Page 20 of Song of Night

“I can handle myself, magic or no magic.”

“You’ve never experienced anything like Vyrin in your wildest dreams,” Asher snarls. “Don’t be stubborn.”

“And don’t be condescending.” I level a glare at him, which he ignores.

Asher grabs a golden plate and begins to add things to it. “They’re watching us, so we need to pretend we’re going along with everything.”

I grab my own plate and do the same, though my stomach rumbles hungrily at all the luscious things I can’t partake of. It’s true what I said to Asher—I can’t starve myself forever. But I can wait a little bit longer. And hope against hope that we get out of here before I gnaw my own arm off.

After we fill our plates we stroll throughout the crowd, pretending to take bites of our food. My eyes rove over the opulence of the room. Everything is ornate, dripping with decadence. Even the air is perfumed, a cloyingly sweet scent like flowers. My irritation with Asher slowly dissolves. I know we need to stick together, and I suppose his sudden desire to protect me is better than trying to get as far away from me as possible. We visit the swan pouring golden liquid, which upon closer inspection smells like honey. The urge to taste it is almost overwhelming, as if it’s enchanted.

It’s strange, though, because I’ve felt almost no magic since we crossed into Cyrena. Is it because I’ve lost my own connection to magic, or because the magic here feels different than what I’m used to? I’d expected Vyrin himself to possess a great deal of it, since he’s ruled for so long, but even he seemed to hold only a faint spark of anything I could sense.

As we move through the crowd, pretending to nibble at our food and sip the golden wine, the other guests seem to take no notice of us, as if we’re invisible. It’s a bit unsettling, though better than the alternative. We deposit our plates and goblets on a small table, and I suddenly have the strangest sense as if I’ve lost track of time. It seems simultaneously that we just arrived, and also that we’ve been here milling about for hours.

“We should dance,” Asher says abruptly.

Surprise ripples along my skin. I could no sooner have guessed that the Lord of Night would ask me to dance than I could predict how many falling stars would move across the sky tonight. “Dance?”

He nods. “Everyone else is dancing. It will be noticed if we don’t participate.”

I go rigid as he tugs me toward the end of the room closest to the ocean, where it seems over a hundred people are spinning and cavorting on the floor.

“I am a spy and a recluse. Do you really think I know how to dance?” I stare at him scornfully, crossing my arms over my chest.

“You’ve never danced?” Asher asks. “Not once?”

I shake my head.

Something changes in his eyes, a softening, a stir of emotion like the melancholy song of the waves beyond. “We will likely die in this place,” he says, reaching for my hand. “You cannot leave this world without at least once having danced.”

My eyebrows arch. “And you, the most feared and dreaded man in the City of Night, are going to teach me to dance?”

Asher smiles for a moment, and then he pulls me hard against him. “I have seen you fight, shadow assassin. Dancing will be child’s play for one such as you.”

My heart pounds as I find myself suddenly in the curve of his arms. I can feel the warmth of his muscles against mine, smell the leather of his pants and jacket mingled with his own natural scent. What I don’t want, if we’re really going to die here, is to die without Asher’s forgiveness.

He winds the fingers of one hand into mine and leads me off into the crowd. We stay near the edge, not wanting to get stuck deep within the throng of bodies toward the center of the floor. The music from the nearby harpists curls around us, and a breeze from the ocean carries the scent of salt and rain and far-off lands. I’d been trapped behind the Waste for so long, never thinking I’d live to see the world beyond. Only ever imagining it, wondering what lay on the other side of my prison walls. And now, in an odd and unfortunate twist of fate, I am out in the midst of it, in all its deadly beauty.

Asher’s earth-colored eyes hold mine, as do his hands, one intertwined in my fingers, the other wrapped around the small of my back. We spin, and I do not think about what happened between us. And I do not think about what lies ahead. There is just this moment and the next and the next, the dance and the sea and the music spiraling around us.

I blink and realize we’ve somehow been swept deep into the midst of the dancers. I don’t remember how we got here. Had we moved, or had they? Bodies crush in around us, and I can smell their sweat and the wine they spilled on their skin. Most of the dancers wear masks, some beautiful, some dark and grotesque. I feel light-headed and the room spins slightly.

“Zara,” Asher says, both his tone and his eyes serious, but he doesn’t have a chance to finish the sentence.

“There you are,” Vyrin says. “I simply must steal a dance with this vision.”

And suddenly my hand is in his instead of Asher’s, and we’re spinning away. I whip my head around, but I only catch a flash of Asher before he is lost in the crowd.

“What are you doing?” I ask, shaking my head. It’s beginning to buzz unpleasantly as if I’ve had too much of the golden wine. Except I’ve had none.

“Dancing, my shadow witch, just dancing.”

Vyrin spins me, and for several long moments, all I see is color and sparkling lights and the distant glimmer of the moon on the waves.

Through the fog of my thoughts, his words finally sink in. “Shadow witch? Why did you call me that?”

Vyrin shoots me a smile, revealing fangs like a wolf. Or was that someone sliding past us on the dance floor with a wicked mask? Everything is moving so fast.

---