Her grin widened as she realized she’d struck a nerve, delight flickering across her face like a cat toying with a dying bird. “There it is. That doubt. Keep it close, petal—it’s the only honest thing about you.”
I straightened, forcing the tremor from my voice. “If what you’ve said is true,” I said tightly, “then isn’t it your job to teach me more than that?” I leaned forward. “I know what it is to be desired,” I murmured. “I’ve had men follow me home. Sneak onto my family’s land just to catch a glimpse. I’ve woken up to footsteps outside my window. I’ve had to twist away from hands I never invited, to shut down stares that never asked permission.”
Something cold flickered in her gaze, but I didn’t let it stop me.
“I want to learn how to shape that want, how to frame it for what I need … how tocontrolit.”
She leaned back, that lazy smile gone now. Her gaze sharpened with something I didn’t yet have a name for … interest, maybe. Or the faintest echo of respect.
“That,” she said, her voice like a hum, “is something I can work with.”
Hetairis sighed theatrically, before rising with the grace of someone who’d never stumbled a day in her life. She circled me slowly, as though deciding where best to strike.
Her hands came down on my arms, firm, not cruel, but enough to still the air in my lungs.
“We’ll have to break you open, I think,” she murmured, her face inches from mine, gaze locked and unblinking as though she could see through my veil. “Find the heat hiding beneath all that rigidity.”
I braced myself, but her grip only tightened slightly, anchoring me there.
“Because believe me, Helena of … wherever”—her mouth curved, mocking now—“you’re going to need it.”
Everyone was busy, on their knees, crawling, practicing the art of allure with trailing fingers and arched backs. Their veils fluttered as they swayed, bodies moving to rhythms that throbbed languidly like heartbeats in heat. No one was looking at me.
But it felt like they were.
Like every gaze in the room slid sideways when I shifted. Like every sigh, every sultry command from teacher to student was layered with judgment meant for me.
I was supposed to be dancing. Enticing. Drawing eyes like honey draws flies. Instead, I stood there like a statue someone forgot to carve properly, burning from the inside out.
Hetairis settled back in the settee, reclining like a queen returning to her throne. She waved a lazy hand through the air. “Again. Begin.”
My pulse drummed loud enough to drown thought. I took a breath and tried to ground myself as I awkwardly shifted my hips, trying to mimic what she’d shown me … grace, elegance, a kind of liquid seduction in motion. I let my hands trail down my sides, tracing silk as if it could disguise the flesh and nerves beneath it. I tried to remember how I’d felt walking through the hall, how I’d swayed my hips and made him look.
Or had that just been because of my face?
Hetairis let out a snort, loud and unkind. “Are you dancing or warding off evil spirits?”
I blinked, faltered, then tried again, one stilted step forward, then another, my hips swaying in a motion that felt more like I was dodging something than seducing anyone. I dropped my voice, tried to hum something under my breath, but it came out too breathy, too fast. My hand went up—why was it going up?—and I realized, too late, I had no idea what I was doing with it. I let it drift down in a strange, fluttering motion that looked like I was brushing away a fly.
A few girls nearby paused their own movements, heads tilting just slightly, and mocking laughter rang out from their cluster.
Gods. I wanted the floor to open and devour me whole. Why was this so much harder with a veil on?
Hetairis’s laugh flayed the room. “Stop. Just … stop. That was the most painful thing I’ve ever seen, and I once watched a senator try to fuck a marble statue.”
I froze.Mortifieddidn’t even begin to cover it.
She rolled her eyes and sat up, resting her elbows on her knees. “You’re trying too hard. You think it’s about stroking your arms and pouting like a confused nymph. It’s not.” She leaned in slightly, her tone cooling. “It’s aknowing, petal. That you are the prize. Thattheyshould be the ones aching, burning, groveling just to taste you.”
I knew this language. The pulse beneath the skin, the seduction in the eyes. I’d felt it before, that power that made men forget to breathe.
So why couldn’t I make itshow?
Hetairis stood again and walked toward me, lifting my veil slightly so she could peek at my face. “Make them yearn to lift this veil and look upon you. Lure them in with your movements.”
She dropped my veil and looked away, her eyes suddenly distant. “I’ve served this court for twenty-five years,” she said in a voice edged in exhaustion. “Twenty-five years of strangers’ beds and eager hands, of smiling while the fruit grew riper around me, and each year sweet new flesh arriving to remind me of the youth … of the beauty that I lose every day.”
She coughed out a humorless, dry laugh.
