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“All of those things are equally applicable to you,” said Mordaunt.

He was right, so Aurienne said, with vast matter-of-factness: “Nonsense.”

“What other attractions?” asked Mordaunt.

“I can’t think of any, but, for the sake of your dignity, I’ll pretend they exist.”

The scar over Mordaunt’s mouth twitched. “I fish for compliments, and instead of taking the bait, you slap into the stratosphere.”

Aurienne squeezed at their joined hands. “I know what’s under here; it casts a pall over any possible attractions.”

“What if my tacn were something else?” asked Mordaunt. “What would the attractions be then?”

The question was posed with sarcastic, boozy interest—only Aurienne caught real curiosity in Mordaunt’s downward glance. A moment later, it was gone. There again was the quirk in the lips; there was the mordacity.

“That tacn has tainted everything I know of you,” said Aurienne. “I couldn’t answer the question.”

“Not even as a thought exercise?”

“A thought exercise? Of this scope? Mid-dance?”

“Try.”

“Arm veins,” said Aurienne.

“Arm veins?” repeated Mordaunt.

“I’d love to pop a large bore into this one,” said Aurienne, running a finger over the juiciest one.

“I am absolutely wasted on you.”

Mordaunt had used her soap today; Aurienne could smell it on him. He was very near. Had they begun the dance this close together? And if they hadn’t, which of them had closed the gap? It might have been her. She hoped it had been him. She looked at the hollow at the base of his throat. It was the lighthouse all over again, the pull of the wanting to be near, the natural repulsion, the back-and-forth.

It began to rain.

There were gasps from the garden below and a faltering in the music as the quartet backed itself under a canopy. The music picked up again, as did the chatter, all dampened by the soft percussion of a gentle June-time shower. It scattered itself upon Aurienne and Mordaunt in glittering handfuls, lit by the green and gold lights below.

“It’s raining,” said Aurienne.

“I know,” said Mordaunt.

“Shouldn’t we go in?”

“Why must you be sensible?”

“One of us ought to be.”

But they weren’t sensible. They were tipsy. They danced in the rain.

Besides, they were indoors, sort of—as well as outside: a bit of both, all at once. Aurienne’s bare feet danced from the balcony’s cold stone to the bedroom’s warm floorboards and back again. The wet splashed indoors; the lamplight glowed outdoors; the rain washed the distinctions away. Water dripped against Mordaunt’s neck, and Aurienne’s bodice,and his temples, and her lips, and wrote things there in calligraphies long forgotten.

Their shadows also spoke things in their twine and untwine against balcony railing and white curtains, cast now by the lamps in the bedroom, and now by the light of the half-moon. The space between her and Mordaunt was a sparkling, rain-studded thing; they pulled it apart and tightened it with every spin, over and under, farther and nearer; they wove and unwove, and wove and unwove.

What was between them? An ebb and a flow, curiosity and guilt, today’s fatal daydream and tomorrow’s scars.

Delighted laughter echoed below as partygoers noticed Aurienne and Mordaunt’s rain-drenched dance. There was applause—a celebration of a thing that was not, and could never be.

Aurienne sought Mordaunt’s gaze to see how much longer he wished to keep up the pretence of the dance, but his eyes were on their joined hands. Their star-crossed tacn pressed against each other’s. Their Orders were in their veins, as inescapable as their own blood.