AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The crowd backed away, giving him room, and a shiver of excitement rippled through them, as though they sensed they were about to witness something special.
He breathed in, flicked his gaze up, and began to play.
At first the music flowed slowly, the notes delicate. He swayed, his body teasing what was to come. I glanced away, pretending to be uninterested, but it didn’t last. He should have been nothing to me, a leaf on the wind, like any other, but as his playing sped up, as he skipped the bow over the violin’s strings, he began to dance. Music poured through him, coming alive at the tips of his fingers and beneath every light step. He teased the instrument, making it sing.
I couldn’t have taken my eyes from him had my whole kingdom depended on it.
I didn’t stand, though I wanted to, if only to see more of him. My heart raced alongside his galloping pace. The feasting hall, its people, and my place among them, it all faded away. Until there was just Lark and his violin, a ray of sunshine in the storm.
He’d never played like this before, never danced as though exposing his soul.
The music flowed and spilled, he danced and played, building to a crescendo and then suddenly, breathlessly, it ended. He stopped, arms spread, violin in one hand, bow in the other, and he breathed as hard as he had last night, when he’d had his cock grasped against mine and his teeth in my shoulder. His crescendo was another kind of climax, one that left his audience spent and breathless.
Silence rushed in, filling the absence of music, coming so fast and so thick that it seemed to last for an age. And then the applause roared like a crashing wave.
Razak clapped, on his feet. “Stunning, truly!”
Such was my awe for Lark’s performance, I almost missed the sly delight shining in Razak's gaze. Lark was more to him than a tool. The evidence of it shone alive in the prince’s otherwise dull eyes. Had Lark danced with such passion and heart for the Prince of Pain inhiscourt?
Jealousy soured my thrill.
Of course they were lovers. Whohadn’tLark fucked?
It didn’t matter. None of this mattered, and certainly not Lark’s performance.
I downed my wine, and with the applause still raining down on Lark, I left the table and swept across the dance floor toward him. Lark’s eyes widened.
“Dance with me,” I demanded.
“What?” The alarm on his face was the first time he’d let slip his real thoughts all evening. We were not meant to be seen together, and never engaged in anything that could be seen to be intimate.
I clicked my fingers at the band. “Music, please.” And offered Lark my hand. “Dance with me?” I said again, but this time making it a question.
He surely wouldn’t refuse, but as I feared he might, he smiled, jogged to the violinist to return his instrument, and hurried back to my side. The band picked up a similar tune to his, but now with a full musical accompaniment, and Lark swept me into his embrace.
“What are you doing?” he whispered, breath tickling my cheek.
“What I must.”
We danced and the crowd watched, including my father, and Razak. Rumors would fly, the shock and surprise of the aloof ice-hearted prince dancing with his fool. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered other than the feel of Lark pressed close. He always smelled so good, of some kind of exotic flower I did not know. I allowed myself a moment to vanish inside the sound of the music and the feel of Lark’s body pressed close to mine. It wasn’t so different from last night, his breath at my ear, his hands on my hips.
I should have let him fuck me and done all those things he’d promised in the library, let him have me the way his dark eyes had demanded when we’d been tangled on my bed. I’d wanted it, but I’d been afraid, and now…
“Razak is planning something,” Lark said. “He did not come here to drink your wine and watch me play the violin.”
“Oh, I know.”
We spun and stepped, and I breathed too fast. My heart thumped as loud as the music swirling around us. Lark pulled me close. We swayed as one, just he and I, alone in a crowd. A horrible ache began to hollow out my chest, a pain I’d known would come, and the sting of guilt with it. “I want you to know”—My jaw brushed his cheek, stubble scratching—“The prince I was before, the one you met on your first day, he would have loved you with all his heart.”
Lark’s steps faltered, but he recovered, managing to keep us out of the nearby flower arrangement. He leaned back, peering into my eyes, searching for the truth. “And the prince you are now?”
“Is so very sorry for this—”
I let go, pulled the dagger from my sleeve, grabbed Lark by the hair, and shoved him to his knees in front of the royal dining table, and in front of Razak.
My father yelled, someone screamed, and the music died.
With a fist in Lark’s hair, I yanked his head back and held the dagger’s edge to his throat. He panted, twitched, his fingers dug into my arm, but I had him.
