by Dan Wingreen
"Highness! Good news." The Crown Prince turned and snarled, an insult no doubt ready to fly from his lips, when he saw Elias. His snarl melted into a look of lost confusion. Which the Dark Prince promptly took advantage of. "Elias has reconsidered his decision and would love to dance with you."
Three things happened, then. The first was that the Dark Prince shoved Elias at the Crown Prince. The second was the Crown Prince, with a look of wide-eyed disbelief, caught Elias around the shoulders. The third was that Elias became all too painfully aware that there were a lot more nobles around them now than there were before. His brain, as near-useless as it was at that particular moment, was still functional enough to point out that rejecting a dance with the Crown Prince again in front of half the peerage would have been indescribably rude and, considering Elias's status as a scholar—and thus a commoner—the scandal that followed would be automatically worse for the throne than anything the Crown Prince had managed to do thus far. If he was going to get out of this, he was going to have to get the Crown Prince to rescind his offer.
"I can't dance."
He hadn't meant to sound as lost as he did, but considering how incredibly out of his comfort zone he was, he supposed it was inevitable. As was the Prince's reaction.
After the shock wore off, the Crown Prince gave Elias what anyone else might consider a dashing grin and said, "It's all right, Elias. Anyone can dance if they have the right partner."
Then, before Elias could think of any other way to get himself out of this, the Crown Prince took him in his arms and pulled him onto the nearby dance floor.
It was every bit as awful as he had expected it to be.
He tripped and stumbled; he missed steps and crushed the Prince's feet with his own on multiple occasions; he slipped out of the Prince's loose grip several times and ended up bumping into the nobles dancing next to them. It was an unmitigated disaster, and for the first time since he was thirteen, he found himself abjectly humiliated.
The Crown Prince, of course, was completely oblivious to Elias's distress. He laughed at Elias's missteps, as though they were charming instead of disgraceful. He led like Elias imagined he would rule, with a light touch instead of a firm grip, and the assumption the person he was leading would do what he wanted without being told what that was. The Prince held Elias close, winced when his feet were trampled, but then still tried to hold a conversation. Elias was too busy concentrating—vainly—on minimizing his ineptitude, but he could guess what the Crown Prince was trying to say based on the way he stumbled over his words and refused to look Elias in the eye.
The Dark Prince was right. He has feelings for me. And he's trying to tell me about them in the middle of this disaster of a dance!
He supposed the one saving grace was that the Prince seemed unable to make the situation even more uncomfortable by actually completing his confession. As it was, he tried several times before giving up with a disgruntled pout and settling into a sulk for the rest of the dance.
By the time the song had—mercifully—ended, more people were watching them than were dancing, and Elias's face was burning. The Crown Prince opened his mouth and, for one horrible moment, Elias was sure he was going to ask for another dance. After one look at Elias's face, however, he made a very rare wise choice and slowly closed it.
Red-faced, shaking, and furiously mortified, Elias detached himself from the Crown Prince's grasp and, with every ounce of the not inconsiderable dignity he possessed, bowed deeply to him. He held the bow for exactly five seconds, then straightened up, spun on his heel and stalked off the dance floor with his shoulders squared and his head held high. A low murmur of conversation sprang up in his wake, and he clenched his jaw and steadfastly ignored every snippet he overheard.
With mounting horror, he realized his eyes had started to burn.
Elias managed to make it two steps past the edge of the dance floor before he felt the urge to break into a run. It was an urge he might have given into, had he not met the steady, deep blue gaze of the Dark Prince. His mortification turned instantly into cold, concentrated anger.
If glares could freeze, the room would have been a glacier with said Dark Prince directly in the middle.
Elias stormed over to the Dark Prince with every intention of salving his humiliation by quietly, but viciously, savaging the Prince with words designed to tear at his very soul, but before he could, a very curious thing happened.
The Dark Prince's hands came up as if to push Elias away, but instead of completing the entirely sensible action before running away from the scholar's fury, he placed them on Elias's shoulders and pulled him closer. Hazel eyes met eyes of the darkest blue, and the fury and outrage and embarrassment bled out of Elias like paint on a canvas left in the rain. The regret he could see in the Dark Prince's eyes left him quite literally breathless. Not during any of his apologies had Elias seen such a depth of remorse.
"I'm sorry," the Dark Prince said solemnly.
Elias forced himself to breathe as every single one of those unidentifiable, maddening, wonderful emotions came rushing in to fill the empty place inside of him left by the departure of his earlier feelings.
"I never should have forced you to dance with such an ungraceful brute."
It took a moment for Elias to register the words, then another for him to fit them into any kind of context. When he did, he was even more confused.
"Wh-what?" He barely even noticed he was stuttering. Surely, the Prince had to recognize it was Elias's fault that the dance was so terrible.
"I never should have let him touch you, let alone ruin your dance like that."
Elias wanted to respond, to say that nothing was ruined because the act of ruining something implied that there was the chance of it being good before it had been ruined, and there was no way that a dance could ever have been good. And yet, he couldn't say anything. Not even as the Dark Prince took his hand gently between his own and held it against his chest.
"Let me show you what a dance truly is."
Elias couldn't do anything but stare into the too-expressive eyes of the Prince. He could feel that unidentified emotion resonating inside of him. The feelings he'd been desperately trying to categorize for so long were shouting at him so loudly he could do nothing but listen. So he didn't protest when the Dark Prince let one of his hands fall away from Elias's, though he wanted to. And he didn't protest when the Prince slowly led him back to the dance floor, though he really wanted to.
Elias followed willingly, a fog clouding the corners of his usually so active mind. He didn't notice whether or not people were still staring at him. It was like the entire world had fallen away, every light dimming until it was just Elias and the Dark Prince standing in a vast, empty blackness, which stretched on to the ends of the world.
And then they danced.
And it was nothing like Elias had expected.
He couldn't hear the music, although if his rational mind was working it would have told him it must have been there, but that didn't seem to matter. The Dark Prince was grace incarnate, leading Elias with expert elegance, like they had been dancing together for their entire lives. His grip on Elias was light, but firm, guiding him with a touch so gentle Elias could almost believe he was deciding what to do on his own. He seemed to know even before Elias when the scholar was about to make a misstep, and he corrected it with one of those gentle nudges before Elias even realized he was about to make a mistake.
They floated through the world like leaves on the wind. He couldn't help smiling as he felt the urge to laugh out loud bubbling up inside of him. Not only was he actually dancing, he was having fun.
Elias had never been more in awe of anything in his entire life.
Light filtered back into the world, then, and he noticed, in the absent way in which people occasionally notice they're breathing, that an entire universe existed outside of the two of them. Right then, however, Elias's world consisted entirely of the Dark Prince. Of the sheer delight he could see
in the man's eyes. Delight that Elias was dancing perfectly with him. Delight at the surprise and awe on Elias's face. Delight that Elias was enjoying himself.
It reminded him of the first time he'd heard the Dark Prince's laugh. He had never thought anyone could take such pure pleasure in laughter and it had completely changed his perception of the Prince, though he hadn't recognized how much until a long time after. He felt the same way then as he looked into the Prince's eyes, except this time it was because he'd never thought anyone would take such pure pleasure in him.
Then the Dark Prince smiled, the delight in his eyes shining with an inner glow, which had nothing to do with magic, as he caressed the back of the scholar's hand with his thumb, and Elias's world shattered.
It put itself back together almost immediately, the pieces fitting next to each other in ways they never would have been able to before and, as easy as that, he found he could identify every single one of his previously unidentifiable feelings with perfect clarity.
So. The thought came absently, with an almost clinical detachment, despite the way his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. This is what attraction feels like.
And it was attraction, Elias couldn't deny it. Not a shallow, physical kind, but true attraction. Attraction to emotion, to who a person really is. To a Dark Prince who was horribly flawed in all the most important ways, but who was also absolutely wonderful in ways which were somehow even more important. He fit into Elias's life in a way no one had since his parents had died; not even Cornelia had been able to fill that place in his heart. The Prince cared about Elias in ways no one ever had. He had heard it in the Prince's words for weeks. He could see it in the Prince's eyes right then, bright and lustrous and so obvious it made Elias gasp out loud, and he knew without any doubt, the way he sometimes knew one of his theories would be proven correct, that the Prince returned those feelings wholeheartedly. He had for quite some time, in fact.
It was quite embarrassing it had taken Elias this long to puzzle it out.
Was he truly right about his own feelings, though? It was strange how his usually analytical mind had latched onto this one answer with such surety. Surely feelings like this took more time to develop, didn't they? After all, he just came to terms with the fact that he thought of the Dark Prince as a friend. His feelings couldn't have possibly escalated so quickly…and yet…
A line from the one Belinda Beatrice novel he'd read all those years ago came back to him then. What is love if not friendship and attraction? He had thought it trite and overly simplistic at the time, but now, dancing in the Dark Prince's arms, he realized it was true. At least, for him it was, because friendship meant so much more to Elias than it did to most people. It meant feeling safe with someone, even when he shouldn't. It meant trusting someone, even when they'd given him every reason not to. It meant comfort and warmth and conversations by the fire. It meant he could stand to be around someone for more than five minutes without being bored or feeling like he was fulfilling an unpleasant obligation. It meant he could feel and not hate it and, if attraction was added into the mix, how was what he was feeling any different from the love so many constantly waxed poetic about?
I love the Dark Prince.
Elias briefly considered panicking, but before he could make a decision one way or another it was taken out of his hands when the Dark Prince laughed. It was the most beautiful laugh Elias had ever heard, full of relief and triumph and such a pure, exquisite elation that Elias could think of nothing else. His eyes alight in a way that made Elias's heart beat even faster, the Prince leaned down and rested his forehead against the scholar's. If there were gasps from the surrounding nobles, if they broke out in furious whispers and frantic discussion about the strange turn of events, Elias never heard them. All he could hear was one shaky, rasping word, whispered from lips which were just inches away from his own.
"Finally."
* * * *
They walked through the halls towards Elias's room in silence, the torches set in regular intervals along the walls struggling in vain to banish the shadows which made the open and usually inviting hall seem like a dungeon once the sun went down. The Dark Prince was holding one of Elias's hands, their fingers threaded together. He hadn't stopped touching Elias since their first dance had turned into a second, and then a third. He hadn't stopped touching Elias when he gently led him from the dance floor—not when they met the eyes of a devastated Crown Prince, nor when they slipped out of the ballroom. It was like he was incapable of letting go.
Elias had thought, on the rare occasions he thought of such things, that he would hate someone clinging to him in such a way, but he found he actually quite liked it. He could squeeze the Prince's too-smooth hand and get an answering squeeze in return.
It was fascinating.
The entire castle seemed to have taken on an air of surreality since they left the ballroom. Like they'd slipped into their own private world once again, except this one carried echoes of the world they normally inhabited. The castle was the same, but there were no servants or nobles in the halls to gawk at them. The night was the same, but instead of shivering in the mid-autumn chill, Elias was warmed from within. The door to his room was the same as it had always been, but Elias had absolutely no idea what was going to happen when he opened it.
His heart raced with the unknown. With the possibilities.
They stopped in front of the door at the exact same time and Elias's lips twitched at the thought that the grace he'd borrowed from the other man had followed him off the dance floor. The hand in his pulled him gently, and he let himself be turned so he was facing the Prince.
The Dark Prince was even more stunning than usual in the dim torchlight, but Elias barely spared his features a glance. It was his eyes that drew Elias, like they had since his final and most important revelation. He could quite literally lose himself in those eyes, in the emotion he could see, in the knowledge that the Prince felt for him and that he could actually return the feeling.
It was intoxicating.
Which was why he didn't even think to resist when the Dark Prince brought his face down to Elias's, why he tilted his own chin up and parted his lips in a blatant invitation he never would have done if he had been thinking even an iota more clearly than he was. It was why he frowned in confusion when all the Prince did was rest his forehead against Elias's once again.
"I had a lovely time tonight, Elias," the Prince murmured, his breath ghosting across Elias's lips.
"So did I," he whispered. He wasn't sure what surprised him more, actually being able to speak through the unfamiliar affection which seemed to be caught in his throat, or that he actually meant what he said wholeheartedly.
"Good." The Prince took a deep breath, then paused and let out a somewhat strained laugh. "I never imagined you would smell this nice. It almost makes me wish I was more the monster people think me to be."
"What—" The question died on lips which were pulled down as he frowned when the Dark Prince stepped away completely.
"I promised myself I would do this right," the Dark Prince said, almost ruefully.
"I thought you said you didn't keep your word?"
The Prince's lips twitched into what would have been a smirk if it weren't for the softness in his eyes. "I said my fear of a greater evil holds me to my word. Unfortunately, there's no greater evil in your kingdom than me, at the moment."
Elias found himself smiling despite the absurdity of the Prince's words. "You're ridiculous," he said fondly.
"And you're drunk on emotion," the Prince said, "which is why only one of us will be going through your door tonight."
Elias almost frowned, but he actually was thinking more clearly now, and realized the Prince was making the right decision. Elias was not going to throw himself at the first man he had feelings for. Especially not when he hadn't had time to properly assimilate those feelings into his life.
Sometimes, he very much disliked the way he was.
"So, then, I assume this is goodnight?"
"Yes, Elias," the Prince said softly. "This is goodnight."
He unlaced his fingers from Elias's, then placed a gentle kiss on the back of his hand.
"Goodnight, Elias," he murmured into Elias's skin.
He released the hand, and Elias felt the sudden absence of the Dark Prince's touch more keenly than he would have thought possible. He wondered if his current condition was going to be permanent, then tried to figure out what he hoped the answer would be. He hadn't gotten very far in his musings when the Prince took two steps back, placed his left foot directly behind his right foot and, with his right hand over his heart and his left arm placed on the small of his back, bowed to Elias at a precise fifty degree angle. Elias's eyes widened.
It was a formal courting bow.
He held it for the required ten seconds before straightening himself and grinning quietly at the expression on Elias's face.
"I'll see you tomorrow, my dear." His grin gained a tinge of smugness at the way Elias's eyes widened even further at the unexpected endearment before he left. He was halfway down the hall before Elias had even realized he'd gone.
He stared at the empty space in front of him where the Dark Prince had been; where, despite himself, he wished the Dark Prince still was. He stared for almost a full minute before he entered his room and closed the door with a soft click, which echoed loudly through the still night air.
Chapter 18
My father once told me when I was a child I would do great and terrible things over the course of my life, and, for most of my youth, his words had proven to be prophetic. I committed my first murder at the age of ten. I stopped a kobold uprising all on my own the day after my twelfth birthday. I even managed to host a gathering of all the northern giant clans without getting stepped on or inadvertently starting another Great Cleansing. I knew no defeat. Victory was my only bed mate, and he was always more than willing to let me have my wicked way with him. So it should come as no surprise that my first failure was rather spectacular.
