Chapter 27 #2
We streamed like a flood through the gates and into the hall, lured by the scent of wine and cake, and by the sparkle of a thousand gleaming pearls, like stars adrift in the songful air.
Almira, truly in the prime of her age as she swept in a dress like riverwaves through the courtyard, looked rather pleased.
“Come, girl,” she said, a twinkle of mischief in her eye. “The king is waiting, and the wind tells me he is running out of patience.”
Adrik leaned against the wooden throne, no longer cast into a corner but perched on a pedestal at the heart of the hall. He had his bare arms crossed at the chest and he watched the gate with the sharp, eager glare of a hawk.
For the first time since he’d swept into the chamber with the snow, I truly mistook him for a faerie—leather-woven straps curled like snakes around his arms, his shirt was woven from midnight silk, gilded vines coiled around his chest, his shoulders, his throat.
Upon his locks sat a crown; a thing of strangeness and beauty, like strings of liquid gold twining into something not quite of this world.
Just like him.
He tensed.
His gaze snapped to mine. The hall melted at the edges, narrowing at the centre to a sliver of green and gold. I had the strange impression I’d angered him, so dark and fierce was his stare.
I noticed, faintly, that the air had become stone-quiet—there was no song, no chatter, scarce a breath.
The crowd had retreated, leaving me alone and exposed at the heart of the hall.
There was only the crisp click of shoes against marble as Adrik stalked its length.
As he neared, I was a wild thing backed into a corner—I craved it more than I feared it.
I spotted, when he halted two paces from me, the crown of daisies in his hands. A twinkle danced in his eye and a smile at the corner of his lips.
“Evana,” he said silkenly, voice like a secret caress. “Queen of the Wild.”
I beheld him breathlessly, this strange king, as he placed the flowers on my brow. A murmur in the crowd. The crown became strangely stiff—not unpleasant but unexpected.
Adrik laughed softly. “The wild, it seems, approves.”
He bowed. The music returned, as lively and suddenly as if it had never ceased, and with it came laughter and revel. A tide of dancers swept me off before I’d drawn breath.
Though I danced for many hours, I never felt the strain—there was no place for such tedious things in my mirth-filled heart.
I danced without pause, but when I thought back on it in the quieter hours of the night, I knew it was not the truth.
There were moments when a trickle of heat slid over my skin and I knew, before I looked, that I’d find a pair of sharp, keen eyes sealed to me like a brand.
Then, the room faded once more to a narrow sliver and I found myself snared to the spot until the next passing dancer whirled me forth.
Hours into the feast I caught a glimpse of myself in a moonlit mirror. I thought that I looked rather like a faerie myself: bewitching and graceful. The stalks and leaves of my crown had turned into threads of pure gold.
I discovered that I felt a little chill; the sort of hollow chill in the gaps between my ribs that only ever came in Adrik’s absence.
He’d been dancing too. I knew because once or twice our paths had crossed and our fingers brushed.
Now he was not among the dancers, and not at the table of sugar-frosted cakes either.
I caught a glimpse of Lorell’s pelt hat and hurried to ask if he’d talked to Adrik, but he was dancing with Sai, wearing an achingly tender smile, and I had not the heart to disturb them.
I found Zora and Almira seated in one of the leaf-cushioned alcoves, lips red with wine.
They directed me to the far balcony and snickered like fiends as I hurried off.
Adrik stood as far removed from dance and company as the hall allowed. He leaned against the curved balustrade and watched with well-practiced indifference as couples drifted past. I noticed only because we had spent so many evenings together that a slight weariness clouded his eyes.
“Are you bored of the revelry?” I asked, smiling as I stepped through the arch. I welcomed the cool air, the crisp scent of snow and midnight.
He laughed quietly. “Quite the opposite. I find myself a little overwhelmed by it.”
“Ah,” I said teasingly, still foolish with mirth. “I thought one should not brood when there is dance to be had.”
I'd expected he would be amused, but his eyes darkened and he said, voice low with lament, “What good is dance if I must share you with the whole town?” He must have heard my thin gasp of surprise, for he drew a breath and mellowed a little.
“Forgive me, Ana. I feel listless and selfish tonight, and I ache for a quiet moment with you. I did not wish to steal your joy.”
“A quiet moment with you, and my joy will be complete.”
I did not know what to call it; the softness that settled like morning mist over his features and veiled his glittering eyes.
A word came to mind and took root there—as foolish hopes tended to do—and I knew that it would rob me of many hours of sleep.
Adoration. As I stood before him amid moonlit marble, I knew only that whatever feeling had struck him echoed within me too, and that the sight of it nearly brought me to my knees.
He took my hands in his and lowered his head.
“I hoped for nothing else tonight save this: That you might grant me a dance.”
“You did not ask.”
“I did not dare.”
I searched him, but there was not a trace of a lie or mischief on his face.
How could he fear such a thing when my answer stood written in every shivering breath and wanting glance?
I rested my cheek against his chest. There was a beat of silence, then a thunderous flutter.
I took a moment to gather my thoughts, struck by his heat and the tickle of breath on my neck.
“Ask me now.”
Adrik gave a breathy laugh. “Will you dance with me, Ana?”
I only nodded. He entwined our fingers, drawing his knuckles gently over the length of my spine.
I could not say whether we danced a swift or a slow dance, whether there was music, whether it lasted minutes or hours, and whether—in the time that we spent entangled in the starlit night—I lifted my gaze from him at all.
I was trapped in a dream that I knew would end like all those that had slipped from me since our kiss: Alone and aching in a cold bed.
Adrik stoked that ache with every pass of his leg between mine as he twirled us over the marble floors; with every brush of his thumb against my bare back, with every low sigh that slipped from his lips. What was holding him back?
“Ana,” he whispered, low and rough. “Will you tell me what has you so flustered or are you simply glad to torment me?” I was biting my lip, I realized, and staring with flushed cheeks at him.
I shook my head, afraid my voice might betray my longing.
“How curious,” Adrik whispered with wicked amusement, “that you should be so rattled from a mere dance when you’ve painted a nude portrait of me. "
I sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“Mhm, sprawled out in the snow, moonlight in my hair. I noticed you paid great attention to detail.”
The drawing of the fox. It felt like another lifetime that I’d watched him sleep in the winter night. I gave him my haughtiest smile. “Had I known it was you, I would have given the beast a much bigger head.”
He laughed brightly. “Do you have a particular interest in foxes, Ana?”
I smiled, rising to my toes to whisper in his ear, “They seem to have a particular interest in me.”
“Perhaps both can be true.”
Irritated by his teasing, I knew no better way to silence him than by grazing my lips over the side of his throat, drawing a groan from him.
He spun us with one quick stride further out onto the balcony, trapping me between his heaving chest and the chill of the marble balustrade.
I stood with my back pressed to him, shivering as I stared into the night.
“Ah,” he said with that wicked, low lilt. “You are testing me tonight.”
“Perhaps,” I said breathlessly. I felt sharply alive, as I had when I was little and chasing the moonlight to the creek. “What does it take to make you crack, Adrik?”
His hand slipped from my waist to my hip.
Heat bloomed through the thin silk of the dress.
I hissed with delight when his thumb found the slit in my skirt.
“I cracked on another moonlit night on another balcony, Ana. I’ve worn the heat of that innocent kiss on my skin ever since.
Did you not know?” He traced a line of fire over my upper thigh.
His other hand rested lightly at the base of my throat.
“Did you not know that I’ve been desperately waiting since? ”
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for you to crack, too.” The moon burned brightly in the skies as his hand climbed higher, higher.
He whispered, “I am cursed with the wildness of a faerie and the heart of a human. I am twice weak to temptation and desire, and I am twice inclined to burn the world for those I hold dear. I am twice prone to fall into a love that will consume me.” He whirled me around to look with aching, pleading eyes at me.
“Have mercy on me, Ana. I have fought long and hard, but I am falling. If you must be my ruin, then please, ruin me whole.”
I could not say what prompted my gaze to slip towards the forest. Perhaps the breeze carried a faint hint of something odd, or perhaps I caught a strange movement behind the trees, or perhaps the roots of my magic, living and breathing beneath the earth, shivered for a moment in terror.
“Adrik,” I gasped, but my gaze was already slipping between the two elms.
I had not felt the tickle of grass beneath my feet in five long years. A sliver of cold remained in the air—a reminder that winter lingered behind a guise of leaves and wildflowers—but I did not mind as I danced amid trees pink with dawn.
The strange dog who had brought me here on gnarled legs had long vanished in the thicket. I’d seen it often this past moon: At the edge of the forest and sometimes in mirrors if I looked at them wrong. Tonight, fearless and unguarded from the berry-wine, I’d followed it into the woods.
It was going to the strange lands behind the pines. To the twisted trees in the swamp where no one ever went.
The forest had grown still. I’d long left the murmur of the river behind me, and the chirp of the birds had faded into stiff silence. There was no sound save shrill laughter and squelching steps in the mud.
I ran faster and faster and faster, but my legs refused to give chase and soon I could not move them at all, stuck in the mud. There was not a breeze. Just thick, dense air that had not stirred in an age, and the stench of something rotten.
The trees were strange, rising like bearded fingers from murky waters, gnarled and ghastly. I grasped a twisted root to wrench my foot from knee-deep mud. There was still laughter—my own, I realized. Laughter and though I was stuck in sludge, though I was not moving at all…
The sound of squelching steps.
The stench of rot, so thick I choked.
I yanked at my leg, bare save for torn scraps of sun-gold silk.
The steps ceased. I looked up.
“Hello, little bird,” said Malek.