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Lin suddenly felt close to snapping at him. At everyone in the room. A bunch of terriers, deprived of the rat they were tearing to pieces. “I’ll take her place,” she said. “I’ll do the dance instead.”
A stir among the crowd. She heard someone laugh: Lord Montfaucon, she was nearly sure. She was glad Kel had left the room. He was the only one here likely to have regarded her with sympathy, and she did not think she could stand it.
“Really,” said Roverge, and as he looked at her, she could see the sneer on his face. “What do you know of Sarthian dancing, Ashkari…girl?”
“Let her do it.”
The room went still. Prince Conor was still leaning back among the cushions of his divan, as if utterly relaxed. In fact, he looked almost sleepy, his eyes half lidded. Silver and gold dust glittered on his light-brown skin, where the angular bones of his face caught the light.
“Let her do it,” he said, again. “It will be something to amuse us, at least.”
Lin stared at him. In that moment she could see nothing in him of the young man whose wounds she had tended, who had said to her bitterly,Ten thousand crowns. The cost of a Prince, it turns out. I realize I have been a fool; you need not tell me.
His face was blank, a wall; his eyes narrow silver crescents below silvery lids. Beside him, Falconet was looking at her with curiosity, anticipation. The Prince’s face did not show even that.
Charlon shrugged, as if to say,As the Prince requests.He signaled, and the musicians behind the screen began to play. The tune seemed to Lin to have changed: No longer pensive and playful, it was slow and dark, the occasional bright note lancing through like a shaft of light piercing the darkness of an unlit street.
Though perhaps it was only her own jangling nerves, Lin thought, as Charlon, having retrieved Luisa’s dropped fan, presented it to her with an exaggerated bow. He backed away, eyes narrowed. He was not pleased with her, Lin knew. She had spoiled his game.
Now he wanted her to give him another one. They all did. Her only allies—Kel, her grandfather—were not in the room. She could, she supposed, simply run away. Flee House Roverge. It was hardly as if they’d set the dogs on her.
But then they wouldwin.The Hill, the Palace, would win. And she would have managed only a few hours in this rarefied air before being shamed and defeated.
She raised her chin. Snapped the fan in her hands open, the black lace brilliant, laced with bright threads. She knew only one dance. She had never bothered to learn another, never beenrequiredto learn another. And she had never been grateful to have learned even the Dance of the Goddess. Not until this moment.
She let the music—different as it was from the music of the Sault—wash over her. She began to move, holding the fan as, in the dance, the girls of the Sault held their lilies. She turned, her body sweeping into the movements of the dance, the room blurring around her, vanishing. She was in Aram now, and it was overrun. Armies clashed on the barren-blasted plains, under a sky that was always dark. Lightning speared the clouds overhead. The end was very near.
She danced her terror, her excitement. She danced the howl of the wind through the broken walls of her kingdom. She danced the blackening of the land, the dim red light of the sun.
He approached, the Sorcerer-King who had once been her lover. The man she had trusted above all others. She wanted him with a fierceness that seemed to outpace the fire, the storm. She danced that fierceness now: her broken heart, her longing, the passion she still felt.
He begged her to stop, then. She was not to be a fool; to destroy magic would destroy him, who she loved, and destroy her, too. All he wanted was her, he said. He would put aside everything else: magic, power, kingship. She would be all he needed.
But he was not to be trusted.
Lin danced the last moments of Adassa—her defiance, her power, blooming like a flower of fire. She danced the shudder of the world as magic left it, draining from the earth, the rocks, the sea. She danced the grief of the Goddess as she stepped into darkness: The world was changed forever, her lover lost, her people scattered.
And lastly, she danced the first fingers of sunlight as they burst across the eastern horizon. The sun rising at last, after months of darkness. She danced the beginning of hope, and the glory of defiance. She danced—
And the music stopped. Lin stopped, too, hurled back into thepresent. She was gasping, utterly out of breath; perspiration ran between her breasts, stung her eyes. She was aware of eyes on her: everyone in the room watching. Charlon’s mouth was open.
“Well,” he said, “that was—”
“Very interesting,” said the Prince. His arms were outstretched along the back of the divan; his eyes raked Lin with a sort of bemused curiosity. She was suddenly very aware that her hair was plastered to her temples and the back of her neck, her dress clinging to her damply. “I had always heard the Ashkar were not particularly good dancers, so that was acceptable, considering.”
A murmur went through the crowd; a few titters. The Prince was smiling, a cool little smile, and she suddenly hated him so much that it was as if she were back in her vision, on the tower, choking on smoke. Her whole body seemed to burn with hatred for his arrogance, his contempt. For the fact that he clearly saw her as a joke, a plaything.
And she hated that because he was beautiful he was loved and forgiven, no matter what he did. He would always be wanted. The whole world wanted him. She could feel a violent trembling in her hands, utterly at odds with her healer’s instincts: For the first time since she had been an angry child, she wanted to slap and scratch and claw. To wreck his pretty face, to stop his sideways smirk.
With a gasp, she hurled the black fan across the room. It hit the floor and skidded to the Prince’s feet. “I hope,” she said, her voice shaking with rage, “that you have been recompensed for your lack of entertainment. For, as you say, I am unskilled, and have nothing more of myself to offer.”
She caught a look of surprise as it passed across the Prince’s face, but she was already turning away. Pushing past Charlon Roverge, she strode from the room. Her grandfather had been right. These people were monsters. Let all their ships burn.
—
“Lin.Lin.Stop.”
It was Prince Conor’s voice. He had followed her, through the winding corridors of the Roverge mansion. She could not believe he had followed her. Perhaps he planned to arrest her, for throwing the black fan? An assault on royalty, they would surely call it.
