Chapter 40 Dance
Chapter forty
Dance
“I’m guessing to use this magic, one does not need to have been born before time existed?” she asks with scorn, letting me turn her in a tight circle.
I remember our little trade back in the mortal world, when I promised to give her the secret of ruling time if she sucked my cock.
I possessed more than one secret, which she now knows, yet I gave her the one that was completely useless.
That was cruel of me, I guess, but then, she did try to stab me with a knife. My deception was her punishment.
“You caught me, love. See? The more time we spend together, the more truth you learn. Maybe I won’t have a reason to lie to you one day, because you’ll have discovered it all.”
“You can’t lie now.” Even as she says it, she lets go of my hand and grips the pendant with my blood hanging between her breasts. I lean in and whisper in her ear.
“No, I can’t lie. You are the most beautiful woman in all worlds. I adore you.”
She huffs impatiently and folds her arms on her chest. “Show me.”
I step away and dance the first few steps, a wide sweep of one leg, arching one arm over my head, a small leap to the side, feet tangling in a quick rhythm with a fast snapping of my heels, with my arms held gracefully at my sides, one a fraction higher than the other.
When I stop, Jaga shakes her head with frustration.
“That’s complicated.”
“These are only the opening steps,” I explain. “You see, the dance is not a routine you just learn. That would be so much easier. The first part, which can take from a few minutes up to an hour or more, is designed to help you hear time and step into it.”
Her mouth is pursed, eyes discouraged, as she repeats flatly. “Hear time. Are you sure you’re not lying?”
I chuckle. “Think about it. Time has a cadence and a rhythm, just like music. It is music of a sort, a song that’s very subtle and present always, so you forget you hear it, because you don’t know a life without it.
I heard it first when I stopped time one day and realized there was a certain…
quiet. It intrigued me, and I played with the concept until I heard it all the time.
Seconds and minutes, sun-ups and sun-downs, the melody of the moon traversing the sky. It’s all music.”
She hangs her head with a weary sigh. “This sounds like something that will take me centuries to master. Weles, we don’t have centuries. I can’t do it.”
“You already did it, love,” I say with a grin, because she keeps letting me call her that, and I take a depraved pleasure from it. Especially since we both know it’s completely true.
“Let me show you the first sequence, the one that helps you feel the music. It’s long and complicated, and then you repeat it until you find your place in time.
The next part is harder. You’ll have to improvise and dance your way to the right moment in the past, then move through both time and space to that moment.
We’ll practice. I’m an excellent teacher and you’re a good student, so it won’t be too hard. ”
Her eyes glitter with a challenge as she shrugs off her coat, approaching me.
“I’d say you’re a good teacher and I’m an excellent student. All right. Show me the first sequence.”
I repeat the first ten steps, and Jaga does her best to emulate me.
I find great pleasure in correcting her stance, first with words, then with my hands.
I let them stray, brushing her breast a few times, palming her ass when I correct the tilt of her pelvis, until she breathes from exertion, angry, frustrated, and riled up.
By the time she masters a small portion of the dance, we’re both hot and aroused, and I pull her closer, brushing her lips with mine. We’ve earned a reward.
Jaga bites my lip and turns away, creating a portal. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” she says with her back turned to me, her fists clenched at her sides. “I’ll cure your incurable disease in the meantime.”
The next day, I convince her to let me slip into her mind so I can correct her movements more precisely. The first time I try to move her leg a little to the side, she freaks out and pushes me out of her head, panting from fear as she grabs a knife and presses it to my throat.
“What was that?” she hisses, furious and afraid. “You never said you could do that through the bond!”
“I wanted to help you,” I say, remembering not to say ‘just’, because that lie wouldn’t go through my cursed throat. “The sooner you learn the dance, the faster we’ll have the knife. I won’t do it again if you hate it so much.”
“I hate it,” she hisses. “Stay out of my head!”
“I promise,” I say with contrition that’s utterly false even though my words are true. The trick to giving honest promises is to mean them, and I do, utterly.
Weeks pass. Jaga works herself to the bone, spending long hours dancing with me as she slowly masters the opening sequence, and then the rest of her days in the torture chamber.
Since Rada and Wiosna aren’t allowed in my dancing space, they often sit on a bench outside the torture chamber’s door and remind Jaga she must eat or wash.
My witch has gained a mad, sleepless look. She’s just like she was before, after I saved her from her grave, yet this time, it’s not apathy that deprives her of sleep and sustenance. Jaga races with time, with herself, and with her heart that beats to the rhythm of my seduction.
It’s not like before, when I drowned her in love in the rebel base.
I fought my feelings back then, trying to master her while remaining the master of myself, and of course, I failed.
This time, I fully accept my love and adoration.
I am lost and fallen, obsessed with her, and so my intentions are born out of love and yearning.
I want my beloved to love me back. And because I am a possessive, jealous god, I want her to be completely mine in every way possible.
“That was absolutely perfect,” I praise her when she dances the complete sequence without errors for the first time.
Jaga wipes sweat off her forehead, breathing hard from effort. “I didn’t feel anything. I can’t hear time, or whatever you call it.”
“No, you wouldn’t, not the first time. But you will. You’ve done it already, remember?”
She shakes her head morosely, and I put my arm around her, congratulating myself when she doesn’t shake it off. She’s been much more accepting of my worshipful words and casual touches ever since we started spending so much time together.
“I have an idea. Why don’t we try obliterating some souls, hm? That should lift your mood.”
She huffs without humor. “Or make me even more frustrated if I fail at that, too.”
“You won’t fail. You’ll be a natural, I can tell.”
“A natural at killing souls? My, you know how to pay a compliment.”
“I just meant you know what a soul is, how it feels, where it sits inside a person,” I say gently, taking her hand.
“You’ll have no trouble finding them, and you have enough power to destroy the built-in protections.
You are a natural—because you’ve brought your soul so far past the limits. I’m proud of you.”
She smiles, squeezing my hand, then frowns lightly and lets go. Ah, yes. Here she is, Jaga reminding herself not to fall for me again, because I’ll hurt her so bad. I pretend not to mind as I take us both to the dungeon level where I keep the Perun-marked abominations.
“Here. Let’s try with this one first.”
I open the cell of a man whose wife Nyja killed a few days ago, trying to find a way to remove her mark. So far, she’s had no success, and her victims keep dying.
Jaga braces her shoulders when I drag the man out, bound and gagged with my shadows. I stand right behind her, close enough to feel the tension gripping her nape.
“It would be easier if I knew he was a despicable man,” she says through clenched teeth. “But he’s just a man like many. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Of course he does,” I murmur in her ear, putting my forearm around her collarbones and pulling her to me until she relaxes against my chest. “You are not delivering a punishment for a crime, love. You’re delivering consequences.
Did he go to Perun and let himself get marked without a shred of hesitation? ”
“Yes,” Jaga hisses. “But…”
“No but. Stupid choices lead to suffering. He deserves all the consequences after making a stupid decision, but also, what you’re giving him is mercy. His soul will not suffer once you do it.”
Jaga laughs under her breath, bitter and dark, slithering out of my grip. “You are right. Stupid choices lead to suffering. What now?”
I step closer, just enough to hover at the boundary between comfortable and too close, and lower my voice so she’s forced to stay near.
“I want you to look at him with your magical eye and find his soul. It’s usually nestled in a person’s heart, sometimes in their throat or head, especially behind their eyes.
It’s tiny, far smaller and quieter than the ancestral soul.
I see it as something akin to a pebble, but alive and pulsing with a faint, hidden light. ”
She takes a deep breath, shakes out her hands, and closes her green eye. It doesn’t take her more than a few seconds.
“I see it. In his heart. It’s… A greenish sort of brown.”
“Very good. Now try to feel it with your magic. It will try to repel you, but ignore it and keep looking at the protections. Enough brute force will burn through them, but you can be more efficient if you find a weak spot on the protective shell.”
Jaga points her open palm at the man’s chest, and he crumples to the floor, dead. I blink. Yes, his soul is gone, a burning hole where his heart used to be.
“I was never good at being efficient,” Jaga says with a shrug. “All right, then. It was easier than I expected. You were right. Destroying souls is my special talent.”
Her mouth twists in self-loathing as she turns to me, and I shake my head.
“You are powerful, and great power can be destructive as well as creative. Neither is bad or good, they are simply two ways to express your magic. In healing, sometimes you have to destroy a part for the whole to get better. This is similar. We’re cutting out the illness so humanity can thrive.
You did a good thing even if it seemed terrible.
Just like cutting off a limb, is it not? ”
“Oh, that silver tongue,” she says with weary fondness. “I’d better go and do some real healing, although at this point, I’d rather throw out all my subjects and start anew. I fear they’ve deteriorated beyond the point of no return.”
“I’ll get you new ones, my love.”
But she shakes her head. “You know, I recently realized we might actually survive, and after that, I’ll have to live with myself somehow. Stop trying to corrupt me. If I am to be bad, I’ll do it on my own terms, without your help.”
She leaves, and I clench my fists, giving in to my fear just for a moment, letting it spread in my chest and stomach, wrapping its vines around my throat and lungs. I’m doing everything I can, and she will still leave me in the end, and I’ll never have her soul.
After a few minutes of despair, I bury that fear deep down and strengthen my resolve. I’ll do anything it takes. Day after day, I’ll chip away at her shields until she lets me in.
Jaga hears time for the first time when Nawie disappears under thick, white piles of snow. She spends the day playing outside with Dar, who is her favorite person. The boy develops fast for his age, his potent magic making him coordinated and verbally communicative far earlier than his peers.
He can fly decently and spit tiny balls of fire, and Jaga chases him through the snow, then throws snowballs for him to melt with his dragon breath.
Rada watches it with a bright smile, wrapped in three coats and a blanket.
Chors comes, too, and they both stand side by side in silence, watching my fiery poppy girl fly hoops around the beautiful dragon child.
“Jaga, burn!” Dar shouts with a wicked laugh before spitting fire right at her.
She pulls up an effortless shield and tells him off so harshly, tears gather in his eyes.
Jaga lets him climb into her lap and explains in a low, serious voice that if he ever does the same thing to his mother, she will be hurt.
“But I know,” Dar sobs, rubbing his face against her chest. “Mama can be hurt. But Jaga is strong.”
She loses a long, weary breath and kisses the top of his head. Playtime is over, and she gives the dragon boy back to his mother, then nods at me.
“Let’s go, then,” she says grumpily. “Such a waste of time.”
And yet, that’s the day she does it. Jaga completes two flawless sequences, then freezes suddenly with her arms poised like wings readied for a flight, and stops breathing.
I don’t dare move, watching her intently.
She takes a careful, soft step back, then another to the side, breathing faster and faster, before she loses her footing and has to catch her balance.
But I already know. She turns to me with awe shining in her eyes, and we stare at each other. She is terrified and shocked, and I am so proud and in love, I can barely stand it.
“I heard it,” she whispers at last, her eyes still wide with disbelief. “I… We can do this. I can do this.”
I lose the fight with myself and go to her, taking her face in my chilled palms. I wait a moment, giving her an out, but she is so stunned, she doesn’t react, so I kiss her with all my yearning and fear.
She did it. We are one step closer to getting the knife, defeating Perun, and her leaving me forever. I almost beg her not to go, or maybe to leave the knife in the past so she will stay by my side forever, because that’s all I care about. But I can’t.
The words would be a lie, and they won’t go through my throat.