“Ah,” I said teasingly, still foolish with mirth. “I thought one should not brood when there is dance to be had.”
I'd expected he would be amused, but his eyes darkened and he said, voice low with lament, “What good is dance if I must share you with the whole town?” He must have heard my thin gasp of surprise, for he drew a breath and mellowed a little. “Forgive me, Ana. I feel listless and selfish tonight, and I ache for a quiet moment with you. I did not wish to steal your joy.”
“A quiet moment with you, and my joy will be complete.”
I did not know what to call it; the softness that settled like morning mist over his features and veiled his glittering eyes. A word came to mind and took root there—as foolish hopes tended to do—and I knew that it would rob me of many hours of sleep.Adoration. As I stood before him amid moonlit marble, I knew only that whatever feeling had struck him echoed within me too, and that the sight of it nearly brought me to my knees. He took my hands in his and lowered his head.
“I hoped for nothing else tonight save this: That you might grant me a dance.”
“You did not ask.”
“I did not dare.”
I searched him, but there was not a trace of a lie or mischief on his face. How could he fear such a thing when my answer stood written in every shivering breath and wanting glance? I rested my cheek against his chest. There was a beat of silence,then a thunderous flutter. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, struck by his heat and the tickle of breath on my neck.
“Ask me now.”
Adrik gave a breathy laugh. “Will you dance with me, Ana?”
I only nodded. He entwined our fingers, drawing his knuckles gently over the length of my spine. I could not say whether we danced a swift or a slow dance, whether there was music, whether it lasted minutes or hours, and whether—in the time that we spent entangled in the starlit night—I lifted my gaze from him at all. I was trapped in a dream that I knew would end like all those that had slipped from me since our kiss: Alone and aching in a cold bed.
Adrik stoked that ache with every pass of his leg between mine as he twirled us over the marble floors; with every brush of his thumb against my bare back, with every low sigh that slipped from his lips. What was holding him back?
“Ana,” he whispered, low and rough. “Will you tell me what has you so flustered or are you simply glad to torment me?” I was biting my lip, I realized, and staring with flushed cheeks at him. I shook my head, afraid my voice might betray my longing. “How curious,” Adrik whispered with wicked amusement, “that you should be so rattled from a mere dance when you’ve painted a nude portrait of me."
I sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“Mhm, sprawled out in the snow, moonlight in my hair. I noticed you paid great attention to detail.”
The drawing of the fox. It felt like another lifetime that I’d watched him sleep in the winter night. I gave him my haughtiest smile. “Had I known it was you, I would have given the beast a much bigger head.”
He laughed brightly. “Do you have a particular interest in foxes, Ana?”
I smiled, rising to my toes to whisper in his ear, “Theyseem to have a particular interest inme.”
“Perhaps both can be true.”
Irritated by his teasing, I knew no better way to silence him than by grazing my lips over the side of his throat, drawing a groan from him. He spun us with one quick stride further out onto the balcony, trapping me between his heaving chest and the chill of the marble balustrade. I stood with my back pressed to him, shivering as I stared into the night.
“Ah,” he said with that wicked, low lilt. “You are testing me tonight.”
“Perhaps,” I said breathlessly. I felt sharply alive, as I had when I was little and chasing the moonlight to the creek. “What does it take to make you crack, Adrik?”
His hand slipped from my waist to my hip. Heat bloomed through the thin silk of the dress. I hissed with delight when his thumb found the slit in my skirt. “I cracked on another moonlit night on another balcony, Ana. I’ve worn the heat of that innocent kiss on my skin ever since. Did you not know?” He traced a line of fire over my upper thigh. His other hand rested lightly at the base of my throat. “Did you not know that I’ve been desperately waiting since?”
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for you to crack, too.” The moon burned brightly in the skies as his hand climbed higher, higher. He whispered, “I am cursed with the wildness of a faerie and the heart of a human. I am twice weak to temptation and desire, and I am twice inclined to burn the world for those I hold dear. I am twice prone to fall into a love that will consume me.” He whirled me around to look with aching, pleading eyes at me. “Have mercy on me, Ana. I have fought long and hard, but I am falling. If you must be my ruin, then please, ruin me whole.”
I could not say what prompted my gaze to slip towards the forest. Perhaps the breeze carried a faint hint of something odd, or perhaps I caught a strange movement behind the trees, or perhaps the roots of my magic, living and breathing beneath the earth, shivered for a moment in terror.
“Adrik,” I gasped, but my gaze was already slipping between the two elms.
I had not felt the tickle of grass beneath my feet in five long years. A sliver of cold remained in the air—a reminder that winter lingered behind a guise of leaves and wildflowers—but I did not mind as I danced amid trees pink with dawn.
The strange dog who had brought me here on gnarled legs had long vanished in the thicket. I’d seen it often this past moon: At the edge of the forest and sometimes in mirrors if I looked at them wrong. Tonight, fearless and unguarded from the berry-wine, I’d followed it into the woods.
It was going to the strange lands behind the pines. To the twisted trees in the swamp where no one ever went.
