Chapter Fifty-Seven #2
“Don’t take our generosity for granted,” Feyre warned Eris quietly.
Eris stilled, but nodded. He extended the box back to Rhys. “I’ll leave it in your keeping while I dance, then.” He added with what Cassian could have sworn was sincerity, “Thank you.”
Feyre nodded as Rhys took the box and set it beside his throne.
“Use it well.” She smiled softly at Eris.
“Ordinarily I would ask you to dance, but my condition has left me unwell enough that I worry about what so much spinning would do to my stomach.” It was the truth.
Feyre had bolted from dinner three nights ago to find the nearest toilet.
Now she made a show of looking between her two sisters.
Elain gave a passable impression of appearing interested.
Nesta just looked bored. Like they hadn’t just given away the dagger she’d Made.
Perhaps it was because Nesta’s eyes had drifted toward the dancing, shimmering throng. As if she couldn’t help herself when the music swelled. She seemed to be half-listening. Maybe music meant more to her than the dagger—more than magic and power.
Feyre noted the direction of Nesta’s stare. “My oldest sister shall take my place.”
Nesta barely glanced to Eris, who pulled his assessing gaze from Elain to stare at the eldest Archeron sister with a mix of wariness and intent that set Cassian’s jaw grinding.
Or it would have been grinding, if he hadn’t mastered himself in time to keep his face blank as Nesta began walking toward Eris.
Eris offered an arm, and Nesta took it, her face neutral, her chin high, each step gliding. They halted at the edge of the dance floor, pulling apart to face each other.
Others watched from the sidelines as the dance finished and the introductory strains of the next began, a harp strumming high and sweet. Eris extended a hand, a half smile on his mouth.
As if those harp strings wrapped around Nesta’s arm, she raised it, and placed her hand in his precisely as the last, swift pluck of the harp sounded.
Percussion and horns blasted; low stringed instruments started a rushing stroke of music.
A summons to the dance in a countdown to movement.
Cassian reminded himself to breathe as Eris slid his broad hand over Nesta’s waist, tucking her in close.
She lifted her chin, looking up into his face as a deep-bellied drum thumped.
And as the violins began their sweeping song, a beckoning back-and-forth, Nesta moved as if her very breath were timed to the music. Eris went with her, and it was clear that he knew the dance’s nuances and exact notes, but Nesta …
She gathered her skirts in her other hand, and as Eris led her into the waltz’s opening movements, her body went loose and taut in so many different places Cassian didn’t know where to look: she was bent and shaped and directed by the sound.
Even Eris’s eyes widened at it—the sheer skill and grace, each movement of her body precisely tuned to each note and flutter of music, from her fingertips to the extension of her neck as she turned, the arch of her back into a held note.
Cassian dared a glance at Feyre and Rhys and found even their normally composed faces had gone a bit slack.
By the time Nesta and Eris finished their first rotation through the dance floor, Cassian had the growing feeling that Elain had rather undersold her sister’s abilities.
The music burned through Nesta.
Had there ever been such a perfect, half-wild sound in the world?
Mor’s memories on the Veritas were nothing compared to this, hearing it performed live, dancing through it.
It flowed and swam around her, filling her blood, and if she could have done so, she would have melted into the melody, become the rolling drums, the soaring violins, the clashing cymbals with the counter-beat, the horns and reeds with their high-arcing song.
There wasn’t enough space inside her for the sound, for all it made her feel—not enough space in her mind, her heart, her body; and all she could do to honor it, worship it, was dance.
Eris, to his credit, kept up.
She held his eyes throughout each step, let him feel her supple body, how pliant it was as she arched into a cluster of notes. His hand tightened on her, fingers digging into the groove of her spine, and she let a small smile rise to her red-painted lips.
She had never worn such a color on her mouth. It looked like sin personified. But Mor had done it, along with the swoop of liquid kohl over her upper eyelids. And when Nesta had looked in the mirror at last, she hadn’t seen herself staring back.
She’d seen a Queen of the Night. As merciless and cold and beautiful as the god Lanthys had wanted to make her. Death’s Consort.
Death herself.
Eris released her waist to spin her, and it was no effort to time her rotation to the flutter of notes, her gaze locking back to his exactly as the music returned to the melody.
Flame simmered in his eyes, and he spun her again—not a prescribed move in the dance, but she followed through, snapping her head around to meet his gaze once more, her skirts twirling.
His lips curled with approval, his test passed.
Nesta smirked back at him, letting her eyes glitter. Make him crawl, Mor had said. And she would.
But first she would dance.
Cassian knew the waltz. Had watched and danced it for centuries.
Knew its last half minute was a swift frenzy of notes and rising, grand sound.
Knew most dancers would keep waltzing through it, but the brave ones, the skilled ones would do the twelve spins, the female blindly turning with one arm above her head, rotated again and again and again by her partner as they moved across the dance floor.
To spin was to risk looking the fool at best, to eat marble at worst.
Nesta went for it.
And Eris went with her, eyes blazing with feral delight.
The music stomped into its crashing finale, drums striking, violins whirring, and the entire room straightened, eyes upon Nesta.
Upon Nesta, this once-human female who had conquered death, who now glowed as if she had devoured the moon, too.
Between one beat and the next, Eris lifted Nesta’s arm above her head and whipped her around with such force her heels rose off the ground. She’d barely finished the rotation when he spun her again, her head turning with such precision it took Cassian’s breath away.
And her feet …
One spin after another after another, moving across the now-empty dance floor like a night storm, Nesta’s slipper-clad feet danced so fast they were a near blur.
He knew that Eris turned her arm, but her feet held her, propelled them.
It was she who led this dance. On the seventh spin, she twirled so swiftly she rose fully onto her toes.
On the ninth spin, Eris released her fingers. And Nesta, arm still stretched above her head, rotated thrice more. Each one of the sapphires atop her tiara glimmered as if lit with an inner fire. Someone gasped nearby. It might have been Feyre.
And as Nesta spun solo—on the toes of one perfect foot—she smiled. Not a courtier’s slick smile, not a coy one, but one of pure, wild joy, brought by the music and the dance and her wholehearted yield to it.
It was like seeing someone being born. Like seeing someone come alive.
By the time Nesta finished the last rotation, that absurd defiance of basic laws of movement and space, Eris had her hand again, spinning her three more times, his red hair glinting like fire as if in echo to the unchecked, dark joy bursting from her.
Nesta’s mother had wanted a prince for her. Cassian now thought she’d undervalued her daughter. Only a king or an emperor would do for someone with that level of skill.
She was seducing Eris within an inch of his life. The murmuring of the Hewn City confirmed that Cassian wasn’t the only one noting it.
Eris’s eyes gleamed with wanton desire as he drank in Nesta’s smile, the glow about her. He knew what Nesta might become with a little ambition. The right guidance.
If he learned that the Dread Trove answered to her, that she’d Made his new dagger …
It was a mistake, to bring her here. To dangle her before Eris, the world.
Emerging from her cocoon of grief and rage, this new Nesta might very well send entire courts to their knees. Kingdoms.
The music rose and rose and rose, faster and faster and faster, and as its last few notes sounded, Eris again released her. Nesta spun solo once more, three more precise, perfect rotations as Eris dropped to a knee before her and held up a hand.
The final note blasted and held, and Nesta halted with preternatural ease, taking Eris’s hand in the same movement that her back arched and she flung up her other arm, the portrait of triumph.
The next dance began, and Nesta did not hesitate when Eris led her into it. It was a lighter, easier dance than the first, whose music had been a song in her blood.
Her partner might be a monster, but he knew how to dance.
Had known how her body screamed to do those extra, solo turns, and let her go free not once but twice, and even then it had not been enough.
If she hadn’t been wearing the heavy dress, she might have begged the orchestra to play the song again so she could just execute spin after spin after spin by herself, knowing when to throw in doubles and triples by instinct and ear alone.
She was drunk on the music. But the second dance required no wild spinning or excess of emotion. As if the conductor of the orchestra hidden in this room wanted her to have a breather. Or at least talk to her partner.
Eris’s amber eyes studied hers. “Trust Rhysand to keep you hidden away.”
Right. She was to flatter him, keep him on their side. “I just saw you the other week.”
Eris chuckled. “And as riveting as it was to see you send Tamlin scrambling off with his tail between his legs, I didn’t see this side of you. The time since the war has changed you.”