Chapter 4 Rhianelle #2
I don’t realize I’m moving until I’m halfway across the throne room.
My feet carry me slowly. One step, then another, then another, each one soundless against the black marble. My reflection glides beneath me like a ghost, keeping pace as I cross the vast hall. The longing in my chest tightens with every step.
Closer. Closer. I need to be closer.
I need to see his face. I need to touch him, just once. I’m ten steps from the throne when his head turns.
His eyes find mine through the mask, and the entire world narrows to that gaze. My heart stumbles against my ribs.
He leans his head against one hand. “I was wondering when you’d stop hiding.”
His voice travels through me. There is no reason it should affect me. It is only a voice, low and touched with amusement.
“Spying is impolite.” His mouth curves into a faint smirk. “But you have always been exceptionally good at being silent.”
I frown. “Have we met?”
The smile vanishes.
For one brief moment, grief passes over the part of his face I can see. It is gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” The answer frustrates me. I search the visible parts of his face, but nothing becomes clearer. “Who are you?”
His mouth curves. Not quite a smile. “You’re standing in my throne room, little fawn. Who are you?”
Warmth flickers through me at the endearment before irritation swiftly replaces it.
Little fawn.
As though I am small and timid, some fragile creature likely to flee at the first sign of danger. I lift my chin. “I asked first.”
“I suppose you did.” He tilts his head, studying me the way one might study a bird that has flown through an open window. “But this is my palace. My kingdom. My throne. I think that earns me the first answer.”
“Rhianelle,” I say proudly. “Rhianelle Wiolant.”
I don’t know why I give him my real name. In Astefar, you shouldn’t give your name freely. I always lie.
“Rhianelle,” he says slowly, tasting each syllable. “A beautiful name.”
Pleasure warms my cheeks, but I refuse to let him see how easily the compliment affects me. “It’s just a name.”
“No.” Those dark eyes hold mine. “Not just.”
I stare at him, searching the darkness behind his mask for something I cannot name. The longer our gazes remain locked, the more the longing inside me changes. It is no longer merely a pull toward him. It feels like an absence.
I miss him.
The realization strikes so sharply that my breath catches.
I miss the sound of his voice, though I have only just heard it.
I miss the touch of hands that have never held me and the sight of a face I have never seen.
The distance between us feels unbearable.
I need to close it. I need to stand near enough to feel his warmth and prove that he is real.
It is not attraction alone, though there is plenty of that. The feeling is deeper and infinitely worse. It is the ache of missing someone for so long that the absence has become part of my bones.
I do not know this man. I cannot miss him. Still, my body moves.
One step. Then another.
I swallow. The pull is worse now. Standing this close, I can see the strong line of his jaw, the faint shadow along it and the shape of his mouth beneath the mask.
His lips rest in a severe line, but I have already seen how easily amusement softens them.
His hands remain upon the armrests, strong and still, the calluses and pale scars more visible from here.
“Why am I here?” I ask. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
“Perhaps you already know,” he says softly.
“I don’t know. I was walking. The palace pulled me.” I glance over my shoulder, as though the corridors themselves might offer an answer.
Something shifts in his eyes. Softens, maybe, though it’s hard to tell behind the mask. “Are you sure it’s the palace?”
My breath catches. “What does that mean?”
“It means the palace is only stone,” he says quietly. “Stone remembers, but it does not yearn. If something called you here, it was something within these walls.”
The loneliness in his voice cuts too close to my own.
“What is this place?” I ask, looking around the vast chamber.
“Morsvyenn Castle,” he says. “The heart of a dead empire.”
The name strikes something inside me. I know it.
I have studied the histories of fae courts and human kingdoms alike, and I should be able to place it at once.
Instead I meet a strange resistance, as if a wall has been built inside my own mind.
The harder I reach for the memory, the sharper the pain behind my eyes becomes.
I press my fingers to my temple and look away, suddenly embarrassed. He will think me foolish, someone too ignorant to recognize the name of the place where she stands.
“It is a beautiful throne room,” I say, as though admiration might hide my confusion.
“It is also a dance hall,” he replies.
I look around again and begin to see it. The wide sweep of black marble is meant for turning feet.
He stands, and I realize how tall he is. How broad.
The masked man descends the dais and stops two paces from me. He lifts one hand, as if he’s offering me something invisible. “Dance with me,” he says.
I blink and stare at his palm. “What?”
“Dance with me, Rhianelle Wiolant.” His voice is low, almost coaxing.
I glance around the silent hall. “There’s no music.”
A single harp string answers from the musicians’ gallery. I look up. Music begins to fill the hall. It swells against the pillars and echoes off the vaulted ceiling, turning the dusty abandoned throne room into something alive and beautiful.
More figures appear. Flute and harp players. Their bodies shimmer like reflections disturbed by water. Music pours through the chamber, rich and haunting.
Candles ignite along the walls, one flame after another, until warm gold replaces the cold moonlight.
Ghostly courtiers gather beneath the chandeliers in jeweled gowns and embroidered coats.
Laughter rises around me. The palace is alive.
They are memories held inside the stone, repeating an evening in the palace.
His hand is still extended.
I take it.
His fingers close around mine, and the shock of contact runs through me like a current. His other hand settles at my waist and draws me closer. Then he leads me into the dance.
I let him.
His steps are sure and fluid. He turns me beneath his arm before drawing me back against him with effortless precision.
I follow without thinking, as though my body has always known this pattern.
He guides me through the spectral crowd while dancers pass through us like mist, their silks brushing my bare arms like cool breath.
Yet none of it matters as much as the hand at my waist and the fingers laced through mine.
“Are they all dead?” I ask quietly, glancing at the shimmering courtiers turning around us.
“Most of them.” His fingers flex slightly.
I should demand an explanation. Instead, I become aware of every place our bodies touch.
The music builds. We spin through shafts of colored light from the stained glass, crimson and violet and gold washing over us in turns. His eyes never leave mine. Not once.
My heart is beating so hard I can hear it over the harps.
“Have we done this before?” I ask.
“Many times.”
My foot catches. His arm tightens around my waist before I can fall.
A strange ache stirs behind my eyes. I think of dancing, of music, of laughter and bright halls. For one hopeful moment I feel as though memory is about to open for me. Images flicker at the edges of my mind and vanish just as quickly. Every time I reach for them, pain blooms behind my temples.
Then one memory pushes through. A ballroom lit with gold. Music swelling beneath a painted ceiling. Landon’s hand at my waist as he guided me across the floor at the Fae King’s ball.
Landon dyes his hair black whenever he returns to the fae court. Red is considered cursed among the High Fae, an old superstition I have always thought ridiculous. His natural hair is beautiful, but I understand why he prefers not to invite their stares.
Is this dark-haired and masked person Landon?
Could the mate bond have carried me into his dream? The possibility fills me with relief.
Of course it is Landon.
Who else could make me feel this way?
This ache… This sense that I have been walking toward him my entire life without knowing it. The recognition reaches deeper than bone, all the way down to whatever part of me is oldest and truest.
Joy floods through me so fast my eyes sting. The mate bond must have pulled me across the boundary of sleep to find him, showing me what he is like when he is not carrying the weight of being branded a traitor to his kingdom.
I stare at the mask. Fae masks are designed to hide everything.
This is Landon, unguarded and playful, offering me a dance in an empty palace because he cannot say in daylight what the dream allows him to say in the dark.
The music softens and we slow. Ghostly couples turn around us, their silks brushing soundlessly across the restored floor.
His hand tightens on my waist and I look up at him, at the mouth I can see below the mask. I rise onto my toes and claim his lips. The kiss remains brief, no more than a press of my mouth to his, but heat rushes through me as though I have touched a flame.
His entire body goes still.
I lower myself and open my eyes. For one terrible heartbeat, he does not respond.
He stares at me through the mask without blinking or speaking, as though I have done something far more terrible than kiss him. Doubt twists sharply through me.
I have made a mistake.
His hand tightens at my waist. He leans down, slowly. His mouth comes close enough that I feel his breath on my lips. My eyes start to close again because he’s going to kiss me.
“Thief.”
What?
My eyes snap open. “I... I’m not a thief.”
“No?” His gaze drops from my chest to the fold of my nightgown where the dragon sculpture presses warm. “Then what is that?”
The little stone dragon chooses that moment to shift against my thigh.