Selene Voss's World
The smell hit her first, not the fire. Ash.
And then the silence that crackles after a scream.
Selene Voss walked barefoot across the marble floors of her Parisian workshop.
The midnight wind blew through the broken glass in her showroom.
A thick, bitter fog hung on the ceiling where her life's work had been hanging bottles of rare perfume that looked like floating gods in the light just a few minutes before.
Now they were in pieces, bleeding oils onto the white floor like secrets that had been spilled.
Her chest got tight.
Not because of the smoke or the fire that had spread across her display wall. No. This... This was a message.
Someone had set fire to her scent empire... and they wanted her to know it.
She walked deeper inside, her silk robe dragging behind her like a whisper. She passed the burned wall where her last formula, Formula V, the one she had been making for him, had been kept.
Vale Dorian. The billionaire who couldn't be touched had asked for the impossible: a scent that makes you feel like you're falling in love.
"Selene, what have you done?"
She quickly turned. There was a figure in the doorway behind the smoke. Man. Very tall. Known.
"You have two seconds to get out," she said in a cold, broken voice. "Before I choose this being you."
He moved closer. Dorian. In a black coat over charcoal that had been pressed.
There wasn't a single hair out of place, and he couldn't feel any of the chaos behind him on his skin. His eyes moved over the wreckage and then stopped on her. Be calm. Figured out.
He asked softly, "You think I did this?" "Your money, not your hands."
"I don't burn my investments." Even when they tell me lies, Selene's breath caught. There it was the edge.
"Do you want to play that card now?" she asked. Her voice dropped to a whisper, as deadly as any fire.
"After all the things you asked me to do and all the things you saw me do? You can't say I lied.
He said, "You told me a lie." Even though his voice was low, it hurt her ribs. "Put it in a bottle." Put a brand on it, and sold it like it was a way to get out of trouble. Selene, you're not a perfumer. You are a fucking magician.
She took a step back and fell. Not because of the insult.
From the truth that lies behind it. He was right. The formula worked. It had made people fall... not in love, but in a crazy way.
A client had tried to kill themselves. Another had broken up a marriage.
And underneath it all, her formula. Her hands. Her shame.
"You knew what this was," she said softly.
"Did I?" Dorian moved forward again. The smoke licked the air between them, soft and smooth.
"Because I remember you saying that smell is memory. That you could put a moment in a bottle. A feeling. He stopped just a few inches away, his voice dark silk.
"What moment were you thinking of, Selene? When you came up with that formula?
" What were you thinking about? She looked up at him, trying not to let the truth slip from her shaking mouth.
You. I took advantage of you. And even worse, I didn't mean to fall. But it was too late. She could see it in his eyes. He already knew.
The air between them changed. Not with anger. Not even betrayal. Something worse. Being close. That kind that breaks bones.
"Why are you really here?" she asked in a whisper. He didn't say anything, Instead, he pulled a vial from his coat which was her missing prototype.
She stopped moving. He leaned in close, and his mouth brushed against her ear.
"You're not the only one who knows how to use scent to change how someone feels.
" He walked out just like that, leaving the vial on her burned table and the truth behind him burning in the air. It was never about love.
There was a war. And she had just been disarmed. The silence he left behind was so loud. Selene looked at the vial.
The glass shone like a knife in the dim light, and the amber liquid inside was still warm, as if it remembered how hot his hands were.
Formula V. The first one. The one she thought had been taken. Her mind was racing. He had it all along? She picked it up with shaking fingers. It felt wrong that it was so heavy. Heavier than it should be.
Not familiar. No, it wasn't violated. Did he open it? Changed it? Did he try it?
Selene stepped back from the broken table, her heart racing. Only two people knew the formula: her and the assistant who had helped put it together while under NDA.
Eliora...
Her breath got stuck in her throat.
The blaze, equation, watching, and seduction it wasn't just a grudge. Dorian had been working on this. He hadn't come to fall in love.
He was there to bury her. And she let him in. I made the smell from him. I pulled his voice into the notes, his skin into the bass, and his anger into the burn. A horrible thought crept up her spine: What if the smell wasn't love?
What if it was copying him? His manipulation. His seduction. His power. A weapon that looks like desire. Her heart rate went up.
She stumbled over to her laptop, pushed a burned notebook out of the way, and opened her encrypted formula folder.
Everything seemed fine, but she knew better. She got into the lab server, which stores all security logs every time you log in. And there it was...a break-in that lets people access things from far away.
Two days ago. An IP address that pointed to Vale Industries.
"No." Selene's blood turned cold. She clicked on the logs for the open file. He hadn't just looked. He had downloaded every formula she had ever made, even the ones made public.
The dangerous ones... the ones that aren't balanced. The smell of sadness, of giving up, and of anger.
She stood still, her heart breaking in her chest. Then her phone rang it was an unknown number. One message came in
You made a lot of money by lying. Now you can smell the truth. A loud hiss filled the room before she could do anything. She turned around.
The bottle on the table had opened. Broken. Opened. Like they were on a timer. A slow, invisible mist rose from the top. It smelt sweet, sultry, floral, and wrong.
Her knees gave out. No. Not this smell. This wasn't Formula V. It was one she put in the ground a year ago. Prototype 09. The one that brings back memories that feel real.
A smell that makes the mind work against itself. The walls around her moved. She couldn't breathe.
The fire wasn't gone; it was still there, with flickering light and pulsing blood. It was back. Fire. Shouts.
Lucien Vale's eyes were wide open as he fell to the floor. Dead. Selene yelled. But there was no sound.
The sound of a match hitting something. Somewhere behind her. A low, dark voice whispered from the shadows of her mind as it fell apart:
"This time, Selene, the guilt won't go away.
The start of a mental breakdown. Prototype scent releases, a perfume that makes you hallucinate and is linked to trauma.
A memory or flashback of Lucien's death comes back. Someone is messing with her mind and her past.