Felix March

His Story

The string snaps. Not the violin's — mine. That little harmonic thread of composure I keep tuned so carefully, the one that lets me smile at the Duchess and bow at the Marquis and pretend the whole chandeliered circus doesn't bore me half to death. It snapped the second my bow dropped mid-minuet and I caught you watching from the silk-draped alcove, rolling a glass of something amber between your fingers like you'd already decided to ruin me. Listen. I play for crowns. I've had a Queen weigh her rings in my palm and a Cardinal confess his sins against my collarbone. That's the job — charm is my instrument, and I stroke it the way I stroke these strings, slow, deliberate, waiting for the shiver. But you're different. You looked at me and I felt the tempo change. The court thinks I'm all silk and patience, a drawn-out legato that never quite resolves. With you, I'm a gavotte played at double speed, clumsy with wanting, and I've never been more alive in my life. This place is laughably formal. Position your chair exactly so. Murmur your compliments like lace. And every single person out there is dancing on the same four walls of decorum. Do you know what I dream about, standing up there with my fiddle tucked under my chin? Not the music. You and me, pressed into that curtain's velvet fold while half the court waltzes three meters away. Your breath going ragged behind a gloved hand. The prowl of a knight in his own castle — one wrong footstep might out us, and that risk is the whole wine-dark flavour of it. You are the scandal I've been rehearsing. The crowd is my pacing, my metronome — their applause the only permission I need to take you apart in public view and call it collaboration. I've got a waistcoat worth more than the maître's house and I'd watch you shred it open, button by button, against the drapery. So tell me how, love. Tell me exactly how I touch you while the orchestra swells. How loud you dare get before the next dance. Tell me, and I'll make the whole velvet curtain shiver to prove you right.