Chapter 34 Eleusínia Mystḗria #2
The butterflies in my stomach were significantly more intense than they had been when I’d been here with Graham. It hit me that I was anxious verging on panicked as I scanned through faces among the dancing witches and mages.
Would he be dancing with other witches all night, if only to keep up appearances?
I remembered Elysia Warrington grinding on his thigh the year before, wearing almost nothing, and a harder pain came to my chest to confuse the butterflies.
I forced myself to stop looking for him among the costumed mages after that, and instead looked for my friends.
I found Miranda a few paces away, talking to Luc and waving her hands in her Kali outfit, complete with elaborate gold bikini top, low-slung skirt, a belt covered in skull designs, and multiple, bright blue arms, which looked so seamless, I couldn’t tell which were the real two out of the six.
Luc appeared to be dressed as Loki, the Norse Trickster God, and wore a helmet with long, curved horns, a silver breastplate, and animal skins over furred boots.
He carried a staff covered in Norse engravings with a curved ax at the end.
I didn’t want to interrupt them, so I stayed where I was, sipping my drink.
I suddenly wasn’t sure I could handle this tonight.
I’d wanted to see Bones, badly, I could admit that much to myself.
But I couldn’t really see him here, could I?
Certainly not the way I wanted. At best, I’d be frustrated by my inability to even talk to him; at worst, I’d get paranoid enough to want to leave.
Now that we’d arrived, I seriously wondered how I could’ve forgotten that, or been so delusional as to come here for him, given everything.
Worse, I was exhausted. More to the point, I wasn’t going to react well if he was in full prick mode with his royals pals, and draped in half-naked witches.
“You look like you’re having an anxiety attack,” a voice observed from my right.
I jumped and turned to find Nyx Minh standing there, dressed as a cat with little bat wings and fangs.
A snake-like tail flicked over the ground from underneath her long skirt.
She wore bright green contacts, nearly lime colored, with vertical pupils, and sipped a straw in a tall, striped, green and black drink that emitted orange smoke.
Her entire face was made up with spells to look like a cat, but Nyx still managed to look like Nyx somehow.
I took a longer drink of the peppermint thing, and gave her an embarrassed smile.
“I’m fine.” I lowered the goblet. “Honestly just wondering why I let Mir talk me into this, when what I really need is about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
Nyx tilted her head, observing me critically.
I liked Nyx, a lot, but I’d noticed she could be disturbingly observant, especially when I didn’t want her to be.
It was easy to overlook when the whole group was together, given how quiet she was, especially compared to Miranda and Draken, but I’d often wondered just how much she noticed, and whether I needed to worry about that.
The look in her eerie, magic-enhanced eyes right now, for example, held a fair bit of skepticism.
“Are you seeing anyone?” she asked.
“Me?” I smiled a nervous, probably twitchy, definitely unconvincing smile. “No, of course not. Not at all. Why would you ask that?”
“Is there someone you want to be seeing?”
I flushed. “No.”
“It just seems like you’re looking for someone,” Nyx observed.
I shook my head, making the tendrils of my hair sway from where Miranda had arranged them artistically around my face.
“You’re probably just seeing me space out,” I lied, wondering if it sounded as unconvincing to her as it did to me.
“I’m not sure if what I’m doing even qualifies as people-watching. ”
Nyx sucked on the straw in her striped drink, still watching my face. She blinked over the green contact lenses, and I realized she was still wearing her glasses, even as a cat.
“Huh,” is all she said.
Miranda barreled into me then, and grabbed my arm, laughing, as she began dragging me out to the dance floor. “C’mon,” she said, ignoring my attempts to plant my feet in the flat-bottomed, slippery-soled sandals. “We’re dancing!”
“No, Mir,” I immediately protested. “No. Seriously. I’m way too tired.”
“No whining, Leda. You look hot. I look hot. We’re dancing. Drake and Jolie and even Luc are out there already. You’re coming with us.”
I was still struggling half-heartedly, glancing back at the goblet I’d left behind on the small table. “Gods, you are freakishly strong,” I complained. “I came, didn’t I? Against my better judgment. Isn’t that enough?”
She ignored me, still dragging us both insistently out to the center of the crowd, where the rest of our friends were dancing as a group, most of them still holding drinks.
I ended up by Draken somehow, who dropped his glass on a passing tray, then caught hold of my hand. “Hey,” he said. “Let’s dance for real. Everyone else has a drink.”
I felt myself balk, on more than one level, but my brain reacted slower, and I couldn’t think of a good excuse. “I’m really not up for dancing,” I said, when he wrapped an arm around my nearly-bare waist and tugged me into a scrum of couples.
It shouldn’t have been weird.
Miranda had just started dancing with Darragh, who’d dressed as one of the Egyptian Pharaohs.
Jolie and Luc joined them as I watched, and even Nyx was dancing with Dervish, who’d come as a drakai, one of those fist-sized, messenger creatures, and magicked himself so that his body appeared to be on fire.
I still felt weird, verging on paranoid, as Draken brought me closer, then spun with me as the tempo of the thumping music changed.
I held him lightly, keeping as much distance between us as I could, but there were so many people out there now, I got squished into him every other turn.
Draken leaned down to my ear then, and I realized he was more than a little ahead of me with the drinking part of the evening.
“Gods, you look fucking gorgeous, Leda,” he said.
I flushed hotter, and tried to laugh, pushing him back with a hand. “I’m pretty sure that’s the day-drinking talking, Drake.”
His hands wrapped around my waist as he looked at me seriously.
“It’s not,” he said. “You know it’s not, Leda, I––”
Someone shoulder-checked him before he could finish, hard enough, they nearly knocked him down in the middle of the dance floor.
I managed to step back before I lost my balance, but when I glanced up, gold eyes met mine from beneath a black, iron-looking crown with spikes that rose a foot over his head.
He’d magicked his face to redden his complexion, but hadn’t changed his features much apart from that, so I had absolutely no doubt who I was looking at.
His hair, now long, scraggly, and black, hung past his shoulders. He wore black armor under a heavy, hooded cloak, bone-colored rings and a bone belt, and gripped a tall staff with an uneven, two-pronged fork in one hand.
“Fitting fucking costume,” Draken snapped, glaring at him. “At least you’re dressed as the inner you.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes off Bones’s face.
Gold and green flames swam through his irises as he took in my costume in a lingering stare.
Draken seemed to notice both things, because he tensed when he saw Bones looking at me, then flinched when Bones turned a harder glare on him.
I had to hope he’d think the irises were part of Bones’s costume.
“Fuck off,” Draken said. “Go be evil somewhere else.”
“Actually, I was wondering if I should be absconding with your date,” Bones drawled, towering over him as his eyes flashed hotter. He leaned on the staff, and looked at me. “If we’re going all-in on costumes, I believe the witch you’re currently pawing at is my wife.”
My breathing stopped.
Bones’s eyes held mine a beat longer, and I didn’t miss the meaning there.
“That’s my ring on her finger, isn’t it?” Bones asked coldly.
He looked back at Draken, and my friend’s expression flinched, right before it twisted in anger. I saw the confusion on his face, though, mixed with something like unease, maybe even fear at whatever he saw in Bones.
I didn’t see that relax until Bones looked away.
“Complete nutter,” Draken snapped, when Bones resumed walking through the crowd. He raised his voice over the music when Bones didn’t turn. “You should tell daddy to invest in a mind doctor, Bones. You’re absolutely fucking mental!”
I only stared after him, trying to decide what to do.
“No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “Absolutely not. I’m going, Mir. I’ve already stayed far longer than I wanted to.”
Miranda made her pouty face, but I was completely unmoved.
I was exhausted.
I was done with the party, and strongly wishing I hadn’t come. All I wanted now was to go back to my room and collapse on my bed with my cat.
Moreover, Bones had pulled one of his vanishing acts, and I could feel that working on my paranoia, too, especially after what he’d pulled on the dance floor.
My imagination seemed to function even more efficiently when I was tired, and I was just paranoid enough to be thinking up all manner of possibilities as to where he might have gone.
To make matters worse, Draken kept getting drunker as the night progressed, and I could tell from a few of the looks he aimed my way, he hadn’t entirely given up on trying to talk to me.
He seemed determined, honestly, in a way that made me distinctly nervous.
It’s possible the drinking was even some form of liquid courage.
Either way, I absolutely did not want to have that conversation tonight, even apart from Bones.
I needed to get out of there. I was done.
I clasped two of Mir’s blue-painted hands between mine, not knowing or caring if they were her real ones. “I’m going,” I told her firmly. “You stay. Obviously. Tell the others I stayed as long as I could… and have fun, you maniac.”
Her pouty lip jutted more, but that time, she nodded.
When I released her hands, she kissed me on the cheek, then flounced away, her extra arms writhing sensually around her.
I could only exhale in relief. Before anyone else could notice my escape and try to stop me, I walked determinedly for the hallway that led to the main lobby.
I was already dreading going back out in the snow, which I could see through the long windows of Worm Hall.
It was now coming down in thick sheets. Over a foot already covered the ground.
I’d just have to grit my teeth and do it.
On the other side was a hot shower, fuzzy socks, a book, a fireplace, and my cat.
I might sleep all day tomorrow.
I’d nearly made it to the lobby, when strong arms wrapped around me, dragging me into the shadows. I yelped, fighting to turn it into more until a hand clamped over my mouth, and my back met the stone.
I found myself staring up at gold eyes. The irises rippled with fire, even as he brought them lower to stare directly into mine.
“Hello, Mrs. Hades,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “Leaving so soon? And without giving your husband a goodbye kiss?”