AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And mine as well.
Because somewhere deep inside me—in a hidden corner of my heart I’m ashamed to acknowledge—I don’t want Keita to go. I don’t want to have to say goodbye if this truly is the end of our journey together.
Keita seems to understand this, because he takes a step closer, wraps me in his arms. “I don’t want to go either,” he whispers, burying his face in my hair. “Not truly.”
I squeeze him with all my might. “It’s not fair. None of it. The gods, this situation, the fact that we might—” I stop halfway, choked by the sob that rises out of me.
“I know.” He squeezes me tighter, plastering little kisses across my face and neck.
“We never got our time together,” I whisper plaintively. “We never got to be alone, just you and me.” I bury my head in his chest, listening to his heartbeat, that familiar sound I know so well. “I never even got to dance with you—truly dance with you.”
“You mean like you Northerners do?” I can almost feel Keita cocking his head above me.
I nod, face still muffled in his chest to hide my embarrassment.
It was one of the things I most looked forward to when I still thought I would one day marry in the Northern way. Unlike Southern dances, the most popular Northern dances are for couples, and husbands and wives hold each other as they dance.
To my surprise, Keita nods. “Then why don’t we dance now?”
I glance up at him in confusion. “But there’s no music.”
“And what would you call the wind whistling around the mountain?”
Keita’s eyes are sparkling as the wildness there is replaced with a sly mischief.
I decide to play along. “And what about the lights?” I pout. “And the other dancers?”
“You mean those dancers?” Keita snaps his fingers, and a host of flames in the shape of tiny humans suddenly dance in the air around us. When I gape at them, astounded, he smiles down at me. “There you are, lights and dancers.” He extends a hand. “Well then, Deka, shall we?”
I look up at him, tears pricking my eyes. I know what it’s taken for him to put aside his own pain and create this festival of lights, but perhaps Keita needs it. And I need it too. So I nod, taking his hand, then I press my body to his and move slowly along to the sound of the wind whistling across the mountain.
The dance isn’t seamless—neither of us truly knows what we’re doing, since this is the first time we’ve ever danced. Still, it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt: Keita’s heated body pressed to mine, both of us moving in a slow, almost instinctual rhythm.
It’s like time has suspended, like we’re both surrounded in a bubble of our own making.
I’m so caught up in the dance, I’m disappointed when, after a few minutes, Keita slowly brings us to a halt, then removes his hands from my waist.
I sigh, glance up at him. “Time to go?”
He nods. Then he looks down at me. “So, how was our first dance?”
“Perfection,” I say. And I truly mean it.
No matter what happens at Gar Fatu, no matter what obstacles or horrors we encounter from now on, we’ll always have this—our one perfect dance.
I walk toward the door, but as I move to open it, a hand stops me. Keita’s. All the mischief has disappeared from his eyes as he says, “Just one thing. We shouldn’t take any of the deathshrieks with us.” When I turn to him fully, he sighs, shaking his head. “I hate to admit it, but I don’t know what I would do if I saw them there again, in that place. I don’t know what I would do….”
What violence I could commit.
The implication hangs in the air, a heavy warning. Keita is a jatu; he’s used to killing deathshrieks, has been doing so since he was nine. He only stopped after we realized that not only were deathshrieks intelligent beings, they were the souls of resurrected alaki.
Now he harms deathshrieks only if they pose a threat to us. He may still be a killer, but he’s not an indiscriminate one.
I nod. “All right. I’ll let White Hands know.”
But when I pull the door fully open, it’s to the sight of Katya and Rian sitting in the chair just outside, Rian curled up in Katya’s lap, since there’s no way she, as a deathshriek, can sit in his. She’s looking straight at us, hurt shining in her eyes.
“Does that include me?” she asks quietly, signing in battle language so Keita can understand her as well. “The no-deathshrieks mandate, I mean.”
