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Tawhiri wore silver too, though tonight his mask was a mere suggestion. Heat flared in his eyes when he saw me, and his wings half-flared too. A harder heart than mine would have stirred—until I remembered the illusion. He was admiring a lady who didn’t exist. Admiring his own illusion, in fact, which presumably was tailored to his exact tastes and made the whole thing curiously narcissistic. My heart fell.
Why was I being so silly about this? Tawhiri might have asked me to marry him, but he’d been coolly practical about the reasons for it. It was politics and perversity, not romance.
Still, when he held out his hand, I felt oddly breathless. “I read in the paper that you allocated one dance to each potential bride. Very fair of you.”
His lips curved. “You were reading about me?”
“Doing my research.”
He inclined his head. “I have not yet danced with anyone else this evening.” He led me out onto the floor, the eyes of the room upon us.
“Aren’t you supposed to be wooing potential brides?”
“I am.”
I glanced away from the intensity of his gaze. “What if I say no? Shouldn’t you know what your options are?” I still couldn’t truly believe he was serious about this.
“Do you think the houses have failed to push each and every eligible woman and man upon me since I attained my majority? I assure you: I have heard the details of their virtues at length. A dance with any of them will not change the balance of my opinion.”
That stunned me into silence for a whole round of the ballroom.
“I have some questions,” I said when I found my voice again.
“I thought you might.” The music came to a halt, and he gave a wry smile and said, “Will you come outside with me?”
When I nodded, I wasn’t expecting him to pull me into his chest. Or for the snap of his wings unfurling and the rush of wind as we took off. Outraged cries sounded below.
“It’s my party; I can fly if I want to,” he said mildly, and I laughed.
He flew us over the palace, and we landed atop a tower that was like a great tree trunk transformed to stone, its crown of leaves forming crenellations. There was a picnic feast laid out and cushions piled about. The night was clear and cool.
I slid out of his grip, feeling suddenly shy.
“You’re really serious about the wooing,” I said. “Why? I thought it was a straightforward bargain you were offering.”
“I should like you not to be wholly averse to the bargain for its own sake. My parents were an arranged marriage, but they grew very fond of each other. I should like something of the same.”
“What were they like?”
He looked to the stars as he told me. His mother had been a bright soul, with a love for growing things; it was she who’d brought the ballroom’s kowhai to the Golden Hall from her own part of Faerie, though more had grown throughout the wood since Tawhiri had taken the throne. His father had been of a more reserved temperament, but fiercely proud of his wife and their only son.
The way Tawhiri spoke of his parents made them sound larger than life, which made me sad for the boy he’d been when they’d died, that he’d never had the chance to know them on more equal footing. It sounded lonely, growing up roaming these halls with an unbridgeable distance between him and any other playmates. It also sounded oddly familiar, to be alone even surrounded by others. I found myself telling him of my stepsisters.
“I’m sure you’d be happy with either of them,” I added out of a sense of fairness. “Acantha would love being a queen, and Rose would marry you for your library in a heartbeat.”
He made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, looking at me in that intent, heated way. I blushed and then remembered the illusion.
“And you? Would you like being a queen?”
I looked down at my hands and thought of the court’s envious gaze. Yes. “I don’t think I would know how.”
“Someone told me most people get better at things with practice.”
I laughed. “Well, you are getting better at conversation.”
We talked for hours about everything and nothing. I grew more intensely aware of him as the night deepened. The rustle of feathers. The warmth of his body, so close. The sleek profile of his antlers and the starlight glittering in his hair. The heated looks that sent thrills right through my body each time until I remembered the illusion.
Eventually, I swallowed and turned back to the topic that perched on the tower between us like an invisible lion-drake.
