Page 66 of A Dance of Lies

We haven’t had much time to practice, Copelan and I, but we don’t need it. Something about this next dance is visceral, as if my body knows the motions based on sense alone. Even so, nerves coil within me. Not only for our proximity, the response we might provoke, but also from the message I am about to relay, however subtle, in regard to Razam.

But my time to fret is limited. Each night, I’m sent to entertain small parties hosted by drunk dignitaries from across the Miridranian courts. It’s common, Laurent tells me. Large families are spread between the three territories, and the Gathering is the only time they make an effort to see one another. So they kick back their chalices and carouse while I alternate with other troupes.

I find myself longing to know the other dancers, to interact, but I keep my distance. I am too dangerous a friend. So I fulfill my duty. I dance, and I hold my tongue.

Each night Anton is there—a familiar, recurring presence. He stays an hour, maybe two, entertaining the courts with his ridiculous tales, then retires not long after.

He never speaks to me, but I feel him watching me, scrutinizing me—especially when I dance.

It’s worse than an interrogation, the way his eyes rake over me. It’s as invasive as touching. Perhaps he is still suspicious—especially after the banquet. Or more so, because of it.

Yet I can’t seem to put a pin on him, either, though I watch him as much as he watches me. It’s become a game at this point, as if we’re circling each other, waiting to see who might make the first move. I don’t break his gaze until I’m forced to. He doesn’t break mine until someone pulls him away. Whoever breaks first seems to lose something—though what, I don’t know.

But I begin to notice things.

He smiles easily—much easier than Illian—and when he laughs, he laughs proudly, freely. He flirts in abundance, seemingly enjoying the challenge of charming anyone willing to indulge him. A new companion, or several, languish over him each night. They come from every court by the looks of it, each more eager than the last. They rub his chest, dangle on his arm, massage his neck, no doubt eager to unravel the enigmatic king. And he revels in it.

Yet he drinks like a man parched, and that tells me he’s either unhappy or he’s trying to forget something—something that haunts him from dreams to waking, the way my father now haunts me.

I long to know what it is.

Tonight unfolds like any other. After my performance, I retreat into the shadows bordering the room, anticipating my dismissal. However, an unexpected guest graces the soirée—Prince Raiden, the Prince of Zar. So engrossed is he in a game of marble joust that he’s forsaken his customary silver headpiece, his dark curls falling freely. Courtiers lounge with the seventeen-year-old prince around a table, musicians stringing an idle tune in the background. They forget about me entirely.

It isn’t until I back against a wall that I realize Anton is next to me instead of indulging in his usual proclivities.

“You have yet to answer my question,” he says, fiddling with the brass buttons on his burnished gold velvet jacket—his gaudiest piece yet, bedazzled in rows of hematite stones. Even locks of his hair are strung back with them. “About why you dance.”

“Why do you drink and flirt with anything that breathes?” I return, only to bite my tongue in regret.

Until he says, “Because I am exceedingly wonderful at both.”

“I think flirting is your way of interrogating.”

“I think you are scrumptious,” he says with a grin, proving my point exactly. “Care to answer menow?”

“I can’t imagine why you want to know so badly.”

“Little is more revealing than one’s passion. Or lack thereof.” He glances at me pointedly.

“Are you always this presumptuous?”

“I am precisely the right amount of presumptuous.”

I let out a huff. “What makes you believe that dancing is not a passion of mine?”

“It pains you in some way or another, does it not?”

So he’s noticed that, too. “That hardly means it isn’t a passion.”

He swirls the liquid in his glass. “What I find most interesting about you, Minnow, is that sometimes you do seem to love it. You transform not only yourself but the room. You enchant us. We are spellbound to you, and you to your dance. Yet there are times you seem to loathe it, too.”

I loathe that he’s been watching me so closely.

Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, but I have nothing in me to combat him further, so I relent, if only a little. “I dance because . . .”

Because I must,I almost say.Because I am forced into it, now.

I hate that my passion, my greatest joy, my way to remember Emilia, is now a weapon in Illian’s hands.