Page 64 of Dance of Ruin

Everything aches: hips, thighs, calves. Even my jaw.

Gee, I wonder why…

I stare up at the ceiling for a long time, trying to convince myself to move. The sunlight seeping through the blinds cuts across the wall in sharp lines, carving the morning into slices I still can’t gather together.

Yesterday’s rehearsal feels like a blur—it’s a miracle I got through it at all. It felt like it happened to someone else.

But it was me. It wasmybody that stumbled.Mybody that shook on stage.Mymind that kept flashing back to Nico’s hand in my hair, his voice in my ear, his cold whiskey glass on my back, making me fumble and falter.

Kuzmina pulled me aside again at the end of it.

She didn’t scold me this time. Didn’t threaten to replace me. She just…lookedat me. Like she saw through every layer of me in a single glance.

"I cast you as the Swan Queen because you are very talented, even though you like to doubt yourself,” she said quietly. “And because I see both Odette and Odile in you. Play the Black Swan, but don’t let the role consume you."

I nodded.

But I didn’t feel like Odette.

I felt I was already halfway to becoming Odile.

I managed to hold it together until the end of rehearsal. Then I stayed late. I ran through every sequence again and again. Until my muscles screamed and my brain had no more room for his voice. His growl. The flash of his eyes.

After I dragged myself home, I could barely climb the stairs to my apartment.

Then I had a text from Nico reminding me to be at his office promptly at eight again tomorrow and not to “bother with panties this time”.

I could barely feel the tingle that text would normally give me, and instead replied that I wouldn’t be coming tomorrow, since I’d stayed late after rehearsal.

Not because I was scared.

Not because I didn’t want to.

But because I need a fucking day to recover.

I roll over reach for my phone, the screen lighting up in my hand, and I see his reply, waiting for me like a figure lurking behind a doorway.

Nico

Be at my office in 30. Or I come find you and make sure your ass remembers whose it is.

My core twists.

My skin flushes.

I swipe to unlock the screen, heart pounding in my throat.

Another message comes in as I reread the first one, and I groan. I have read receipts turned on.

Nico

Don’t make me come over there and fuck your mouth again, ballerina. I won’t be so gentle this time.

My breath hitches.

There wasn’t anything remotely gentle about the last time.

…Like you minded?

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