Page 77 of The Isles of the Gods
Uh…oh.
It’s Selly, and she looksspectacular.She’s in an incredible green dress covered in sparkling beads, every one of them afire as the mirrored stars whirl past. Her hair’s coiled atop her head like a golden crown, and I’ve never seen anything like her.
Judging by the expression she’s wearing, she might also be thelastthing I see.
At least that much is the same—I’m not sure I would’ve recognized her if she wasn’t scowling at me.
“What in seven hells are you doing?” she demands, grabbing for my arm and yanking me away from the circle of dancersto the edge of the crowd. The light glitters off her dress with every movement.
“Learning about Port Naranda’s culture and traditions,” I shout above the music. “Gathering intelligence.”
“You wouldn’t know intelligence if it marched up to you and tried to force its way in through your ears to the empty spot where your brain should be,” she snaps, green eyes magnificently alight with her anger.
The snap of her voice, the snap of her eyes…somethingsnapsin my heart, and suddenly I’m swept up by the insane urge to kiss her, to lose myself inher.I very nearly wrap my arms around her, but holding myself back with a kind of restraint I never knew I possessed—I’m notthatmuch of an idiot—I manage instead to reach for her hand.
“Dance with me?” I ask her. Ibegher. “I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“Only if I’m lucky,” she shoots back, snatching her fingers away, cheeks pink with fury. At least I assume it’s fury.
Goddess, what if itisn’tfury making her blush?
I should let it go, but the drink’s warming my veins, and I’ve had too little sleep and far too much pain, and it’s pushing up inside my chest, making me reckless. “Don’t you care that we’ll never see each other again?” I ask, before I can think better of it.
Her face goes still, and a little of the anger bleeds away, but she doesn’t answer me.
“Icare. It’s one more thing than I can take right now. Dance with me?” I hold out my hand. “Consider it a last request.”
She looks at it like it might grow teeth and bite her. “I don’t know how.” Suddenly, like the focus on a camera snapping into some other setting, I see the irritation in her features change.
She’s afraid.
Selly?MySelly, afraid of a dance floor?
My heart aches to simply snatch up her hand, but I just leave mine extended, waiting. Hoping. “I can show you.”
“Le—Maxim,what are youdoing?” she replies, back to frustration again just a beat too late—I saw the way she gazed at me for a moment. Like she was realizing something, trying to figure it out. As soon as it’s there, it’s gone, but I’msureI saw it.
I try a couple of the tapping, swinging steps my new friends showed me, shooting her a grin. “This.”
Her hands curl to fists, and she takes a step in closer so she can speak without shouting. “Can’t you— Don’t you know what’s relying on you? How can you be in anightclub?”
Our eyes meet, and the music flows around us, and the lights gleam off her dress, and the burn in my gut settles back in like it was never gone. With it comes my own flare of anger, rising in a wave to take the place of that sudden, unbearable urge to feel her in my arms. “Don’t I know what’s relying on me? How do you think I could forget? I see them every time I close my eyes, Selly!”
“And yet here you are, dancing. I was just starting to appreciate you as a deeper human being.”
It kills me that after everything we’ve been through together, she’s falling back into seeing me just the way my sisters always have—a waste of space and privilege. It kills me that she’s probably right.
I make myself shrug, keep my mask in place, and though my throat tightens, the thumping music is enough to disguise the change in my voice. “Well, that was your first mistake.”
She draws a breath, her spine straightening, and I brace. “You wanted to get to know your father? What would he think if he could see you now?”
I take a step back, the air leaving my lungs. The thudding of the music fades. The whirling lights from the mirror ball overhead vanish at the edges of my vision.
“I think he would be very disappointed indeed,” I whisper, half relying on the din to cover it, half too shaken to care.
But she hears it. She’s frozen in place. She looks like she’s just shot me, but didn’t know she was going to pull the trigger. Her lips part, her eyes widen. “No, I’m—”
“Don’t be,” I cut her off. “Don’t be sorry. You’re right. And it’s my fault, all of it. I’m the reason they’re all dead. I’m the reason this war is…I’m the reason. It’s my fault.”
