Page 24 of A Dance of Lies

A strand of white-gold hair dips into his gaze as he looks down the tip of his nose at me. “Stand straight. Lock your knees.” I obey, and he taps my shoulders, swaying me to test my balance. I only just manage to resist tipping over.

Satisfied, he whispers, “Close your eyes.”

My eyelids fall shut, my skin clammy. Whatever this test, I won’t refuse it. He already saw my weakness. I must show him my resilience now.

Or perhaps I need to see it for myself.

“I visited the Carasian Mountains once,” he says, slipping a band around my eyes. His blindfold.

Breathe.

Don’t panic.

“It was a long time ago, during the great blizzard that lacquered ice across the roads in East Miridran for months,” he goes on. “With nothing better to do, I climbed Mount Carapet—by myself.”

The same mountain that King Anton fell from. Dizziness swirls over me, but I keep my feet rooted. I hear him circle me.

“There’s no feeling quite like standing on the edge of a cliff, the world unspooling beneath you in waves,” he says. I tilt my head, trying to discern his direction, but his voice is like wind, drifting from place to place.

Then he leans in, his breath stirring my hair. “Allow me to take you there.”

A chill stipples my skin and I press my palms to my leggings.

“The mountain is your throne,” he says from somewhere on my left. “The snow-laden grass a carpet beneath your feet. The trees are your soldiers, your white knights, standing at attention. The birds are your trumpets, your announcers, and when you level your gaze with the horizon, it feels as if you’re flying alongside them.”

I see it, this picture he draws for me. He stencils it word by word until I am there, my toes grazing the cliff ‘s edge, the wind—his breath—cool on my skin. He tells me what I hear, what I smell, the taste on my tongue.

“You belong here,” he says—a whisper, “with the world at your feet and leaves in your hair. You see the riverbed below, the wildlife. Deer prance freely, beckoning you to join them.” He’s to my right. Or in front of me, perhaps, but I am lost to the vision. “This is your kingdom after all; even the gale obeys your command. Go with them, Vasalie.”

I’m tempted to step from my perch, the urge overwhelming. Hechooses then to issue a simple command into my ear, so gentle I almost miss it. “Now fall.”

He isn’t behind me. Distantly, I know this, but still I let my weight plummet backward—

He doesn’t catch me. My heart leaps into my throat, but then something light and soft—fabric?—lassos around my shouldersinchesbefore I hit the ground, then lowers me until I’m flat on my back.

I rip the blindfold off.

An aerialist ribbon, it looks like. I scramble up, begrudgingly accepting the hand he offers me, dropping it once I’m steady. “I almost hit the ground!”

“But you didn’t.” His lips quirk, and he tosses the aerialist ribbon aside. “Well, Miss Moran, that certainly wasn’t trust. But you’re brave, and I can work with that. Abandon, however, is another matter.”

Abandon.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I say, a slight jitter still working its way through my limbs.

“It means giving up your freedom, your instincts, your boundaries.” He narrows the space between us. “It means that you lend your partner a key to the areas you’ve locked away. It means you surrender everything you want, everything you are, in lieu of the dance.”

“And you want me to prove it.” Like his test of trust.

“Can you?” His smirk holds a dare.

I take my bottom lip between my teeth, then lean to grab the blindfold. “Not with words.”

His hand twitches at his side. I summon my courage and wrap the blindfold around my eyes, and before I can change my mind, I close the remaining distance, my chest pressed against his.

I draw in air, feeling his breath rise and fall with mine.

He sets a palm on my lower back. Energy crackles like wildfire, and yet I can read it, somehow. I can read him, sense what he wants.