Page 69 of A Baron of Bonds
We laughed in the shining sun as the music stopped, and the crowd clapped. The musician bowed low and nodded, thanking those around her before picking up her bow once more, stepping on a raised stone at the fountain’s base, and beginning something new.
Karus pulled me forward, refusing to let me stall any longer.
The sound of the strings being pulled tightly started the next round of sprays across the water, and Karus began the movement to a dance I did not know the name of, let alone the steps.
She led the way as she showed me how to hold her hand and place my other around her waist, her own clasped in mine. She gripped my shoulder as she guided us around the marble tiles.
Other couples joined us, young and old. Even a father and his daughter stepped into the paved courtyard as he twirled her around to the time of the music that he seemed to know just as well as his child’s laughter. The sound lilted through the square and everything was perfect.
Everything was beautiful and right, and all I knew was Karus in those moments of joy, both of us stumbling a bit over our dance not yet perfected, yet perfect in that moment.
I pulled her closer, not caring what was traditional, not caring what was proper or common. She laughed in my ear as I took the lead and led her further away from the crowd.
I lifted her hand and twirled her around and around, her burgundy cloak and coper skirts flying in time with the music as she tried to keep up with her own feet.
We flew to the edge of the other end of the fountain where fewer people gathered and no one danced. Her laughter hit me hard and where it did best, right in my chest like a sharp pang of longing, sadness, and fear of what I could lose once more.
But I remembered what she said, and she was right. I was not ever going to heal this way if I did not stop these spiraling thoughts—if I did not stop these moments of remembrance of what little joy life held without her.
Instead, I chose euphoria in that moment.
I chose to love her in that space of time, dancing around a fountain to violin music. Dancing around her laughter and perfect beauty spilling green from her fingers as she held ontomine. The sway of her skirts were like the sway of our love, flowing through the world as a beautiful and mesmerizing thing to behold.
Her grace in her feet was impressive, considering how often she stumbled into doorframes or tended to miss a bottom stair. I loved seeing her like this.
I twirled her once more, readying myself to catch her if she flew too far, but she let go of my hand to continue spinning, her arms out wide, welcoming in the joy and the bliss of the moments we shared together.
She continued her trek, spinning too far and too fast, and I swiftly moved in, following her glide across the square just out of reach of the fountain.
She tumbled into a human statue, clasping onto its outstretched hand before falling into laughter, her chest heaving on the bronze frame.
I caught up to her and leaned in, laughing myself and asking, “Are you alright, love?”
“Yes! I’m alright. I didn’t mean to spin that far before this good man caught me.” She backed up, holding her stomach in laughter, her hand closed around the statue’s bronzed gloved fingers.
I glanced up at the shining metal, and dread pooled through my veins in recognition. “Karus,” I warned, pulling her away.
“No…it can’t be,” she whispered, her breath leaving her lungs rapidly from the dance or what we had discovered. I wasn’t sure which.
His likeness was well done. The curve of his high cheekbones, the tuft of his beard, right down to the detail of his gloved hand that seemed to be reaching out toward the city as if in a gesture of aid.
I read the inlaid stone aloud below us, Karus’s gaze still set on his face. “For his cure that saved our city, we honor Baron Heimlen with this likeness, the Savior of Hyrithia.”
Chapter 36
Karus
I knewI wasn’t a good person.
I knew in that moment of disbelief that I had been through some trials in my life that could not be undone.
Maybe that happened to everyone.
Perhaps we all were born in the light until the dim and dark of the world reared its head and cast a shadow upon us. By then, we were forever marred, not something pure light or endless dark, but gray. Something that could be either.
It was the dark that flickered through me in those few moments.
If Heimlen stood before me now, in the flesh, not in molded bronze, I would have killed him.
