Until he let go of my waist, brought his hand to my face, and touched my mask. Just touched it with his fingertips—there, over my eyehole.
The man stopped. Sucked in a deep breath. Froze completely—I could tell because I had slammed onto his chest again when he stopped so abruptly.
Not going to lie, I was terrified, but it didn’t last long. The next beat, the man shook his head a little, put his hand back around my waist, and continued to dance.
What in the Everstill…
I was stunned for a moment, could do nothing but look around, try to find an answer to what was happening here.
That’s when I realized that almost every single person was touching the mask of their dance partner at one point—exactly like this guy had touched mine.
I didn’t hesitate. As he spun me around once more, I raised my hand from his shoulder and touched his mask right over his eyehole without a second thought.
The ballroom disappeared completelythe same second. I was picked up and sucked back through time and space and who knew what—and then I was standing still again.
No—I waswalking.
Down a narrow street washed with gold, I was walking.
Sunlight spilled evenly over stone walls and shuttered windows in a place I’d never seen before. Two-story buildings on both sides, most made of stone, and the sky was so perfectlyblue,and the sun so perfectly round.
I wanted to look at it, as disoriented as I was, but couldn’t. My eyes didn’t respond to my commands.
Or maybe the eyes of whoever I wasinright now didn’t respond to my commands.
Because I was in a different body—I could just see my feet. They were big and they were wide, and the shoes on them were ones I’d never seen before, definitely male.
Whatever was happening, I wasnot mein those moments. I was someone else, and someplace else, and…
Somewhere ahead, people laughed but the sound only reached me as an echo. Every step I took forward was steady. Even though I thought I should be panicking, I wasn’t. My breathing was calm. My eyes were ahead, sometimes on the sky, sometimes on the smooth stone of the walls, sometimes on the cobbled street ahead of me, a street that never seemed to end.
All the buildings were…identical. The way the sun fell and the breeze blew…everything justfit.
A little too well.
Beautiful—too beautiful. Too calm, and my chest was still so empty. Nothing in me reacted to anything I saw or heard. No warmth underneath my skin—and this had to be a memory, I thought. It was the only explanation that made a little sense because those men had takenmymemories and had attached them to my mask, and maybe they’d done the same to my dance partner, too.
Except nothing was actually happening. I was only moving through the street, never slowing down or speeding up, neverliving.Just…walking.
I tried to push myself back, away from the man—and it worked. Drawing in a sharp breath, the ballroom and the music and the people returned all at once, and I was no longer touching the mask of the guy I’d been dancing with.
This time, I knew enough to step back, to let go, to move farther and farther away until he realized that I didn’t want to dance with him anymore.
He did.
His hand was still raised as if he were considering running after me or something. At the last moment, he thought better of it, simply turned around and disappeared into the crowd, dancing all the while.
I released the breath I’d been holding and brought my hands to my chest to try to calm down my racing heart.
But I only got a short moment before another man grabbed my hand and spun me around, and pulled me behind one of the partitions. My feet moved,dancedon their own while he guided me, his pulls smooth, gentle, his hands cold. I didn’t even have a second to be afraid.
This one was shorter, and he wore a dark red suit almost identical to March’s, except his hair was far lighter, almost aslight as mine from what I could see. He wasn’t March by any means, but he spun me around and there was less of a crowd here between the partitions, though the music reached us with the same volume.
The man suddenly let go of my hand and tapped his fingertip to my mask.
This time I expected it. This time, I wasn’t as shocked when he stopped for a second, froze, gasped, then continued dancing like nothing at all had happened.
A moment’s glitch, that’s all. Just a moment’s glitch.
