She stared at it as if it were a suspicious mushroom.
“Truce,” he said, soft, as if the word might spook.
Her fingers slid into his, warm against his calluses. “Under the original terms of truce,” she said dryly, “this gesture qualifiesas a renewal. Limited duration. Subject to breach without notice.”
A smile ghosted across his mouth as he tugged her toward the square. “Then consider this a clause you forgot to write down: when music plays, the witch is obligated to dance.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That was never in the contract.”
“It is now,” Wesley said, drawing her into the rhythm anyway. “Section Eight, Subpart B:all smoldering glares must be performed in time to the music.”
Wesley tugged her into the circle as Oli sang and spun Selene until her braids whipped like comets. The wyvern fountain spat silver arcs that misted their faces when they passed too close. Someone pressed a cup into Maude’s free hand; she drank without looking—spiced, hot, perfect—and told herself the warmth in her chest was the cider, nothing more.
“You’re terrible at this,” Wesley said cheerfully over the music, executing a smug little step that had no business being that light on a man his size.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was trying to radiate menace.”
“It’s working.” He grinned—the kind of smile that made the lantern light show off for him.
Her body did the traitorous thing of remembering: the shape of his palm from earlier, the weight at the small of her back. She scowled at her own feet and let the reel yank her two steps right, one left.
They lasted three rounds before the music turned, the crowd folding inward like a current. Fiddles slipped into something low, vowels drawn out like wind through a hollow reed. The drum fell to a heartbeat. Couples drew together, palms and shoulders and breath.
Before Maude could bolt, Wesley’s palm slid along her spine.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“No. I don’t do slow.”
“Come on,menace. One song.”
She folded her arms. “I bite.”
“I’m vaccinated.” He offered his hand again, palm up. “Please?”
It was ridiculous how loudly the wordPleaselanded. She searched for an excuse and found only Oli, already draped around Selene like a scarf, whispering something into her ear. Selene laughed so hard she nearly toppled. Useless. Both of them.
Wesley’s hand was warm where it settled at her waist. Up close, he was broader than she ever let herself acknowledge—baker’s arms, a heartbeat steady as a drum beneath his shirt. She stepped into him because the alternative was letting the awkwardness hang forever. Her forehead brushed the center of his chest.
“You’re so short,” he murmured, amusement in his low tone.
“And you’re obvious.”
He laughed, then—carefully—set his boots wide and lifted her by the waist the smallest fraction and set her on his shoes.
She made a sound she would later deny on penalty of murder.
“It’s practical,” he said, solemn. “I don’t want my spine to seize from leaning.”
She grinned into his shirt. Heat climbed up her neck. Her laugh got lost in the fabric and came back gentler than she meant for it to.
They moved. Not gracefully—she would never give him that—but in time. His stride shortened; her chin found the hollow near his collarbone; the thrum of the band threaded through him into her. The square pulsed around them: cider steam, pumpkin glow, fire-dancer sparks catching the air and winking out like tiny meteors. Selene’s laugh cut bright as a bell; Oli shouted something obscene about hips that Maude refused to process.
She slid off his boots after a bar or two, dignity reasserting itself, and put her palms flat against his chest where his shirt was soft and heat lived. “Don’t you dare try to spin me.”
“Oh? What would you do if I did?”
He dipped his head a fraction, close enough that she could count the blue flecks in his eyes, close enough that she felt the shape of the kiss he hadn’t taken last time like a heat map on hermouth. For half a second, the square, the town, the curse—everything—thinned to the ache ofmaybe.
