Idry was holding her entirely too close.
But it was worse when the big, jolly dancing master handed her over to him with a breathless laugh and proclaimed, “Your turn, sire!”
He tried the big sweeping turn and nearly threw Jocasta through a wall. He pulled her into a twirl, smacked her into his chest, and knocked her backwards.
Idry stopped smiling.
The small chamber orchestra (which Girion realized should have been asked to either face the other way or been concealed behind a curtain) started missing notes.
Jocasta held up a hand. “Do you know ‘All Across Three Winters, My Heart Has Searched For Thee’?”
The conductor nodded eagerly and flicked his baton.
“I don’t know that one,” Girion hissed.
“It’s slow. It’s a... It’s a slow song. About a man who searched through all three of the Winter kingdoms for his true love. I think if we just slide together in a circle, we can manage it.”
Idry made a noise like someone had kicked him in the nose and retired to the corner, his hands rubbing his temple, muttering about “All the latest steps from Cerf-Biche, but no. Slide in a circle...”
“Ignore him,” Jocasta whispered and pressed up close.
Girion held onto her. That he could do. He was good at holding tight. Fiercely gripping. He took possession of her hand and her hip like they were his and pretended not to notice a new level of heat emanating from her. Or the strange, sweet smell that seemed to pour from her, bursts of scent that beat in time to the ticking of her pulse under his hand.
Slide. In a circle.
Don’t look at anything else but her.
Sliding with her.
Against her.
Into her.
The thought hit him hard, and he wanted to pull away, only to find Jocasta’s hand digging into his side, his tunic clutched in her fist like a lifeline.
You can’t abandon her. She won’t abandon you. Bound together, endlessly, like a circle.
“Across three winters, I have walked, in frost and snow so blinding,” Jocasta’s soft humming turned into murmurs so low that he had to strain to catch them. “Feet so weary and heart near broken, but of every pain unminding. If I could have found you sooner—” She looked up, and her voice broke away into nothingness, a sharp gasp making her stumble in their slow, repetitive steps.
“Keep going. It’s beautiful,” he urged, nodding.
“I didn’t know I was singing,” she whispered, eyes not meeting his.
“You know all the words.”
“My mother likes the song. It’s too sad for me.”
“Don’t the lovers find each other?”
“They do, they do!” Jocasta hastily reassured. “I just don’t like that they had to suffer first.”
“Ah, well. I can relate to that. Love seems to hurt people.”
“Mhm.”
Another slow circle. Idry was looking at them now, with a thoughtful, calculating expression on his face.
“Not that I believe it should," Girion said when Jocasta’s face closed over. “My... My father loved my mother so devotedly. He was an empty thing without her, so he threw all of his efforts into me, into the kingdom, and then... Then my stepmother caught his eye. Ensnared him. He thought it was love. It was not.”
