Page 36

FEELINGS DANCE

“ D ance with me.” She put his hand on her waist and belatedly realised that, however practical this act of distraction might be, dancing was undeniably intimate. She could feel the heat of his hands through her dress. It made her remember… other things.

His frozen shock began to crack, but he didn’t move. He frowned down at her. “Oh. Do you want me to lead?”

The oddness of this remark temporarily distracted her, but a quick scan of the dancefloor explained it: clearly there wasn’t the same ladies-and-gentlemen arrangement here that she was used to.

“Yes! I don’t know this dance! Mainly I was trying to prevent you causing a diplomatic incident or giving us away in the middle of the ballroom!”

He canted his head, ears swivelling in the direction of the players. “Good idea,” he said and swept them up.

For a few moments, she was wholly overwhelmed.

He was an excellent dancer, good enough that Gisele could relax into following, trusting her body to him despite not knowing the steps.

Giddiness suffused her, her whirling thoughts smoothing out.

She loved dancing, though no one ever asked her unless she manipulated them into doing so, and she always felt bad afterwards because it made them so uncomfortable. She laughed.

“Don’t tell me my dancing amuses you? I actually do claim some prowess in this area.”

“No, I was just thinking that this is the first time I’ve ever asked anyone to dance. You’re not supposed to, as a princess,” she added when he looked confused.

“Did you always do what you were supposed to?”

She shook her head. “No. I went through a long phase where I thought that perhaps you’d come if I behaved sufficiently badly.

Or maybe I just wanted to provoke a reaction from someone, anyone, but they were all hopelessly understanding about it.

” Unsettled by her own admission, she added quickly: “What was that about, with that person before? Did you know them?”

His step faltered, though he caught himself before it threw them both off-balance and instead sent them into a repeat of the same sequence they’d just done, as if he was too preoccupied to come up with another. “I only met them tonight.”

So she had got the pronoun right. “Why did you say such things to them, then? How did you know their name?”

His gaze fixed over her shoulder. “I have my own curse. It woke unexpectedly.”

“Ominous but unhelpful.”

He stopped brooding for long enough to huff down at her.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Well? You’re going to have to tell me more than that.”

He waited until he’d swept her into a new pattern, then spoke quietly but clearly.

“I am what they call a heartbringer. I can read people’s deepest fears and desires.

Normally I need to try to see such a thing, but I spoke Sintu’s worst fear without meaning to.

I’m not sure why that happened. I was angry with them implying I’d been negligent; perhaps it was only that. ”

She frowned. “I thought your power was turning straw into gold.”

Again, there was a small jerk in the rhythm of the dance, quickly smoothed out. “No,” he said quietly. “That was… only the result of my power in that specific circumstance, bound to the bargain I made with your mother. It is not the power I was born with. Not my greatest power.”

They kept turning, her mind reeling. Heartbringer . He’d certainly kept that quiet—no, actively misled her. This new magic didn’t match what she’d thought she knew of him, but then, did she know the man at all? She’d never suspected the dream version of him might be the real thing.

“Have you read my heart?” she asked, deeply disturbed at the prospect.

He shook his head. “I can’t. I get… flickers of feelings, sometimes, but I think that’s the bond between us. I think it stops me from reading you as I normally would.”

“You tried, then?”

“Of course I tried! A madwoman turned up at my house and stabbed me! What did you expect me to do?” He sighed.

“But it’s not as frightening an ability as you imagine, at least not that aspect of it.

It’s perfectly possible to learn what’s in people’s hearts through the simple and mundane process of getting to know them.

I don’t need magic to know what your deepest desire is, Gisele.

You told me quite clearly within moments of meeting me: freedom. ”

She bristled. “And my worst fear?”

“What is fear but desire inverted? You fear being trapped at Skymallow as you were in your palace.”

She’d expected to flinch at his answer, but it didn’t hurt at all. Rather, a knee-jerk, irritated denial welled: that’s not my worst fear . Panic followed on its heels, because it really should be her worst fear, if her priorities were anything like how they ought to be. What was happening to her?

Mal entirely misinterpreted her reaction. “I won’t let that happen,” he promised her solemnly.

“Before, you said you used to be considered a weapon? Is this why? And how did you read that fairy’s fears if you don’t have—” your powers , she stopped herself from saying, because they were in public even if they were speaking quietly.

She could see how the ability to read hearts would be a dangerous ability in the game of court politics, but surely it would be exaggerating to call it a weapon.

He shook his head. “No.” He spoke quietly, directly into her ear as they turned into the next piece of the dance. “Before I lost my powers, I could manifest heart-readings.” He said it so neutrally that it took her a few spins for the full impact of his words to hit.

Once they had, she stared at him, not sure she’d understood correctly. “What do you mean by manifest, exactly?”

His gaze once again fixed over her shoulder, avoiding hers. “I could make wishes come true. Or nightmares.”

She sucked in a breath. “Any wish?”

“If it was someone’s heart’s desire.” His mouth twisted.

“And any nightmare?”

He nodded, still not looking at her.

“Our Lady in the Skies,” she breathed. “My mother wanted…the straw into gold. That’s what that was?”

He nodded again. “It was her heart’s desire, her wish.”

“Is that— Are there a lot of fae who can do that?”

“No,” he said heavily. “I don’t know of anyone else who can.”

Gisele couldn’t think what to say, and Mal thankfully didn’t seem to expect anything.

They danced in silence as she thought. She’d wondered more than once if his paranoia about his old enemy might be exaggerated, but this wasn’t about anything as simple as gold .

Suddenly, she felt like Mal might not have been paranoid enough .

The ability to make nightmares real . It seemed so incongruous that someone like Mal could have such a terrifying power.

Or was it? Had she accepted the mild-mannered version of him too easily?

Perhaps her mother hadn’t been wrong to fear him so greatly.

Perhaps Gisele had been wrong to judge her for that.

Perhaps she’d been wrong about everything.

A dance was a conversation, her old instructor used to say, something created anew each time between each pair of dancers.

She could feel Mal waiting for her, leading her into a series of repeated sequences, each one a soft question rebuffed.

Eventually she sighed and added an extra spin in response.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking the cue. “If you no longer want to help me, I promise we’ll find another way?—”

Her head jerked up. “What?”

“I wasn’t honest with you about what the return of my full powers would mean. It…People react badly, usually, when they find out. I understand if that changes things.”

“That is not even slightly what I was thinking about,” she told him.

He cocked his head, eyes penetrating—and yet lacking that disturbing intensity he’d turned on poor Sintu. “Oh. I assumed unleashing a horror of nightmarish possibilities was pricking your conscience.”

It probably should have. “ Are you planning to do horrifying things with your powers, once you have them back?”

His expression had tightened. “No, but I never planned to in the past, either, and that didn’t stop me.”

She supposed it hadn’t, if he was talking about the effect he’d had on her life.

And yet, “Intent still matters. It’s not an excuse, meaning to do good and ending up doing bad instead.

But it still matters.” She gave herself a shake.

“Sintu told me that the diviner was taking petitioners over there.”

They had danced their way to the far end of the ballroom, where an obvious knot in the crowd had formed, a queue waiting outside an archway.

A tall, spindly guard with pale-green skin and bright buttercup-yellow hair stood next to the archway, grimly assessing each supplicant. Some she turned away, implacable in the face of their arguments.

When they reached her, the guard considered them through thin-pupilled eyes, like a goat’s. There were scales across her cheekbones.

“What is it you seek?” she asked.

Mal hesitated. “Freedom.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed further, but she nodded and gestured him through. When Gisele tried to follow, she found her progress blocked by the guard’s long staff.

“I’m with him,” she protested.

The guard shook her head. “Supplicants only.”

She and Mal exchanged glances. She could see both that he didn’t want to leave her alone and that he was worried she wouldn’t trust him to do this without her.

But I do trust him, at least with this , she realised.

Despite her increasing doubts, he’d made it plain that he wanted to be free of this bond between them.

That, at least, she could be sure of. Her chest tightened.

“Go,” she told him. “I’ll wait for you. I’m under the protection of guestright, remember?”

He nodded and disappeared through the archway. The guard pointedly gestured with her staff for Gisele to get out of the queue.

Gisele smiled brightly at her before obeying, making the guard blink.

She couldn’t explain that the guard treating her like any other person was strangely buoying.

A part of her had relished every single minor interaction this evening for the same reason, despite her churning emotions.

Another part of her couldn’t help but wonder if this was what it would be like if she returned to Isshia, curse-less.

I doubt the court has changed that much , she couldn’t help thinking as a fae couple sauntered past, dressed solely in a strategically draped fabric snake, which appeared to be enchanted so that it slithered in an endless connected loop between the two of them.

Am I really planning to return there, if things go as planned tonight?

Somehow, she had managed to not think much about the fact that this might be the end of things, or close to it.

If the diviner could find Mal’s name, how long would it take them to retrieve it?

Her days at Skymallow House might draw to an abrupt halt.

Or what if the diviner could find the name itself tonight?

The thought made something like panic tighten her throat.

She hadn’t said goodbye to the house or the meadow folk.

Calm down; of course you’ll be able to go back there first. Mal’s not going to turf you out this second even if he does get his name back tonight. You’ll have time to say your farewells.

For some reason, this didn’t make her feel better.

With a start, she spotted the faun from before heading in her direction with a purposeful stride. Were they looking for her? Gisele had asked them how to find the diviner, after all, so it wasn’t much of a logic leap to look for her here.

It seemed like a confrontation best avoided. Slipping through an archway, Gisele hurried away from the ballroom, down a long hallway set with glowing lanterns, until she reached an open doorway. Hopefully this would keep her out of sight until either Mal was finished or the faun lost interest.