Page 43 of To Dance with Death

By the time I make it back into the pavilion, I find it crowded, boisterous, half the occupants slouched over divans and already asleep. Anton, for his part, idles by the open balcony near the far end, several gathered around him with chalices in hand. I find Ishu with him this time, sneaking yellow grapes off his plate when he isn’t looking.

Like last night, I march toward him. Look directly into his eyes and announce my presence.

“You are late,” he muses.

“You never specified a time.”

“How irreverent,” a nearby soul mutters, leaning her head against his shoulder. She’s long-limbed and draped in a glittering green gown, her complexion a glowing amber. “She can’t even be bothered to bow.”

“My apologies,” I say, swallowing the bout of aggravation cording my throat as I dip into the requested bow. I remind myself that this is for him. To restore him.

And for him, I will always bow.

With that, I pivot and take position before the fountain I performed in last night. This time, my outfit is in two pieces: a bustier and a matching scalloped skirt the color of the sea at dusk. But it’s my prop that gives me a familiar confidence. An edge.

It didn’t take long to scour the kitchens for a sack of flour. It’s not like millen, not nearly as light, the grain coarse and thick like sand. But with the atmosphere of this place, it dances in the air in much the same way when tossed.

Perhaps it’s silly to hope that it might have a similar effect on him as it did at the Gathering. That it might spur a memory. I had even taken the time—not that I had a lot after spending the day in the Abyssal—to scrape the glitter off another dress and into themakeshift sack I made, which holds the flour just as it once held my millen.

Hope is a fickle thing, ever slipping from my grasp. But now, as I pose in the center of a sea of guests, I put myself back on the Isle of Anell.

And I dance just like I did then.

My powder sparkles around me like mist, like a drizzle of rainfall. The harpist’s tune is not unlike theIlliunaI performed for Copelan, but gentler, more melodic. I keep my choreography simple, relying on the swirls of dust I release—each spin, each dip, cleverly timed. When the song draws to a close like curtains pulled shut, I curl onto the floor, careful not to show just how hard I’m breathing, how heavy I feel. Even so, I bask in the soft, polite claps that crackle about—a small victory compared with last night. When I look up, though, it’s merely Sorrell and the few souls I met previously. And Anton—

He—

I gather myself and push to my feet, my gaze circling the room. But he isn’t here. He didn’t even bother to watch. Even Ishu is gone.

That girl. Did he escort her to his room?

Just how many does he rotate through?

My head churns into a disoriented rush, and strength wanes from my knees. But the nausea is the worst, threatening to spill up my throat.

It’s not even that I blame him for seeking comfort or pleasure. But the space I carved in his heart has now been filled. I am inconsequential, our past erased. And though I knew it—kept reminding myself, even—seeing him move on is like picking at a scab.

If I keep tormenting myself like this, the wound might never heal.

Sorrell, Rasmus, and Unna surround me. Sorrell places a drink in my hand, linking his arm through mine yet again. He drags me to a table, and my mind is so absent, so dazed, that I let him.

The game they play passes before me in a blur. And despitemyself, I can’t help but scan the room for him in the hopes of being proved wrong. But I see neither Anton nor the girl.

My heart feels like a bruise.

The next handful of days feel much the same.

I wander through the Abyssal, searching farther in each time, but nothing makes sense beyond the basic compilation of lineage. It makes me want to scream. Worse are the headaches, the feverish chill that flares each evening and seems to get worse by the day.

In the evenings, I’m so tired that it is all I can do to refill my sack with flour and shave another dress of its tiny, crusted beads. And still I have to dance.

Anton barely skims a gaze over me the first few nights. The nights thereafter, he looks utterly bored—even when I catch him watching. Yet I can’t help but notice that once each week he forgoes his daily judgments and vanishes for the day. Those nights, when I dance, his expression verges more on furious than bored. I wonder why, and if it has anything to do with Moranya. I make a mental note to follow him if I can catch him before he disappears.

For now, though, I have only my performance to grab his attention. I’ve even resorted to choreographing them as closely as I can to the ones at the Gathering—the very ones I performed at the smaller banquets where he would watch me with intent. I had been excited, hopeful, only for him not to care.

I feel like a fool, even knowing it was a shot in the seemingly endless dark. All my energy should be directed to my search, and yet I can’t help the dejection that comes knowing I can’t reach him, or his memories, no matter how hard I try.

That I might never catch his eye again.