by S. W. Clarke
I couldn’t help laughing. It was sweet and wholesome and so not applicable to Clementine Cole. But tonight, I had decided to forget, for a few hours, who I thought I ought to be.
I swept a hand back to Loki, who’d jumped off the bed and walked up. “Hope you don’t mind if my familiar joins us.”
Jericho knelt, extended his fingers for Loki to sniff. “Of course.”
Loki came forward, scented him. Then looked up at me. “He’s not a psychopath.”
“Good to know.”
Jericho straightened. “What’d he say?”
“He said he can smell all the skeletons in your closet.” I came through the doorway, closing it behind me. Outside, the night air bit. A soft, fat-flaked snow had begun to fall. “Even the one you thought you’d properly hidden under the floorboards.”
Jericho went stiff. “Witches’ familiars can…uh…do that?”
I looped my arm in his, winked. “And more.”
When the four of us came down to the grounds, I understood why Eva had dismissed my concerns about being cold.
Two hours ago, the lit, garlanded path that now graced the grounds hadn’t been there. What lay there now was crafted of stone, and the snow that fell didn’t even touch it. Instead, it disappeared into nothing some seven feet above the path.
Now, the whole student body passed down it, men in their dress robes and women in their dresses. I didn’t recognize half of them; done-up, they looked like different people entirely.
As we stepped onto the path, the air changed. Warmed. I glanced at Eva over my shoulder as we walked, eyebrows raised.
She pointed at the path. “Earth magic.” Then swirled a hand through the space around her. “Air magic.”
I gave a single nod. “Of course.” There weren’t really words to describe the wonder of all this to a human like me.
And that was before I saw the actual ballroom.
When we came through the forest and into the meadow, I stopped. Out there amidst the whiteness, I could swear I was staring into a snow globe. Garlanded pillars sat at intervals all the way around a wide wooden floor, the whole space lit with yellow balls of light hovering some twenty feet in the air. The snow didn’t penetrate past the light; it disappeared as it had over the path.
The ceiling was invisible. The walls were invisible. Inside, all the women had taken off their robes, their arms exposed.
They weren’t shivering. They were laughing.
Some were dancing already, to a small orchestra at the far end. I recognized a few professors seated with their instruments.
Torsten and Eva passed us, holding hands. “Come on, Clem,” she said with a glance back at me. They crossed from the path into the ballroom in a fluttering of wings and hair.
“This isn’t real,” I said.
Jericho’s hand found my back. “Why not go and find out?”
It was real. Of course it was.
Jericho took my cloak when we entered the ballroom, and I stood with my hands clasped in front of me as I never did. It was warm here; it was bright. Jericho left to get us drinks from the table on one side of the floor, and I stood at the edge of the dance floor.
The whole academy was here. Students, professors. For a tradition that had only been reanimated this year, it was massively popular. These people loved any excuse to drink from their fancy goblets.
Umbra stood at one side in her dress robes, leaning toward Professor Goodbarrel and smiling as he spoke. Aidan and a few of House Spark talked in a circle near the food table. Rathmore and the young fae professor had either come together or were friends now, because they stood next to one another, he nodding as she talked with her hands.
I’d thought he might still be away. I’d thought he wouldn’t go to a dance.
Then, without preamble, his eyes met mine. Held my gaze.
A stroke of rare self-consciousness overtook me, and I broke eye contact, fixated on Torsten and Eva on the dance floor. The most ardent fae-human couple at the academy had taken the center of the room, and they did not dance like you’d expect at a school function.
These two were elegant, sweeping. Torsten knew dance sequences.
I blew out air. “Loki, I thought I could move, but…”
He snorted beside me. “You couldn’t.”
I shifted narrowed eyes down. “Hey, cat. You never saw me at a club.”
“You’re talking about drunken gyrating. My point stands.” He shifted lidded eyes up to me. “Can I take off this wretched thing now?”
“The bowtie’s cute.”
“Cute and dreadful aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I leaned down, untied it from his neck. Flapped it at him. “Chef Vickery awaits. Probably has a salmon fillet with your name on it.”
And Loki was gone like a flash, straight for the food table.
When Jericho brought drinks, it wasn’t long before he asked the dreaded question. I’d taken about two sips, and then he turned to me. “Want to dance?”
I shoved my glass into my face, shook my head overtop the rim as I drank away.
Jericho’s fingers found mine. “Come on. Just once.”
I set my glass down on the small circular table next to us. “Trust me, this isn’t what you want.”
But I was wrong. Somehow he got me onto the floor. Somehow we ended up standing face to face, he showing me the steps to a slow song as his hand sat at my back. He wasn’t hesitant about making eye contact, even less than a foot away.
I stepped left, and he stepped right. The two of us jerked against one another, and I laughed. “You asked for this.”
“I did.” He swept me through a twirl, which we managed with relative ease. “You’re fine.”
Torsten and Eva swept by, wholly engrossed in one another.
When I came out of the spin, Jericho smiled. “You’re doing—” His smile reformed into a grimace.
I’d stepped on his foot.
I gave him a half-apologetic, half-I-told-you-so look. “Sorry. What was that you were saying?”
“You’re doing great,” he gritted out, ignoring the flub entirely.
If there ever was a gentleman, it was Jericho Masters.
We’d barely managed our way through the first dance when Eva began tapping a glass goblet with a spoon. She stood beside the small orchestra, who’d stopped playing.
Jericho and I came to a stop. His hand didn’t leave the small of my back, and I didn’t quite know how I felt about that.
Maybe it was politeness, but I didn’t move away.
“Welcome, everyone, to the Shadow’s End Solstice Ball—the first in eighty-two years. And given the turnout, definitely not the last in eighty-two years.” Eva smiled as applause and cheers echoed her. “If you’re here, the rule of the solstice ball is—and always has been—this: you must dance. And in the spirit of the ball, we’ll begin with a dance the fae call the dannse deicha.”
The fae in the room laughed, clapped, wings in motion.
I leaned toward Jericho. “That sounds kind of like Gaelic.”
His eyes flashed with mirth. “Where do you think Gaelic came from?”
“Everyone onto the floor,” Eva said. “Even you, headmistress.”
When all present were on the dance floor, Eva instructed us into circles of ten. Jericho and I stood together, linking hands with the person on our left and right.
Aidan had ended up in our circle, and I winked at him. “Nice robes, North.”
His birthmark flushed a degree above his well-fitted dress robes. For once, he’d combed his brown hair perfectly back. And he was, in a way I’d never recognized, dashing. “Nice dress, Cole.”
I’d all but forgotten the green dress. The beauty of Eva’s tailoring was, of course, that I had no trouble moving in it. She’d crafted it perfectly to my body, and so it was easy to forget about once I got over its sultriness.
I winked at Aidan. “You should see my cat.”
“All right, here are the steps,” Eva c
alled. She had created a circle with Torsten and eight others, and they began dancing clockwise, hands still linked all the way around. The orchestra played as they did, and when they stopped, so did the dancing.
They all rushed into the center, each grabbing a random hand and partnering off. The orchestra started back up, and they danced around the room in pairs until Eva told them to join a new circle of ten. And on it went.
Before I could object, the song had begun. And at either side of me, so did the dancing.
I didn’t know the steps. I didn’t remember any of the instructions.
But neither did anyone else, really.
On we went in the circle, and when the music stopped, we rushed into the center. A hand grabbed mine, and I ducked under the group to find Aidan on the other side.
He grinned at me. “Are you leading, or am I?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Aidan wasn’t a terrible dancer. He wasn’t great, either. And between the two of us, we couldn’t decide who ought to lead. We bumped into another couple, and the two of us couldn’t stop bickering over who’d initiated the bumping.
By the time the music changed, we were hardly dancing so much as poking one another in the side with merciless abandon.
We rushed toward the nearest couples, all of us linking hands in a breathless crush. Were there ten of us? It was hard to tell, because the music changed again so quickly the only choice we had was to start moving.
When we had to come together, I reached out for a hand. Someone grabbed mine, and when I ducked through the center of the circle to find I was dancing with Gabriel, the blond second-year from House Spark.
He pulled me to him, hand tight. “Bonjour, Clementine.”
If Aidan and I couldn’t decide who would lead, Gabriel squeezed any choice from the air. He didn’t lead so much as drag me, and I struggled to keep up. All the while, I tried not to stumble over my heels; otherwise, he might leave me behind and go on dancing with the ghost of me he’d ripped out of my corporeal form.
I was grateful when the music changed. We found ourselves in another group of ten, and by now I barely had the breath to find hands to link with.
It was only when we’d started clockwise that I realized Callum Rathmore was in my circle. Directly across from me.
I didn’t want it to be him. Anyone but him.
When we came into the center, I reached out. A hand found mine, brought me over to the other side of the circle.
I straightened, found myself standing before him. My hand still in his.
Of course. Of course it would be the last person I wanted.
He took a step closer, and I sucked in air. Rathmore had a good half-foot and some fifty pounds on Gabriel and Aidan; one wrong step, and I’d be on the ground.
But Rathmore wasn’t like Gabriel or Aidan.
His fingers came to the small of my back, and I wondered if he felt the key there. If he did, he didn’t show it. His other hand slid to the proper position to hold mine. In a moment we were dancing, and I hardly knew it had happened.
I only knew he directed, and it was the easiest thing in the world to follow. He didn’t try to force a lead like Aidan, or to drag me along like Gabriel. He led with his whole body—hands and arms and feet and legs and shoulders and torso—and as though I were an extension of him.
I ought to mind; no man controlled me. But this? It felt like the most natural thing I’d ever done.
Loki had been right: I really couldn’t dance. And I hadn’t understood what he’d meant until now.
This close, Rathmore’s smell enveloped me. He studied my face, the ghost of a smile appearing. “Who taught you to dance?”
I rolled my eyes up at him. “You’re taunting me.”
He extended his hand, brought me through a spin. When I came back around to him, he shook his head. “Never.”
We swung around one corner of the room, and I was only vaguely aware of our conversation. Mostly I was focused on his fingers on my back, his hand holding mine. Firm, warm. “Never? Don’t lie, Rathmore.”
“I encourage you.” He paused. “Often.”
“You must know people think you’re the most incorrigible hardass at the academy.”
“Do they?” His smile grew; it changed his face completely. “Or is that just you?”
Had I ever seen him smile before? Not like this. I couldn’t imagine I had. But then, it was coupled with all of this—our bodies touching, moving almost as a single entity. The smell of him.
I sifted through my catalogue of snark, my lips parted—
The music changed.
Rathmore’s smile shifted. He exhaled, his hand leaving my back. And just like that, we were linking hands with the next group of ten.
At the end of the dance, I staggered to one of the chairs on the periphery. When I dropped into it, my vision swam. My eyes lifted to the invisible ceiling, where the snow fell in large flakes and disappeared before it reached the ballroom.
My fingers flexed in my lap, still feeling touched. Held.
The small of my back still tingled.
“You look like you could use some hydration,” a voice said.
My eyes lowered. Jericho stood in front of me with a goblet. I smiled. “Please.”
He sat next to me as I drank. “You looked like a natural out there.”
I snorted into my drink, lowered my goblet. “I’m stunned I didn’t break a heel.”
On the floor, the next dance had begun. Couples were pairing off in a circle spanning the circumference of the whole ballroom, and the sequence largely involved one half of the couple being spun around three times in a row.
By the middle of the dance, one fae had been spun around so many times she careened onto the floor in a flutter of wings. Aidan and his partner weren’t half-bad. Rathmore and the young fae professor were a sight to behold; she had become just a blur of silver wings.
“That looks like a vomit-fest,” Jericho said.
I laughed. “You read my mind, Masters.”
“Up for the next one?”
I shrugged. “Sure. As long as you’re the one doing the spinning.”
Fortunately, the next dance was a slow one. Jericho stood close to me, and I stepped on his foot at least once more. We weren’t in perfect sync, but we weren’t terrible, either.
We were fine, Jericho and me. It was pleasant.
The dance went long into the night, the snow falling harder. Everyone’s robes became untucked, their hair falling out of their perfect buns and pins. By the end, mine was wild around my head.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I recognized an old feeling. It came on me during the last dance, when Jericho and I rushed under a pyramid of hands, past a long line of students and professors clapping at either side of us. When we reached the end of the line, we parted to opposite sides, clapping for the next pair to come through.
Was this joy?
I wasn’t sure. I could hardly remember it.
At the end, we gathered into a large, tired circle as the lights above us dimmed. Eva led us through a fae New Year’s song, and though I didn’t know the words, I found myself grateful for the half-light.
I didn’t want this night to be done yet.
Here with the snow above us, holding hands with the students at either side of me, I knew I would remember tonight when things got hard. The nostalgia I felt for a night that wasn’t even in the past pricked the backs of my eyes.
Life would get hard again. It always did.
Chapter Thirty
The next morning in the library, Aidan invited me to stay with his family at their home in Dover over winter recess. Around us, the library lay deathly quiet. Everyone was hungover and asleep and so not interested in deciphering letters on old parchment.
But of course, he’d dragged me out for our usual research session. We’d been going for four hours now.
I folded my arms, pointed at him. “You’re the one who’s supposed to tell
me to stay here on the grounds, where it’s safe.”
He shrugged, bit off a biscuit. “I should. But ever since we went to visit my grandmother…”
“Ah. What I’ve come to refer to as ‘The Granny Incident.’”
Aidan made a face. “Yeah, ever since then, I’ve been thinking about how safe we really are at any given time. How much of safety is just an illusion.”
I half-smiled at him. “Seems to me when you can shoot blue fire, you’re pretty safe.”
He set to swirling his tea with a spoon. We had given up on our morning research on the Shade and the prophecy; instead, we’d fallen into conversation. “I’d rather just be able to use fire like you.”
“Why? You can incinerate people with—”
Aidan gave a short exhale. “Anyway, the point is, I know you don’t want to spend the rest of your life hidden under Umbra’s bubble. The house in Dover is enchanted as well.”
He would never talk about his gift. I still couldn’t understand why; talking about it wasn’t using it. But I humored him. “So I can retire for a few weeks to the safety of your family’s magic bubble?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “The offer’s open.”
I sat back. “Actually, Farrow offered to let me stay with her here on the grounds over recess. I already took her up on it.”
“Farrow?” Aidan’s eyebrows rose. “How’d you finagle that?”
“No finagling, if you’d believe it. She just offered.”
“Farrow’s not easy to get to know. You might be the first student she’s ever liked.”
I thought back to what she’d told me about her best childhood friend being a witch. “She likes my kind, I think.”
“Your kind?”
“Witches, if you’d believe it.”
Aidan lowered his spoon, met me with sincere eyes. “I like witches. Only known one, but…”
“You’re obligated to like me, North.”
“And why’s that?”
“You’re the student ambassador.”
He leaned forward. “Believe it or not, I do dislike some people. I don’t like you because I have to.”
