the committee, no second thought at all. So you'll have a space at the brunch this weekend, right there at the front table."

Silva smiled serenely. "Perfect. That sounds wonderful. I'll be sure to thank her. They did such a nice job with the decorations for this, don't you think?"

The spring fashion show was one of the most attended events of the year, and all around them buzzed the high-pitched chatter of Elvish women, heads leaning in, dissecting the room around them, the decor, the refreshments, wardrobe choices of the women who passed them. Silva was right there, beside her mother and grandmother at one of the pricey donor tables. They had waffled between sitting at a table or sitting in one of the folding chairs in front of the runway, eventually deciding the table would be more comfortable for her grandmother.

"Darling, are you sure you don't want to have your own seat up front?"

She had taken her grandmother's hand, hooking their arms as they entered the venue that afternoon. "Of course not. Our seats are perfect. And this way, we get to talk about the dresses."

Daytime Silva was an obedient doll, always doing exactly what was expected of her. Pretty and perfect, well-mannered and well-bred, without a single thought in her head beyond the fundraiser and what handsome elf might engage her in conversation at the reception afterward.

If she had thought her absence from Cevanor? had made a splash, Silva might have been disappointed upon her inglorious return. A ripple, was more like it. Silent, like drowning.

Her mother had clearly burnt the candle at both ends each and every week her daughter had been absent, poisoning the well with better gossip, juicier stories, ruinous details about other families. Silva considered that he had once told her that what he collected were secrets. Her mother, she realized, was the same. Bits of gossip, rumors and half-verified truths alike, tasty morsels she kept tucked away until it was necessary to throw them to the crowd for feeding. Silva's return to the fold was seamless and uneventful, as if she'd never left in the first place.

It was a different story with girls her own age, of course. Young elves in their twenties and younger, university-aged, impressionable younger girls. They watched her walk through the room with widened eyes. She had left. Escaped. Broken free of this perfect crystal fishbowl and swam out into the great blue yonder, beyond the horizon. They couldn't possibly know the scars she bore beneath her neatly tailored dresses.

They didn't know how far she'd swum, of course. They'd heard rumors, perhaps had seen with their own eyes on her social media, since scrubbed clean. But they couldn't possibly know how far she'd gone, how close she'd been to getting away for good, the way she'd kissed that golden horizon, going so far beyond the protective reach of their community that she was still plagued with nightmares of what awaited on the other side of the water.

I suspect you will be excellent sport, sweetling.

Still, even though she knew there were some whispers here and there, she'd come back without so much as a bobble, her life righted on its prescribed course. Her family was thrilled. Her friends were happy to see her again. She had the attention of a handsome, successful elf, whom she was forced to admit seemed entirely decent.

None of them knew that inside she was screaming.

"Ladies, I hope you don't mind. I took the liberty of getting you some refreshment. I hope I guessed well enough on everyone's preferences."

Her grandmother beamed up, positively giddy that her Silva was back, and not only that, but she had such a fine elf at her side.

Silva smiled, knowing full well that there wasn't a single person in attendance who would look at her and realize that she felt dead inside. She had become a very talented hustler in the past year.

"Tannar, that was so thoughtful," her grandmother simpered.

"Sit," she encouraged, her mouth still curved, her eyes twinkling, a perfect mask. A perfect mask for a perfect elf, just what Daytime Silva needed to be. "They're going to be starting soon."

It had all started the day she returned to the office, that winter. The setting seemed appropriate to her. She remembered another afternoon, walking those same halls with a bounce in her step, feeling purposeful for the first time in her life as she'd marched back to her desk, ending one relationship and beginning another. That had been a different Silva, a Silva who was as lost to her as he was.

Her return had been far less tenacious.

Silva entered the building that day, glancing around her, scanning her key card, hurrying down the corridor to slip into the elevator at the last moment, as invisible as a little mouse. The security guard at the door never looked up from his crossword, the co-workers in the elevator never noticing her in time to stop the door without her lunging through. It was then that she realized that this absence, too, had barely been a ripple. None of her chattering coworkers in the elevator paused their conversations to acknowledge her, if they even saw her at all. Her return to her desk was hardly a splash in her department, the team leader doling out assignments for the week, barely raising their eyebrows to her. Why would they have noticed you were gone? They never even noticed you in the first place. Did you matter so little to anyone here?

She already knew the answer. Silva of the Daytime was a mouse, and no one ever saw her. No one ever had. Not really. Only him. The truth of the matter was, she was forced to acknowledge, with the exception of her family, Silva would have been able to disappear from her own life as easily and seamlessly as Tate had managed.

Just thinking his name was like a knife slipped between her ribs. She would hunch against the pain, sucking in a shuddering breath, trying to breathe around it.

She went through that first day feeling so insignificant and invisible that the thought of entering the break room had filled her with gut churning anxiety, and she couldn't afford more gastrointestinal distress at that point, escaping out-of-doors instead.

"Silva?"

She had been sitting outside in the cold, staring out at nothing as she sipped at her ginger lemon tea, avoiding the noise and conversation of the break room. The landscape around the office complex's campus was a frozen stasis — Drab and grey. There was no snow on the ground, no ice, but everything was frozen solid just the same, rather like her heart.

"May I join you?"

Tannar didn't wait to sit, but he was good enough to take his seat on the opposite side of the table, opposite side and opposite end, giving her all the distance she required.

"I'm glad to see you. I . . . I heard you went through kind of a hard breakup. I just wanted to say . . . I'm sorry. I know how that goes. My ex and I —" he broke off for a moment, and her head had lifted, meeting his eyes for the first time since he joined her. "We were together all through university, we lived together for a year or two after. I thought that was it, you know? A done deal, my whole life mapped out." He'd chuckled, a self-deprecating tone. "Just when you think you have it all figured out, right? I don't even know how we fell apart, not really. Just that one day we were fine . . . and then the next day we weren't. So when I say I'm sorry, I really do mean it. I know it's the worst feeling in the world to have all your expectations slip through your fingers. I'm really glad you're back."

A break-up. That was the story she'd chosen, not that she'd had much of a choice. A monstrous lie, one that made her want to scream, to shred something, to spill blood . . . but her choices were limited and her options few.

The more time that passes, the harder it's going to be to forgive you. The harder for your sort to forget. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're the only one with impossible daydreams, Silva.

She saw Tannar again at the club, that same week. She was there having dinner with her family in the dining room, a weekly tradition they'd kept her entire life. Silva felt a bittersweet prickle, coming back to sit at their table in her usual seat beside her grandmother, ordering the same dish she always had. If any of the families at the surrounding tables had taken note of her absence over the previous six months, they were good enough not to mention it.

She listened to the same conversations that had been hashed and rehashed for years, the same gossip, the same vacuous chatter about upcoming fundraisers and banquets and club meetings. The croquet pitch was having new shrubbery put in, wasn't that nice? The treasury had allocated funds for an upgrade to the steam room in the pool house. How exciting. Did she happen to see that Aelia Daemmerly had announced her engagement? What wonderful news.

Silva felt a bit like a marionette. She had been absent from her theater for a while and had needed to re-tie her strings, but she knew her role, had played the part long enough that she was able to slip back into the scene without pausing, no extra rehearsals required. You'll go on to do all the things a good little elf is meant to.

This place was never going to feel like home again, she realized. Not in the way that it had. She had been comfortable here once, completely in her element in this environment, with her family and the elves she had called her friends, comfortably nestled in the empty frivolity and ease of her scripted existence. This had been home, and now it never would be again.

She loved her family, could not envision the future without them, but without him there . . . Silva felt as if a part of her heart had been cleaved away, torn by his teeth, and the wound gaped, bleeding freely, would never stop bleeding. She had swum away from this fishbowl and kissed the horizon, had glimpsed what horrors lay beyond the veil, had loved and had been loved in return. She could slip back into this play, she could be Silva of the Daytime once more, but she would never again have the comfort of home. One more thing that had been robbed from her.

Tannar had been having drinks at the bar with several men his age, each of them uniform in their neatness — collared shirts beneath lightweight silk sweaters, or else crisp button downs and chinos with sensible, sedate shoes. There were no Norfolk jackets and scuffed leather boots to be found.

"There's that nice young man from your office, dear." Her grandmother's voice had been hushed, as if she'd not already clocked Tannar at the bar, as if she'd not developed the skill to scan the room and take the measure of those populating it immediately.

"It would only be polite to go say hello." Her mother's voice was pointed, and Silva had wondered if any of them had any idea of what it was they were asking of her.

It was then that she had the realization.

This place, this community, it was never going to feel like home again, but that did not mean it was not a shelter. That did not mean she would be smart in giving up her position. After all, maintaining the upper hand in a long con was the only way to walk away ahead. She'd perched on his lap at that poker speakeasy, holding her fanned cards as he whispered to her, had listened to him convince ogres twice his size that he barely knew how to hold a cue. Watch the others. Watch their behaviors, look for their tells. The things they don't say are far more important than the things they do. Don't eat their food, don't accept gifts, be careful where you wander. But above all, know when to cut your losses and walk away. Without that skill, a simple hustle could be ruinous.

She had escaped this place, for a time, but they — Tannar and her family, the elves around them — had not. They had no idea what lessons she had learned and what new skills she possessed.

She could be who they wanted her to be, Silva of the Daytime, reestablish her security in their community, reassert her place in it and the privilege that came with it, for both of them, and when the time came — which it undoubtedly would, she thought, sipping her ginger tea — she would know when to cut her losses and walk away. She would step through that clover and find him. The perfect hustle.

And now she was halfway there.

"You look beautiful, by the way." Tannar's voice was low, but it was not a whisper.

Silva smiled, refocusing on the spring fundraiser happening around her. It wouldn't do to be caught being displeasing to others in any way. She knew what Tannar was seeing as he bent his head to her. Her makeup was perfect — the extra color she'd used in her contour hid the sickly tinge to her skin, a result of the nausea that had persisted for weeks on end, that she was certain she would simply never be rid of. Her hair, handing in a smooth wave, shone like a burnished penny. She was fashionably but demurely dressed, looking like the perfect little Elvish debutante. Silva of the Daytime.

She slipped her fingers through his, leaning in to kiss his smooth, ivory cheek. Wagers against the house, double or nothing. She had much to lose, but much more to gain, and she could not afford to be cut off from this world. Not now. Not when she had so much riding on her security. But she could do this.

As sure a bet as drinking a blue-eyed goblin under the table, with just as high a reward.