Page 43 of The Devil and His Goddess (Sinners Do It Better #2)

Harper

AIYSHA STOPPED THE MUSIC FROM where she stood with Perseus at the side of the room, and I went off relevé to face them while working to catch my breath.

“See?” I said weakly.

“Your dancing is beautiful,” Aiysha praised with a smile. That grin quickly changed, and she nibbled her lip as she reluctantly added, “You just need that Harper spark back.”

I’d been trying to regain that spark. It was all I thought about during the day when I worked on dance at home while Perseus was at Silverlight. Only when he came home did I let go of my struggles to exist in momentary peace.

When he and I were together, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other, and it didn’t even need to lead to anything sexual. We simply wanted to be close—my hand on his leg, his fingers running through my hair, my head on his chest while his arm held me close. It was like we were making up for the time lost.

That initial time by the pool was hard, but Perseus made it possible to get through with his reassurances and affection. We’d done it and more plenty of times since then, and each time got a little easier. There were times I’d still find panic-driven thoughts creeping in, or I’d feel a weird sense of shame afterward that he had to talk me through. Nonetheless, I was finding my footing.

If only the same could be said of dance.

Something was still missing, something at my core that fueled the way I danced. I’d managed to snag pieces of it when I danced with Perseus, but when I was alone again, that tether to my magic vanished until I was a moving, emotionless husk.

“That Harper spark,” I said bleakly, “is seeming more and more impossible to find. I don’t understand how I can’t … I’ve always …”

I sank to the floor and hung my head in defeat while rubbing at my forehead.

Perseus squatted in front of me, meeting my crestfallen expression with a firm one. “Why do you not look in the mirror when you dance anymore?”

The abrupt question left him, not like an actual probe, but as an accusation. Like he already knew the answer and was trying to get me to admit it because it had something to do with my current problem.

I held his steadfast gaze and gripped my ballet skirt tightly in my hands. Dance was the reason I existed. It was my first, and would be my last, love. Nothing had been allowed to get in the way of my art, and from the time I started, I had been keen on doing whatever necessary to become a better dancer. Watching myself as I performed helped me improve and gave me the confidence I needed to dance well. So why didn’t I look in the mirror anymore?

I couldn’t answer that, because it was the wrong question. The real question was why would I want to? Why would I want to see the lifeless performance? Why would I want to face myself and the truth that no one else was willing to acknowledge?

“I can’t,” I answered in a small voice.

“Why?” he demanded even as his face remained deadly calm. Again, the question was posed, already knowing my answer.

I shook my head and gestured at the mirror behind him. “Because all I see is a girl who’s broken.”

“Harper,” Aiysha gasped sadly before coming to kneel beside me on the floor. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and squeezed me, but my gaze stayed trained on Perseus’s.

I knew what his response would be. It was the same one he gave me every time we had this conversation, and we’d had it plenty of times. We’d briefly started it in the pool and since then, we’d had it a handful more. He’d always try to convince me I wasn’t broken, but his belief in me didn’t match the facts stacked against me.

“You aren’t broken,” he declared as he always did.

“Then why can’t I get back to who I was before?” I fired back. “Why can’t I dance like I used to?”

“Because that’s not who you are anymore, Harper,” he answered with a furrowed brow, the first sign of his sure mask giving way to glimpses of pain. “As much as we want to rewind time to save you from what happened, we can’t . We don’t have the power to change what’s already happened, which means the girl you’ve been searching for isn’t there. She’s changed. You’ve changed. You have to let go of her and start dancing as the Harper you are now .”

The truth of his statement hit me like a gust of wind on a mountain’s cliff. I had no response to form as I fell over the edge and into a place where I had to face what he was saying.

Who I was before was vibrant, gifted with a way of dancing, flirtatious, and full of life . I was naive and unfamiliar with struggles like the one in store for me.

Who I was now was dull, struggling with what mattered most, hesitant, and full of so much pain . I was well-acquainted with the evil of the world and had tasted its poison.

I’d been trying to dance as myself from before, but how could I? How could I dance or even live as though the poison didn’t run through my veins?

So who exactly was I now? I’d been trying to figure that out, and I always came back to the same conclusion.

“The girl I am now is weak,” I choked out.

Perseus clenched his fists as his jaw ticked. Aiysha squeezed me harder and immediately tried to dismiss the notion, but her reassurances fell on deaf ears.

Perseus shot to his feet and stared down at me. “Get up. You’re dancing.”

The abrupt command paired with the authoritative tone he used as artistic director had nerves darting around inside of me. He already knew I couldn’t do it, but still, I stood with Aiysha next to me.

Perseus held a hand out next to him, and a long, thick black cloth suddenly appeared in his palm. Without a word, he came up to me and began to wrap the cloth around my eyes like a blindfold.

“What are you doing?” I asked, reaching up to pull the fabric off.

“Don’t,” he warned, making me freeze.

He secured the cloth near my bun, and the heat of his body left my back as he moved to my front and started pulling my pointe shoes off to replace them with something else. I wiggled my foot and gave a test tap on the ground, confirming it was a stretch canvas ballet shoe.

“You’re going to dance with that blindfold on,” he announced once finished with my shoes.

I frowned and opened my mouth to argue, but Aiysha beat me to it.

“Perseus, she has to see to dance. Vision is crucial for balance and placement and a whole slew of things. She’ll fall or—”

“No, she won’t.”

The confident response came from right in front of me. Even with the total darkness, I could feel his searing gaze on me. I could feel his unfaltering belief in me. Despite knowing the trash performances I’d been giving all this time, he still believed that I was capable of more, and I desperately wanted to believe him.

Silence descended over the room. I waited to hear them discuss more or argue, but they said nothing—at least, nothing that I could hear. I turned my head in every direction and asked, “Are you guys still there?”

Another brief moment of quiet came before Perseus answered from near the stereo. “We’re here. Are you ready?”

I worried my lip and touched the fabric over my eyes. “Do I have to do it blindfolded?”

“Yes,” came his firm reply.

I dropped my hand and sighed, getting into starting position for the set we’d been working on this morning—a solo of Psyche’s from Dancing in the Dark . But when the slow sound of a piano played over the speakers, I faltered. I dropped my arms and turned to face the stereo as the familiar song started to fill the room—the very song that had transformed me into the dancer I’d been up until now.

“This …” I croaked.

“Dance,” Perseus said over the music.

The lyrics of “Rise” washed over me, and with a hard breath, I faced the mirror I couldn’t see and listened to the song. My entire body zeroed in on it like a missile locked on target, and my limbs practically hummed to dance the old routine.

So I did.

I let go of the fact that I couldn’t see.

I let go of the fact that my dance abilities had changed right alongside me.

I let go and just danced .

My body floated through the air, guided by the heart of the song, which tugged at every single emotion buried inside of me. Like stitches on a tapestry, the threads unraveled and reshaped into something new as I leapt, turned, and moved with all the feelings I’d been fighting.

Shame. Misery. Anger. Hatred.

Each one spun around me like wild strings tangling in the air around my outstretched arms, and with a hard toss of my hands, I let those go, too. I felt them. I embraced them. I released them, welcoming in a whole new series of feelings with the power of the music, lyrics, and dance.

Resolve to embrace my new self.

Joy for the things I still had, despite the pain awarded me.

Peace with the fact that I couldn’t change the past but could take control of my future.

Love for my friends, my art, Perseus, and … myself.

The song ended as my body snapped into its final pose with head held high and arms raised in victory. My chest rose and fell hard as the lingering high of all the emotions continued to fill me up with their light.

The blindfold was tugged before slipping off, and the sight I was met with nearly stole the air I was trying to take in. Perseus stood right at my back, holding my gaze in the mirror in front of us where I still stood in the powerful end pose of the piece.

“Look at you,” he said in my ear. “Fucking look at you. Look at them .”

He pointed to the side of the room, and that was when I noticed the handful of other people standing with Aiysha in the reflection of the mirror.

Aiysha had a hand over her mouth, tears rolling down her face as she stared at me in awe. Zagan and Xander’s brows were raised in admiration and were as frozen as I was. Iyla smiled at my reflection with glistening eyes. Dante squatted on the ground with elbows braced on his bent knees and mouth in his hands, like he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

“You did that,” Perseus said, pulling my gaze back to his in the mirror. “ You as you are now . Your dancing moved them to that state. So hear me when I say you aren’t weak. You are so much stronger than anyone in this goddamn room, and you are not broken.” He smiled ever so softly and whispered, “You’re a powerful, brilliant goddess.”

I stared at my reflection and the strength in the pose. I studied the strength in the body that had been abused. I saw the strength in the eyes that had witnessed horrors. I acknowledged the strength in how far this girl in the mirror had come.

Because that’s who I was now. I was strong .

Those pieces of myself that had been scattered and lost restitched inside of me. The effects of the dance gathered the strewn fabric, and the weight of Perseus’s words guided the needle. Finally, I had a whole tapestry again. It wasn’t perfect. The evidence of it being shredded was still there in the imperfections of the lines and shaky stitching. But it was whole again.

I was whole again.