That couldn’t have gone worse. Salim half-expected for Nikolai to show up and gloat about what he’d done to his and Ophelia’s budding relationship. Burn it all to the ground. This was what he must have meant.

But even that might have been a reprieve from the tortured state of regret that seized Salim as he watched Ophelia turn her back on him and walk back into the theater.

He was rooted to the spot. He couldn’t go after her, she’d made that clear. But neither could he leave.

There was some part of him vainly hoping that she would realize how much he did truly care, and would forgive him for his deceit. That she just needed a moment to process what he had said, and she would be back once she had.

But, in his heart, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Salim didn’t know how long he stood there for, but he did notice that his hands and feet had begun to feel the cold acutely, dressed as he was in formal wear and not at all equipped for the Russian winter. He noticed the snow. He wasn’t sure if it was just starting, or if it had been going on the whole time.

He thought back to the snow in Madrid. It had been different there. It had been rare and beautiful. Snow in Russia is to be expected, and holds none of the same magic.

After a time, during which Salim stood frozen and freezing, he heard the sound of the door to the alley opening. His heart leapt for a moment, but instead of Ophelia appearing in front of him, it was just one of the administrative personnel that he’d hired for the tour.

“Sir?” the man asked. “We’re about to go on. Did you want to watch?”

Salim considered that for a moment. Maybe it would be better if he left, now Ophelia had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him. The less painful option would be to leave now. He could continue bankrolling the company, but farm out the actual running of it to someone else. He’d been kidding himself to imagine that he could just step in and run things, anyway.

If he did that, if he left now, he wouldn’t have to witness one more time the depth of what he had just lost.

But then, he wouldn’t get to see her dance at least one last time. And he couldn’t live the rest of his life knowing that he’d had that opportunity and hadn’t taken it. He still believed, after all, that bringing Ophelia onto the world stage was the single most worthwhile thing that he had ever done. The least he could do for his broken heart was give himself one last taste of what he had helped bring to others.

He couldn’t believe that he had actually done the thing he had been most afraid he would do. He’d stayed silent to try to avoid upsetting her in such a way that it might affect her dancing, but by staying silent, he’d allowed her to find out in the worst possible way. If there was any way that what was happening between them—what had happened between them—had hurt her career, he had to know. He had to be there for her.

“Thank you, I’ll be in in a moment.”

After the man left, Salim gave himself one more moment to breathe in the cold air of the alley, and steel himself for what he was about to see.

The house lights went down. The stage lights came up. The orchestra played. There was the tower. There was the princess. The poor, abandoned princess. The dying princess. The deceived and self-deceiving princess.

Salim had been wrong. He knew it as soon as Ophelia walked on stage. He’d been mistaken to think that anything he could do would ever keep her from pouring her heart and soul into her dance.

On the contrary, she was even more vibrant and evocative, now, than he had ever seen her. Every movement of her body was filled with more emotional heft than he’d ever seen. It was so intense that Salim felt a tear well up in one eye. He’d seen the show multiple times, now. He’d never seen it quite like this.

He thought he saw her notice him. It was hard to tell—she was practiced at seeming to look at the whole audience and yet not one single member. But he wanted to believe that she knew he was there. He wanted to believe that some of this dance was for him.

The steps were the same. The music, the storyline… it was all just as he’d seen it before, only brought up to a new level. In the brief moments when Ophelia wasn’t dancing and he could look around at the people around and below him in the audience, he could see the awe and admiration in their eyes.

Salim knew that he had lost Ophelia. He knew that he would never truly forgive himself for that. And he knew that he would be playing these past few weeks over in his mind for the rest of his life, thinking about what he should have done differently, and wondering if it would have made a difference.

But he would not—he would never—regret buying the ballet company. He would never regret supporting it wholeheartedly and putting all his backing behind it, to help it be the most successful version of itself that it could be. He would never betray his promise to foster Ophelia’s talent from the sidelines, even if she never agreed to see him again.

All of that was something that he could hold on to. But, as he watched her dance, he also knew that Ophelia wasn’t someone he could let go of. Not so easily. Not yet.