Page 55 of Lord of Dance and Desire

I stopped. I was sotunnelvisioned. The signs had wagged in my face like a Rottweiler’s tail, and if I’d spent one moment just thinking about it rather than shoving everything to the side because I didn’t want to face it or myself, I could have prevented this. Maybe?

I could have warned Andrei because I would have figured out Dartanyon had been spreading the drug around the Arts building. Had used it against me, and at least one other dancer.

“I’m not your caged bird,” I said, staring at him as my anger built and swept aside common sense. “I’m not your toy ballerina that will pirouette in your box when you wind me up. I’veneverlet myself be a thing to be used, and I won’t start now.”

This was the lesson I’d needed to learn.

If they take away your legs, then cut off theirs.

Dartanyon wouldn’t let me go? That was his choice.

But I’d make him pay the price of my capture. I’d show him why “be careful what you wish for” was one of the more ominous adages in human culture.

It hit me—the reason I’d gone along with Andrei’s controlling behavior. Not from fear of who and what he was, but because for the first time in my life, a man gave me as much as he demanded, if not more. I didn’t feel like a thing. Smothered, at times, definitely. To the point where I wanted to jump up and down on the kitchen table shrieking, then leap onto Andrei’s back and ride him like a bucking bronco.

But not athing. Not just a vessel for his convenience and pleasure.

Dartanyon stared at me a split second, then smiled and lifted his hands to the level of his eyes. Light shimmered at his fingertips, thin tendrils that snapped forward, streaming through the glass, and hit me with delicate force.

“You will dance for me. You’ve forgotten that you were first mine.”

I cried out as the tendrils wrapped around my wrists, my ankles. Cried out, and began to infiltrate the tiny tears in the glass with my own essence. Began to slowly, insidiously, wear him down.

“You’ve forgotten what I promised,” he said. “That you wouldn't escape me in life, in death, that every life your soul reentered, I would be there. Have I ever failed my promise, my love?”

I wanted to scream and slap the glass with my hands. I kept my voice level. “I am not your love. I amHasannah.”

“You don't know what you are.”

I knew. Thisdemoness,descendent of a distant Fae bloodline. I knew what I was. Good and bad. “I know I’m Andrei’s.”

Anger suffused his face. “You never belonged to that squalling infant Heir.”

He jerked his hands, and my limbs began to move in a parody, the dance steps emerging into a piece I recognized. Gisele.

It wasn't me dancing, it was him. He knew every step by heart.

And I danced it, at his whim.

Again, and again, and again, and I last count of the hours he made me dance. And as I danced, I wrapped delicate ribbons around his soul.

Love me.

Touch me.

You cannot claim me in a cage.

When he cut the strings, his rage spent, every muscle in my body was weaker than a baby bird.

I collapsed to the floor, curling in on myself, weeping. I didn’t have the energy for sobs, or even for pride.

“You will learn,” Dartanyon said. “You always have. And then we'll be together again. But this time, we will be born on an equal plane. You always wanted equality with me, youarguedfor it. Equality and independence. And you were right.” He sighed. “My Anthoni. My mortal bonded with an immortal’s soul. Does that please you? That I admit you were right and I was wrong? That your gambit bore fruit?”

“Gambit?”

“To this day, the Courts wonder who took you from me. They assume you were a victim of our politics.” He gave me a smile so filled with bitter, ironic sorrow that I flinched. “They never stopped to think that it was by your own hand. Anexcellentplay, my love. You made your point.”

I lifted my head. “I’m not Anthoni. I would never do that to myself.”

---