Page 55 of Encore

I could feel what she was feeling now. She was exhausted but completely content. Beyla would have been happy if it had just been the two of us tonight. I would have felt it, and it would have been honest. It would have been enough. It meant so much to her that I did this with everyone on such an important night.

Now that this curse was over, we would have plenty more important nights and a ton of entirely dull nights. I intended to make every last one of them just as special as tonight. I didn’t even need to ask. Every man in this room would do the same. She would play a princess to our prince on stage now that she was staying here and dancing, but we’d always treat her like a queen.

I squeezed her to my chest. This wasn’t over. She didn’t just need massive amounts of dick tonight, though I doubted she was complaining about that. Beyla needed to be held and cherished while she slept.

“Think we can all cram into this bed?” I asked.

The apartments in this building were typical for New York. There wasn’t a ton of space, and if there was, you couldn’t afford it on our salary. However, Merlin managed to fit a pretty gigantic bed in here, considering the space we were given.

“I love that you suggested a cuddle pile,” Merlin said, diving into bed and grabbing Beyla.

I didn’t say a damned thing about the fact that the fucking incubus thought gryphons weren’t rabid snugglers. Bevan crawled in behind me. There wasn’t room for Nicolai, but that didn’t let it stop him. He curled up at the foot of the bed. Beyla just sighed.

“Can you believe Marsden justgaveus a brownstone we don’t have to pay rent on?” she said. “And bank accounts with money to furnish it? We can get a bed big enough for all of us.”

“It was the least he could do after everything,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting him to resign and offer Nyx his job, but she’s perfect for it. Nyx will be mad about it for two days, and then she is going to say yes.”

“What do you think happened when she left with Kaine after the show?” Bevan asked.

“Whatever happened, don’t ask. If they feel like sharing, they will tell us,” Beyla said.

“What do you think are on those boxes of flash drives he gave us? He had a box for you and a box for Nyx,” Nicolai said.

“It could honestly be anything,” Beyla said. “I really don’t want to think about what’s going on in Marsden’s head anymore. We broke the curse, I just danced a lead role with everyone I care about in front of a New York audience, and we’re all properly bonded now. I just want to fall asleep with all of you and wake up in bed together.”

I think I spoke for all of us when I said I wanted that, too. Marsden would leave a legacy of being a fantastic ballet dancer and choreographing beautiful ballets as artistic director. Only a few of us knew the truth, and even if he didn’t try to put a geas on us, we couldn’t talk about it without seriously damaging the company.

I didn’t want him dead, but I didn’t want to deal with Marsden and his mind games anymore. So yeah, it brought my mate to me, and we were getting to perform this gorgeous ballet, but I just wanted to move forward.

So did my mate. She’d be busy while her friends and family were in town, and we still had several performances to go. We’d get through those flash drives, eventually. Knowing Marsden, there was probably something insanely creative on all of them that he tried to give us to help us later on.

All I wanted to focus on was more nights like this in our new brownstone.

Epilogue

Iknew Ripley and Ravyn couldn’t stay long with their families. Ravyn had help at the museum and had a little leeway with her vacation time. They finally trained a backup at the library for Ripley after she got kidnapped and made a stink about the state of things when she got back.

Kaine stayed longer than they did, and most of that time was spent with Nyx. Marsden gave him his reserved seats so Kaine could watch the show every night. Kaine would always be my biggest fan, but now he was Nyx’s, too.

We got through the entire run of the show. Marsden disappeared after the last performance, and we never heard from him again. Nyx raged about how stupid Marsden was for a few days, then took his job, just like Arden said she would.

We made plans to move into the brownstone. Nyx would be living next door, and Madame Lucinda was on the other side. The flash drives Marsden gave us were different for Nyx and us. Nyx’s had plots and digital scores for ballets. Ours had novels and screenplays. Marsden had been writing under aliases. He gave us his logins, and all we had to do was publish or send it out. We also got all the money from his royalties.

The money in the bank accounts he gave us was more than enough to furnish the brownstone exactly the way we wanted. We turned it into the perfect little home, and we had a bed big enough for all of us. I loved going back there every night and crashing with my guys.

Nyx was a fantastic artistic director. She took the company in an entirely new direction. She recognized that many of us were talented choreographers. The guys’ video they did for me had gone viral and garnered attention from dancers and companies all over the world.

She capitalized on that and broughtThe Pinto a new era. She asked for volunteers and gave us a bump in salary. We used plenty of ideas from Marsden’s flash drives, but the choreography was all of us working together. Nyx usually put herself in a solo orpas de deux,but she usually cast me as the lead.

My career took off, and it was so unreal. Kaine stayed away, but not for long. Kaine and Nyx did the long-distance thing for a little while, then he put in for a transfer and moved in with her. It was so great having him close to me.

We still had a few more years left in us career-wise, but we all knew what we would do when we retired. Madame Lucinda had been a guiding force in all of our lives. So, we wanted to pay that forward.

None of us feared retirement like Bellatrix did. It could be scary for dancers. It was too early to collect social security, and you didn’t exactly get a pension. The only thing left was teaching, and that was what we all wanted to do.

We also decided when our dance careers were over, we were going to start a family. Of course, that was out of the question while we were still performing, but it would be pretty amazing once I hung up my pointe shoes.

I never thought I’d be here. I thought after Derek broke my feet, my dance career was over. It would always be me dancing in a home studio in the garage for the rest of my life. I just needed to be patient.

The curtain went down on another opening night. This feeling would never get old. It was always just as special as that first night, even if we weren’t breaking a curse this time.

I didn’t know where he was or if he was still alive. He made many mistakes, but I would forever be grateful to Marsden for dragging me into the ballet life kicking and screaming.