“Where have you been?” Vivienne asks, grabbing hold of me. “You need a leash like Oak’s. Come on, we’re going to dance.”
I eddy along with them. There’s music everywhere, urging a lightness of step. They say the pull of faerie music is impossible to resist, which isn’t quite true. What’s impossible is to stop dancing once you’ve begun, so long as the music goes on. And it does, all night, one dance bleeding into the next, one song becoming another without a pause to catch your breath. It’s exhilarating to be caught up in the music, to be swept away in the tide of it. Of course, Vivi, being one of them, can stop whenever she wants. She can also yank us out, so dancing with her is almost safe. Not that Vivi always remembers to do the safe thing.
But really, I am the last person to judge anyone for that.
We clasp hands and join the circle dance, leaping and laughing. The song feels as though it is calling my blood, moving it through my veins to the same ragged beat, with the same sweet chords. The circle breaks up, and somehow I am holding Locke’s hands. He sweeps me around in a giddy whoosh.
“You are very beautiful,” he says. “Like a winter night.”
He smiles down at me with his fox eyes. His russet hair curls around his pointed ears. From one lobe, a golden earring dangles, catching the candlelight like a mirror. He’s the one who’s beautiful, a kind of breathless, inhuman beauty.
“I’m glad you like the dress,” I manage.
“Tell me, could you love me?” he asks, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Of course.” I laugh, not sure of the answer I am supposed to give. But the question is so oddly phrased that I can hardly deny him. I love my parents’ murderer; I suppose I could love anyone. I’d like to love him.
“I wonder,” he says. “What would you do for me?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” This riddling figure with flinty eyes isn’t the Locke who stood on the rooftop of his estate and spoke so gently to me or who chased me, laughing, through its halls. I am not quite sure who this Locke is, but he has put me entirely off balance.
“Would you forswear a promise for me?” He is smiling at me as though he’s teasing.
“What promise?” He sweeps me around him, my leather slippers pirouetting over the packed earth. In the distance, a piper begins to play.
“Any promise,” he says lightly, although it is no light thing he is asking.
“I guess it depends,” I say, because the real answer, a flat no, isn’t what anyone wants to hear.
“Do you love me enough to give me up?” I am sure my expression is stricken. He leans closer. “Isn’t that a test of love?”
“I—I don’t know,” I say. All this must be leading up to some declaration on his part, either of affection or of a lack of it.
“Do you love me enough to weep over me?” The words are spoken against my neck. I can feel his breath, making the tiny hairs stand up, making me shudder with an odd combination of desire and discomfort.
“You mean if you were hurt?”
“I mean if I hurt you.”
My skin prickles. I don’t like this. But at least I know what to say. “If you hurt me, I wouldn’t cry. I would hurt you back.”
His step falters as we sweep over the floor. “I’m sure you’d—”
And then he breaks off speaking, looking behind him. I can barely think. My face is hot. I dread what he will say next.
“Time to change partners,” a voice says, and I look to see that it’s the worst person possible: Cardan. “Oh,” he says to Locke. “Did I steal your line?”