Page 38 of The Assassin's Bride

Children's clothing was much the same. The coats could be a little roomier, the colors a little bolder. Children often preferred bright colors, and everything here was drab. Only the striped awnings and colorful coat colors sported any sort of vibrancy. Dyes were a luxury, then. Used only for drawing attention to the most important things. Collars framed faces, and the awnings represented a livelihood for the families who sold goods beneath them.

After her circuit of the stalls spent looking at shoppers rather than goods, she went around again to confirm her suspicion. There was no dyemaker here; those bright fabrics had to be brought from elsewhere. The capital, she presumed. Danesse.

By the time she was certain there was no one selling dyes, the great fire in the middle of the village was blazing and the musicians had moved farther away, to where they could play without discomfort. People danced in an open field, where the low stone walls that separated the space from the village roads cast long shadows in the firelight.

Small clusters of village folk stood around the gates and near the walls, clapping along with music or chatting amongst themselves as they watched the dancers move. Thea lingered near one such group, observing the steps. The dances were unfamiliar, nothing like the slow, swanning motions in the usual Kentorian three-step. Before long, she found herself nodding along with the rhythm, and it was not much longer than that before a gentleman split away from the dancers to offer her a hand. It wasn't until then that she noticed the dancers were segmented into groups. There were those who danced as families, a mix of all ages that bounced along in time with the melody, and those who danced in pairs. The movements were similar, but more focused.

She smiled and touched her fingertips to the stranger's palm, as she'd seen other young women do. He led her into the field and raised her hand high overhead to lead her in the first few steps.

At first, he went slow, giving her time to learn the pattern. By the third revolution, she was confident enough to tear her eyes from her feet. She raised her head to offer a smile to her partner, but her gaze slid past his face to land on the people near the gate.

Gil stood among them, his arms crossed and his face so fraught with anger, she saw his stormcloud eyes through the illusion she'd sewn.

Thea set her jaw and stared back as she went around again. He had no right to look at her that way. She'd done nothing wrong. Yet by the time she completed the circle with her partner and looked toward the gate again, he was gone, and the sudden disappearance made her heart skip and then flutter with uncertainty.

Hadshe done something wrong? She'd told him she wanted to dance, he told her she was free to explore. That he might tell her she could and then rescind the offer sat poorly with her.

A shadow moved to her right and her partner halted their dance. Her head snapped around as an arm reached past her shoulder to take her hand from her companion's. Gil. How had he moved so quickly?

“It's unbecoming for a woman to dance with a man other than her husband,” he said as he turned her toward him and raised their hands together, his hand cupped, her fingertips in his palm.

“Then I'll be unbecoming.” Despite the anger that still furrowed his brow and set his mouth hard, she stared up into his dark eyes, challenging him to scold her.

“Not of you,” he replied through clenched teeth. “Of me.” He led her through the first turn, his steps more graceful than the first man's had been.

“You didn't want to dance.” Four steps right. Two left. Four more right. She looked to her feet again, to Gil's feet, to his Ranorsh boots that made him a blend of her homeland and here. He fit in everywhere, truly. Even the unfamiliar dance came naturally to him. Or was it unfamiliar? She tried to picture him here before, twirling some unknown woman in the same field. The thought lodged a strange discomfort in her chest.

“I still don't.” He added a new step, one the other dancers had incorporated when the music changed. Four steps. Two. Four more, and a tap of his heel against hers. The motion brought him closer and instead of resisting, she savored when his other hand came to rest on her hip.

“You're good at dancing.” Was this what she'd wanted? What she'd hoped for when she tried to get him to dance? She rested her free hand atop his, tracing the tendons from his knuckles to his wrist, sliding her hand up his arm. Four steps, two. Something firm beneath his sleeve greeted her exploring fingers. A sheathed dagger. She shouldn't have been surprised.

He never tore his eyes from hers. “I'm good at many things.”

“Perhaps you should show me more.” Light's mercy, she shouldn't goad him. Her hand lay atop what had to be one of a dozen knives hidden on his person. What more did she need to remind her what sort of man he was?

Without warning, he stopped, staring down at her with a fire in his eyes that threatened to consume her whole.

Her breath caught and her gaze slipped to his mouth. He was right there, so close. All she had to do was rise on tip-toe, to lift her face, to meet his lips—

“You have put off your end of this bargain long enough,” he growled, shattering the moment.

Her heart shattered with it.

“You will finish sewing. Tonight.” He released her and spun back toward the gate to stalk toward the inn he'd chosen.

It was all Thea could do to stay on her feet. “Tonight,” she croaked.

And tomorrow, she would pretend everything was the same.

CHAPTERFOURTEEN

Gil was angry.

Thea didn't know what she'd done to stoke those coals, but she couldn't deny the anger that visibly smoldered within him. Maybe it hadn't been her. Maybe something had happened in the brief time they'd been separated. Or maybe she truly had taken too long, frittered away valuable time, robbed him of something that couldn't be replaced.

The realization that she knew so little about his mission had never been so stark. She didn't know what timeline he ran on, didn't know how easily it could be jeopardized. So when they reached the room at the inn, she put her head down and sat on the floor with the trousers she'd started and not yet finished.

Even with the two lanterns and several candles he'd scrounged from somewhere, she found it difficult to see. Her tiny stitches disappeared into the dark brown fabric she'd selected. She tried to keep them steady anyway. Even if her stitches were shaky, they'd be strong, and if a few went wayward, it wouldn't harm the integrity of the clothing she made. But she wondered what it would do to the magic.

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