Despite myself, I take his hand.
So we dance.
And he's good at it. Of course he's good at it. He leads the way he does everything — no wasted motion, no showing off — and within eight bars I realize he's doing something else, too. He's shortening his steps to match mine. Turning me away from the crowded side of the floor before I notice it. Making me look like I know this dance.
But I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.
One of his hands swallows mine entirely. The other sits at my back, holding me as gently as he held the teacup at the last fitting. Gently. Like I’m something that matters.
I'm fairly sure no one has ever handled me like something breakable. I'm the one who fixes something breakable.
The melody skips— and I'm the one who missteps, my boot landing squarely on top of his.
He doesn't stumble. He doesn't even slow. He just turns my mistake into a little lift-and-set. My feet leave the floor and find it again on the right count.
So smooth that anyone watching would think we'd rehearsed it.
"Sorry—" I'm flushing. "I stepped on you."
"You'd have to try harder than that."
"You're covering for me."
"I'm leading," he says. "It's the same thing."
And I laugh — I can't help it —and I get brave. "All right, my lord. If you're so good at covering. There's an orc step, the little quick one — I saw Saskia doing it. Teach me."
He looks at me a moment. Then he adjusts his grip, says "on the skip," and when the tune skips again he pulls me through it with him, and it works.
Now I'm laughing and he is fighting a laugh and losing, tusks and all. We are trading steps in the middle of his sister's wedding, my cold hands in his warm ones, and we’re laughing.
This is what dancing should be.
"There," I say, breathless, looking up at him. "Now we're dancing."
He looks down at me, smiling.
Then the smile disappears. His hands leave me between one bar and the next.
The music is still playing. His hands are gone from me between one bar and the next.
"Thank you for the dance," Torgan says — to a point above my head, in the voice of a man concluding a trade negotiation. "You should — the cups. There will be a toast soon."
"Torgan—"
But he’s already moving through the crowd, and everyone steps aside.
I stand alone in the middle of the dance floor with my heart hammering.
The music turns over. Dancers wheel past me, and I get myself to the edge of the floor before anyone can sweep me into a line, because suddenly I cannot bear to be flung and caught by people who mean it.
I find a bench against the wall. I sit, and I do the thing Grammy told me not to do.
I worry myself into a spiral.
Was it the one dance? One misstep?
I saw it. How he shut himself off.
