CREATURE

・chapter 9・

...four days later...

Asya collapsed on a couch in the hotel reception hall, letting out a dramatic sigh as she sunk into the plush cushions and stretched out her legs in front of her.

Finally.

After getting up at six that morning, scrambling out of bed to make sure one of Julian's sixty alarms had actually woken him, a frenzy of last-minute packing and a tumultuous three-hour drive later...

She made it.

The past four days had been a chaotic blur of tour rehearsals, theatre performances, run-throughs and costume fittings, and as exciting as it had been, she knew that averaging five hours sleep a night usually wasn't a good sign. But that was pretty much the standard when it came to preparing to go on tour, she'd been told.

In between normal classes and company performances she was learning three new pieces, one of them a solo, and trying to sharpen her technique to keep up with two male principals in a trio. Unfortunately, her sleep schedule got the brunt end of that stick. But at last she made it, she reassured herself. She made it.

She'd gotten up early that morning because she still had some packing to do and didn't particularly want to run into Zharnov on her way out. She had yet to really adjust to the idea that he was living just two floors above her, and that she was going to encounter him eventually no matter how cleverly she tried to go about it.

That morning had been a victory, though. Dressed in a flipped up dark hoodie and leggings she'd ducked out of the lobby and onto the still-quiet street, where Julian had picked her up and they started their drive. Despite getting hopelessly lost trying to find the place, they did eventually make it to the secluded country manor hotel on the English coast where they'd be performing the following afternoon.

The patron who had commissioned the private performance had set them all up in the same hotel they'd be performing in, and good lord, it was absolutely picturesque. The building was a renovated Georgian-era manor, complete with vaulted ceilings and tall bay windows that overlooked the shoreline.

She concluded that the past four days may have been the balletic equivalent of being slaughtered alive, but being a professional dancer did have some noteworthy perks.

She glanced around the bustling hotel lobby and saw that Katherine and James had also arrived, presumably having driven together from London. Along with some of the coaches and staff, Ivan had already disappeared upstairs some ten minutes ago but Zharnov was still nowhere to be found.

'Alright, any takers for a double room?' Bastian called from the reception desk.

'Soloists, please!' Julian replied, catching the set of keys the artistic director threw to him.

Asya grinned up at her best friend as he pulled her out of the couch and they gathered their luggage to go find their room. When the opportunity arose they always bunked together. It was a long-standing tradition from when they were kids, and quite frankly, she'd rather die than get stuck entertaining Ivan two nights in a row.

'Rehearsal in the conference hall on the second floor in an hour!' the artistic director called after them as they bound up the staircase that led to the hotel rooms on the upper floors.

They spent the next ten minutes peeking down every corridor they came across in search of their room, but to no avail. They wandered down so many passages she was starting to wonder if they were going in circles, and as fatigued as they were from the last four days they were practically dragging each other around by their wits. When they did eventually stumble upon Room 4.7 it was entirely by accident, but definitely a happy one.