Dance of a Burning Sea

by Mellow, E. J.

  Thump thump.

  Orange to red.

  Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump.

  Her arms floated through the air, moving across the stretched skins, pulsing out a trance.

  Slowly a voice entered the rhythm, alto and soprano at once. Larkyra spun a chorus into her sister’s beats.

  Then finally, as if everyone had been holding their breath for the final Mousai, Niya began to dance.

  Her movements started low, a stomping of feet and quick twisting of hips to catch the heady beat. The tassels lining her costume jumped and spun, her magic spilling like bloody mist into the air to mix with her sisters and cover the crowd. Alōs kept utterly still as he sensed the group’s spell wash over him, the icy barrier of his own magic swimming to the surface of his skin to both shield and moan in delight.

  Beautiful, his gifts whispered.

  Play with us, the Mousai’s magic crooned.

  Steady, Alōs commanded.

  The room was slowly being captured. Bodies swayed next to him and voices rose behind, attempting to match the level of euphoria searing the space.

  Tonight the trio spun magic so potent he didn’t dare take a breath.

  The beat was a trance. The song an overdose. The dance carnality.

  The Mousai performed unhinged, angling to take all present as their prisoners.

  The only cure was to give in.

  Alōs curled his hands into fists, unable to look away as Niya ran her fingers over her silhouette, twisting to the beat.

  His heart pounded loudly in his ears as she moved off the stage. With growing dread and traitorous hunger, he watched her slink nearer.

  Guests took careful steps back, all while still reaching for the fire dancer, scared and desperate at once.

  Alōs understood such temptation.

  Niya glided and twisted, creating a pocket of space as she moved.

  And just when he believed he had himself in control, beneath her mask, blue flames met his through the crowd, their eyes colliding.

  It took all of Alōs’s strength not to take a step back.

  Niya was locked onto him, approaching like a lit fuse to a bomb.

  She rolled her hips, around and around, parting the mass of fawning and frenzied onlookers with her ripple of powerful magic, until she was a mere grain’s distance away.

  Waves of her heat licked over his clothes, sending cracks along his frozen shield to finally seep into his skin. Alōs bit back a groan; he felt as if he were being unwrapped, dipping naked into a steaming pool.

  His power responded to her power with a purr.

  Yes, his magic crooned in treachery. More, it pleaded, bending to her will.

  Alōs clung desperately to the thin strands of his lucidness, clenching his jaw as his gaze ran along Niya’s curves, watching as her gifts continued to pulse, lush and giving, from her body, red ripples in a pond.

  She was magnificent.

  She was consuming.

  She was also testing him. Teasing him. Pushing him as far as she dared.

  Here was the creature he had bound and collared aboard his ship.

  She’d been given a night of freedom and was now angling to soar.

  Alōs could not blame her. After months of being chained to him on his ship, of course she would burn the brightest once home. He had wanted this. To give her a night of freedom. He now realized his earlier warning to himself had been too late. For he was not sure he would survive until tomorrow as Niya continued to cover him with her magic. Her searing spell battling his icy tundra of strength. A wall of steam. Of dares.

  She did not dance for the crowd this night. She danced for him.

  Alōs was the only one responsible now for bringing himself back.

  So he did it the only way he knew how.

  Alōs turned and forced himself to walk away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Niya struggled to stand still as her sightless maids loosened and unclasped her costume. Her skin continued to buzz from the performance, a red haze of her magic circling her like hungry bees in a flower field. She wanted to keep moving, keep dancing. Oh, how she felt so alive!

  It had been too long since she had moved so freely, had captured a roomful of souls and sent their minds spinning. Niya had allowed her worries of what still lay ahead with the Prism Stone to fall away. She had wanted to dance unbound, and her sisters had met her energy. The Mousai had truly outdone themselves this night. The kingdom would be talking about it for months.

  Niya smiled as she thanked and dismissed her maids before slipping into the warm bath they had prepared for her.

  With a sigh she let the warm water massage through her tired muscles. Honeysuckle filled the air as she lathered her body and worked her fingers through her scalp. For the first time in a long while, she felt at ease, relaxed.

  She never wanted to leave her chambers.

  Her private dressing room was covered in plush pillows and hanging floral tapestries. Candelabras burned in the corners, creating glowing pockets of warmth. At the back, her large circular bed was calling to her. Once she was done bathing, Niya planned to curl up in it and revel in its softness.

  She and her sisters were scheduled to have an audience with the king later, but she had enough time to enjoy a little more lazy pampering.

  I deserve it, she told herself, especially after spending months aboard a pirate ship.

  Niya did not want to think just yet about how she’d be sailing away soon. She didn’t want to think about the black mark on her wrist or the responsibilities that were still bound with it. She didn’t want to think about anything.

  Slipping under the water, Niya relaxed her whole body. Her magic settled gently into her veins, the sinking of wet leaves.

  She held her breath for as long as she could, enjoying the quiet that filled her head.

  When she resurfaced with a gasp, goose bumps rose on her bare arms; a new chill filled the empty room.

  Niya was no longer alone.

  The bath sloshed as she dipped lower into it.

  “I know you’re here,” said Niya to a shadowy pocket in the corner.

  He stepped forward from the dark as though carrying it with him.

  Alōs’s sapphire gaze was bright against his brown skin, his angular features cut hard.

  He stopped at the foot of her tub, standing before her like an eclipse.

  Niya’s entire body tingled as his gaze slipped to what she hid beneath the suds.

  When their eyes met again, his expression was unyielding.

  “The servants’ passage to your chambers is still not well guarded.” His tone was casual, almost friendly compared to his coiled energy.

  Niya raised a brow. “As I can see.”

  Silence.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” she asked.

  Alōs’s eyes brushed the tops of her breasts, skimming the surface of her bathwater.

  Niya felt a wave of hot panic as he shrugged out of his coat, but he merely draped it over a nearby chair and sat.

  “I came to congratulate you on your performance,” he said, crossing ankle over knee.

  “How kind of you,” she replied slowly, continuing to eye the pirate, every part of her body aware of every part of him, ready to act before he did. Alōs merely leaned farther into his seat as if they were sitting together for tea rather than her being naked in a bath.

  She loathed him for forcing such an upper hand.

  But Niya also knew she had pushed him tonight. It had been the most satisfying thing to watch desire flood into Alōs’s eyes, desire she had placed there.

  He had been on the verge of being controlled.

  By her.

  And then he had walked away.

  Alōs could not handle her, and knowing this filled Niya with carnal delight.

  She was not one to ever be handled.

  “While compliments are always welcome,” she went on, “I do not see why they couldn’t wait until another .
. . more appropriate time to give them.”

  “You never complained when I paid you visits like this before.” He angled a brow. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

  He was pushing her as she had pushed him. As they always seemed inclined to push one another.

  “Perhaps you should get naked and I dressed and see if such a reversal would make you as disagreeable as I.”

  White teeth flashed with his grin. “I would only find fault in that situation because we were not both naked together.”

  Niya pursed her lips, the familiar irritation he prodded awake in her rising to the surface. But she was beginning to understand this game. “Why are you really here, Alōs?”

  He regarded her for a long while, the gentle sound of the candles flickering in the room the only backdrop to their moment.

  “The next part of our journey might be the hardest part yet,” he eventually admitted. “And while you have certainly proved your dedication in helping me find the pieces of the Prism Stone, I find when those in my crew do not trust one another in moments of importance, things go awry. When we get to Hallowed Island, it will only be you and me searching out the stone. Kintra will not follow.”

  “Your point being?”

  “You do not trust me.”

  Niya snorted. “Of course not.”

  “I’d like to remedy that.”

  “And how, by the lost gods, do you intend to do that? You are a horrible person.”

  Even as the words escaped her, she knew them to no longer be entirely true. But she had acted on reflex, according to how they’d always spoken to one another. Biting, caustic, enemies.

  Niya was still unsure how to navigate being allies with Alōs, despite beginning to care about completing this mission for entirely different reasons than acquiring her freedom. She could not allow the people of Esrom to suffer such a fate, could not allow Ariōn to be at the mercy of the wicked creatures that filled the upper parts of Aadilor. Niya herself could be grouped into that lot, as well as Alōs.

  Every world deserved a sanctuary. What would Aadilor become without theirs?

  “I do not argue you that point,” said Alōs, tone hardening. “Yes, I have done horrible acts, and I will still. But there are . . . reasons my life was set on this path, a path I have accepted.”

  “And pray tell, what were those?”

  “Ariōn.”

  Gooseflesh danced along her arms at hearing him speak his brother’s name. Would he finally share what she had been wondering since Esrom? Niya waited, quiet, despite sensing the bubbles in her bath thinning.

  “Ariōn was born in the spring, during a moon letting,” said Alōs, gaze growing cloudy with memories as he looked to a corner of the room. “A day that was said to be a blessed time to bring new life into our kingdom. But he was born weak and thin, carrying a sickness, our healers said. Yet he was alive, breathing in my mother’s arms. As soon as I saw him, I loved him fiercely. He was my younger brother, and I knew in that moment my role, more important than the king I was meant to become, was to protect him. Ariōn . . .” A wistful smile fell to Alōs’s lips then. One Niya had never seen mar his features before. “Well, if you believe me to be stubborn, Ariōn beat me there tenfold. I was surprised our healers did not catch on sooner that whatever they told him he should not do, he would. Ariōn loved to swim and would pull me to our private beach almost daily to float in the waves. He was so curious about Aadilor, too, then. We’d look up at the sky, knowing despite the clouds there was an entire ocean between us and the rest of the world. He loved to ask me what I thought was up there. What was so scary and bad that Esrom kept hidden and afraid in our bubble. I admitted that I did not know, but our parents and the High Surbs were wise and had their reasons. Little did I know then how many threats truly lurked topside. That one day I would become one of them.” Alōs grew quiet, Niya watching him idly rub the area where his pinkie ring had once sat. Her heart ached at his story, knowing in a way what came next. “He was eleven when we learned of his rare blood disease,” said Alōs, his voice coming out rough. “Pulxa, it’s called. By the time real symptoms arise, it is too late, or so my family was told. ‘Nothing can be done.’ ‘We’re sorry.’ That’s all our medics said. Useless,” Alōs bit out with a frown. “But I couldn’t accept that. Ariōn was so good, filled with such compassion and joy for life; how could he be the one meant for the Fade over me?” He looked at Niya then, his burning gaze imploring her to answer a question that seemed to have haunted him for years. A wash of helplessness ran through her. “Ixō in the end is the one who told me the way to possibly save my brother,” Alōs went on to explain. “What would allow both of us to live. I had to commit such a traitorous crime that I would be eradicated from Esrom’s history, removed from the royal line as the next king. This would force the High Surbs to call upon ancient and forbidden magic to save my brother. Pause death so he could then be king, the Karēk line saved and all the spells that are so tightly wound to Esrom from the centuries of our family’s rule intact. I hardly had to think about my options. That very night I stole one of the most important things in Esrom. I took the heart of Esrom and left. It wouldn’t be until years later, after the Prism Stone had been divided and sold for some time, that I would learn the price for cheating the Fade of a soul it desired.”

  “Esrom’s magic was fading,” said Niya in a whisper.

  He met her eyes and nodded. “Yes, and now it’s not just my brother’s life that is threatened but all of our people’s and those who seek the sanctuary of our shores. So you see, while I do not deny the monster I have become, none of us enter into this world meaning to be bad.”

  Niya held the pirate’s gaze, taking in what he had just shared. The water in her bath had grown cold, but she hardly noticed as her mind spun along with her thumping heart.

  Despite how she fought against it, she did feel for Alōs.

  He’d been barely a young man when he had decided to steal the stone to save his brother. Everything since that moment had been about survival. Survive so his brother could live. Sin so his homeland could be saved. Take so he was not left with nothing, again.

  These were convictions Niya understood, actions she would have mirrored if any of her sisters’ lives were in danger, behavior she most likely had already done at one time or another for her family, for her king. For love and loyalty very rarely could be separated. Not for her.

  But even as she let all these thoughts settle deep into the missing grooves of who she had always believed Alōs to be, a buzz of frustration, of warning, swam to the surface.

  He has spoken such pretty lies before, a dark voice said in the back of her mind. He has tricked you into trusting him, just as he is now. Trust him for more leverage over you. Trust him so he can take what he needs and leave you bare and exposed. Look how he has approached you in your dressing room, when you’re most vulnerable. Tricks, the voice hissed. Tricks.

  Yes, she thought, her breathing growing quick at her sudden anger. Even though she knew his story to be true, what did that matter? He wanted her to trust him, but why? She already had agreed to help. What would trust do except allow him to betray her as he had before? Go to this Hallowed Island and help him find the last piece of the stone, only for him to then leave her to the cannibals when she least expected? All for reveling in perpetually having the upper hand. Tricks, tricks, tricks. Niya was no longer that naive girl. No longer easily swayed by a sob story. She had seen her fair share of thieves employing beggars in the streets, drawing in innocents so they could pick pockets for more silver. Look this way so you cannot see me attack from behind.

  No! she silently shouted. She had been doing just fine as she was, keeping those aboard the Crying Queen at arm’s length, the captain especially. Only fools repeated mistakes of the past.

  Tricks. Triiiiiicks.

  “Damn you,” Niya bit out, unable to contain any more of her thoughts. “I will not let you manipulate me. Not again.”

  Alōs blinked, as
though this was the last response he had expected. “I am not trying to manipu—”

  “Of course you are, and the worst part is you can’t even tell anymore. You come here, ready to intimidate me when I’m most vulnerable, then you spout your good deeds so I trust you enough, care enough, to risk my life for your goals. I will help you find the final piece of the Prism Stone, Alōs, but know it is only so I can get rid of this”—Niya lifted her wrist from the water, baring the mark of their binding bet—“and be free of you and the entire lot on the Crying Queen. I will cooperate because that was our agreement, nothing more.”

  An odd look passed over Alōs’s face, and if Niya hadn’t known better, she’d have thought it was sorrow. “I truly did a number on you.”

  Niya’s rage burned higher. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she scoffed. “I am what I am because of what I know this world to be. You were merely my first lesson.”

  “So there is truly nothing I can do to remedy the past?”

  She laughed, cold and hard. “Why try? Like you said, we could never be friends. Let us remain what our destinies have handed to us: companionable enemies.”

  He watched her a long moment. “How extraordinary.”

  “What?”

  “You’re scared.”

  Her chin jutted out. “I certainly am not!”

  “You are. You are scared of what a true alliance between us would create.”

  “I may have fears, Alōs, but they no longer involve you.” Niya stood from the bath. She would not be forced into a corner any longer.

  Her nipples hardened in the cool air, rivulets of water running over her skin as she exited the tub.

  Alōs froze, his gaze locked onto her nakedness as she stalked toward him. There was a hiss of steam as she bent low, their two powers clashing, her breasts lightly grazing his chest. She caught his intake of breath.

  “Who is scared now?” cooed Niya before pulling free her robe draped on the corner of his chair.

  She shrugged into it, but Alōs grabbed her wrist, keeping her from cinching it closed. His gaze burned. Engulfed her.

  “You,” he all but growled, “play too well with fire.”