I stayed silent.
“And I did believe,” he said.
“What does it even mean though?” I asked.
“It . . . it means ny’seraph,” he said. “And that is everything.”
Everything. He’d said that before, when he spoke of a ny’chora.
“What else?”
Distracted, I shook my head. “Have you ever called anyone else na’laa?”
“No.” A shadow of a smile appeared. “I have not.”
Our gazes locked again, and for some reason, that revelation felt just as important as learning that some of what Maven had said was true.
“I’ve wondered about you,” he said in the silence. “I’m wondering right now.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve told no mortal that I have a brother nor shared that I enjoy reading.”
“Well, I’ve never told anyone I wanted to be a botanist, so . . .”
“Not even your baron?”
I shook my head no.
“That pleases me.”
“Why?”
“That is also what I wonder. Why. Why I would share anything with you, but you already know that,” he said, and the way he said it was as vaguely insulting as it was before. “Even today, when I should be fully focused on those before me, I caught myself wondering what it is about you. It’s still incredibly perplexing and annoying.”
Oookay. I pulled my hand from his arm. “Well, then, perhaps I should leave so I don’t continue to add to this perplexing annoyance.”
The Prince chuckled. “It’s more like I’m a perplexing annoyance to myself,” he said. “And if you left, I would have to follow and I feel like that would lead to an argument when there are far more entertaining things we can do.”
“Uh-huh.” We’d started walking again.
The grin that crossed his lips held a boyish charm that made him seem . . . young and not so otherworldly, and it tugged at my heart. I quickly looked away.
“Dance with me.”
My brows shot up as my head cut in his direction. That I hadn’t expected. “I’ve never danced before.”
He stopped. “Not once?”
I shook my head. “So, I don’t know how to dance.”
“No one knows how to dance the first time. They just dance.” His gaze met mine. “I can show you that, Calista.”
I sucked in a heady breath full of that soft, woodsy scent of his. My name was a weapon. A weakness. I nodded.
My gaze dropped to his hand as he offered it to me. This . . . this felt surreal. My heart was flipping all over the place. And was it my imagination or did the violin from the lawn seem louder, closer? As did the guitar? And was there suddenly a melody in the air, in the night birds’ singing and the humming of summer insects?
“And if I prefer not to?” I asked, my hand opening and closing at my side.
A sliver of moonlight caressed the curve of his cheek as his head cocked. “Then we don’t, na’laa.”
A choice. Another that shouldn’t matter all that much, but it did and I . . . I wanted to dance even if I were to make a fool of myself. I lifted my hand, hoping he didn’t notice the faint tremor in it.
Our palms met. The contact— the feel of his skin against mine— was still startling. His long fingers closed around mine as he bowed his head slightly.
“Honored,” he murmured.
A nervous giggle left me. “I thought Hyhborn can’t lie.”
“We can’t. I spoke no lie.” Thorne tugged gently on my arm, coaxing me closer as he stepped into me. Suddenly, his hips brushed against my stomach, my chest against his. The fleeting contact was sudden, unexpected, and only then did I realize this wasn’t the kind of dancing I’d seen the aristo do at the less wild balls the Baron sometimes held, where there were at least several inches between their bodies and each step was a well-practiced, measured one. This was the kind of dancing the aristo took part in once the masks came out.
His hips swayed and the hand on mine urged me to follow. After a few moments, I realized that this kind of dancing was a lot like making love. Not that I knew what making love felt like. Fucking? Entirely different story, and this didn’t feel like that.
“Silence your thoughts.”
“W-What?” I glanced up, able to see only the lower half of his face.
“You’re stiff. Usually that means your head is not where your body is,” he said. “You’re thinking too much. One doesn’t need to think about their body to dance.”