“Shit.” Fionn whistled. No one was answering me.
“What does it do?” I asked again.
“The Pentacle is the sacred object which corresponds to the earth element,” Rory began. He’d told me that much already. “It is said that, among other things, it was the key to releasing the Goddess Ishtar from the underworld.”
“So, that’s a good thing, right?” I looked at the four of them; they had all stiffened.
“It is a dangerous thing,” Ciaran finally answered. “Our Goddess has been imprisoned for a millennia. Since the fey still walked the Earth. No one knows what would happen if she were released. She might be a benevolent presence who would bring prosperity and freedom for the magic-wielding people.” His hand resumed its casual perusal of my lower back, sending skitters of pleasure through me.
“But…” I leaned into him, just a little.
“But she might go scorched earth and try to wipe the slate clean. She also may not distinguish between the humans who imprisoned her and the ones who worship her,” Fionn chimed in, a grim expression on his usually cheerful face.
“So if she’s released, it might be the literal end of the world?” I asked. It felt a little silly. A little dramatic. But the tension in the room right now told me that this was serious.
“It could be catastrophic if that object ended up in the wrong hands,” Ciaran confirmed.
“But if it’s in the opera house, then it’s as good as in Scion’s hands,” I whispered.
“That would be quite the predicament, wouldn’t it?” Ciaran’s other hand found my knee and I was about to combust. I tried to focus on the seemingly dire problem at hand but Goddess… his hands were on me and I was trying not to squirm.
“We would have to confirm that the object was in fact the Pentacle,” Rory said softly.
“Yes,” Ciaran confirmed.
“But that would mean going into the opera house. Which is owned by the viscount. Who is essentially in Scion’s pocket,” I reasoned.
“Indeed.” Ciaran’s voice was grim, but his fingers were circling a sensitive spot on the side of my knee.This cannot be happening.
Everyone was silent for a few moments, processing what I had just revealed.
“Let’s finish the game. There’s nothing to be done about this right now,” Elena chirped, breaking the tension in the room. “Come on. I’ll re-deal this hand.” She reached across the table and gathered up the cards.
So we played. Fionn and Elena won again, gloating terribly. Ciaran kept one hand on my lower back and one on my knee the entire time. Though I knew that I should have been worried about the fact that an ancient, sacred magical object might be in our enemy’s hands, the only hands I could think of were his, tracing illicit patterns at the base of my spine.
DANCING AND DIATRIBES
It was a welcome relief the next week when Elena invited me to come to a dance class. After everything that had happened over the past few days, I needed to get out of that apartment, or I was going to burst into flames. Probably not literally, but with the magic flowing in my veins, who knew for sure.
Elena told me to pack my heels for the class. I borrowed a rather skimpy black slip dress from Elena. She said it would allow me to move freely as we danced. This was such a departure from what I was used to wearing to dance classes. Butterflies flitted around in my stomach. I had never done anything like this style of dance before; what if I made a complete fool of myself?
“But what if you love it?” Elena asked when I voiced my nervousness. “I know, I felt the same way before my first class, but you’ll see. It’s just so much fun.” I remembered how much I had wanted to get up and dance during Carol Ruby’s show, so I shoved down my nervousness and followed Elena toward the Room of Cubes, where the dance studio was located.
The space was little more than a large open room with a wall of mirrors on one side and a worn wooden floor. My chest ached to be back in a dance studio. It had only been a few weeks,but my muscles also ached from the atrophy of not practising. There was a row of black chairs against the back wall, opposite the mirrors, and a phonograph sat on a small square table in the downstage right corner. A few people already milled around in the middle of the room, chatting and stretching. Elena and I grabbed a spot near the front.
Elena knew everyone and introduced me. This class was mostly women, but there were three men as well, wearing heels just as high as the women. The teacher came in through a side door. She didn’t help with my feelings of inadequacy and intimidation.
She introduced herself as Mal. She had golden brown skin, and large, angular eyes with thick lashes. Her long crimson hair gently curled in loose waves, all the way down to her waist. She was curvy, with voluptuous hips and thighs. She spoke with authority as she led us through a warm-up. It was gruelling and I felt every movement in my out-of-shape muscles. But the burn was exactly what I needed—to feel that rush that comes from physical movement.
The choreography was different from anything I had ever done before. First, dancing in heels was an adjustment. I was used to holding my weight in a certain way to dance in pointe shoes, or even character shoes, but to dance in heels was almost the antithesis. Once I stopped feeling like an unsteady fawn, I found my rhythm and started to pick up the moves. I wasn’t nearly as good as anyone else in the class; they were all seasoned professionals compared to me. But choreography is choreography, and the part of my brain that could pick it up quickly had not atrophied along with the rest of me.
We moved on to the chair portion. Here I really had to push my boundaries. This was not a proper, stuck-up ballet class. Mal reminded us that there was room for imperfection. Some of themoves were sharp and precise, but others required us to be lazy and syrupy.
Mal placed the needle on the phonograph as we danced the choreography to the music. It started off simple: there was staccato piano, one and a two and a three and a four. Sixteen counts of that. Then the drums came in, and finally some soulful vocals. It was sultry and strong. Mal’s choreography had us begin with a dive down toward our left leg. I went for it. All in: the hard-working ballerina from the Lutesse City Opera did not have another setting. And though Mal was more casual than Madame Giselle, she was just as intense.
As the drums came in, I swung my leg up and over the chair, sitting down on a hard accent. I swung my head back, lifting my chest up high, flipping my hair around with reckless abandon as I turned to face stage left. I leaned back in the chair, tipping almost all the way down to the floor as my legs kicked skywards. My skirt hiked up, showing off my thighs—not as muscular as they once were but still strong.
I spun off the chair, undulating down to the floor, hips writhing as I crawled forward, legs splayed, ass in the air. It felt wild: I had never done anything this reckless or free. But my body had craved the fire in my lungs, the elevated heart rate, the way my leg muscles burned as we moved from dancing on our feet, to the chairs, to the floor and back up again. The way it felt to spot, keeping my head level and my gaze fixed on a point as I completed a series of pirouettes even while wearing the heels, even as my calves screamed in protest. I felt better than I had in weeks.
