“You’re late,” he said, bored. “The rest of your party is already assembling.”
“I was asked to perform a solo piece,” she said, crossing her arms.
The man groaned, flipping through the pages of the schedule. “If you can go on now, then—”
“Lead the way.”
She scanned the crowd… somewhere, Séverin was there.
The guard directed her to the musicians to choose a song. Laila recognized their instruments, and an ache dug into her ribs. The double-sided drum, the flute and veena and bright cymbals.
“Which piece shall we play?” asked the veena musician.
She peered through the curtain at the crowd. Men in suits. Women in dresses. Glasses in their hand. No sense of the story she would have tried to tell with her body. No language with which to decipher the devotion of her dance.
She would not perform her faith to them.
“Jatiswaram,” she said. “But increase the tempo.”
One of the musicians raised an eyebrow. “It’s already fast.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think I don’t know that?”
Jatiswaram was the most technical piece, the distillation of music and movement. A piece where she could still perform and set her heart aside.
A few minutes later, an announcer cleared his throat. The stage fell dark. “Presenting a nautch dancer—”
Laila tuned out the presenter. She was not a nautch dancer. She was abharatnatyamperformer.
As she walked, two parts of herself merged together. She had done this walk, worn these clothes. The man who had brought her to France as a performer had thrown away the original costume sewn by her mother. Laila was supposed to wear a customizedsalwar kameez, not this ridiculous thing that left her midriff and chest on display. Her hair was supposed to be strung with flowers, with a preserved jasmine from her mother’s first performance. Not unbound, and brushing her waist. She looked at her hands, her chest pinching. Her hands felt naked without henna.
A low murmur of approval chased through the crowd when she walked on the stage. When she performed at the Palais, her favorite moment was stepping onto the stage before the lights rose: the adrenaline fizzing in her veins, the darkness of the theater that made her feel as if she’d only just burst into existence. But here, she felt like something held beneath glass. Trapped. Between her breasts, the key to the library felt like a chip of ice. She scanned the crowd. Before each seat was a basket of rose petals to be thrown upon the performer at the conclusion of their entertainment.
The music keyed up.
Even before the light fell on her, shefeltSéverin before she saw him. A space of cold in a warm room. The lights cast his eyes into shadow. All she could see were his long legs stretched in front of him, his chin on his palm like a bored emperor. She knew that pose. Memory stole her breath. She thought back to that evening… on her birthday… when she’d felt buzzed with a daring she almost never indulged. She’d cornered him in his study, more intoxicated by the way he’d looked at her than she had been from any champagne. Séverin hadn’t gotten her a birthday present, and so she demanded a kiss that turned into something more…
Laila could feel the moment he became aware of her on the stage. The sudden stiffness of his body.
He’d never seen her dance before… and instantly something changed within her. It was how she felt before she always performed, as if her blood nowglittered.
She needed him to look closely. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t get the key on time. But shewantedhim to look closely too.
Perhaps it was just her fate to be haunted by a night never acknowledged. But that didn’t mean she had to suffer alone. Maybe it was cruel of her, but her mother’s voice rang in her ears anyway:Don’t capture their hearts. Steal their imagination. It’s far more useful.
And so she did. She sank into the beginning pose, hip jutted, chin tilted to expose the long line of her throat. The music started. She tapped her heels against the floor. The movements so precise it was as if she’d sewn her shadow to the beat.
Tha thai tum tha.
Séverin might have looked like liquid elegance as he lounged in the crowd, but she knew him. Every muscle was strung taut. Rigid. Beneath that posture was something prowling and hungry. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel them tracking her. His mouth had gone from a controlled smile to a slack line.
Laila felt a burst of satisfaction.
I won’t be haunted alone.
She dragged her hand across her chest. Séverin shifted in his seat. Laila hooked her pinky into the gap of the key. She stamped her foot, glancing at the floor as she concealed the key in a row of bangles. As she sank lower, she smiled to herself.
There was another power in her. A power that sat low and thick in her blood and consciousness. A way to move through a world that tried to keep her to the sidelines.
