Daughter of Smoke and Bone(92)

“Or perhaps not so sturdy,” said Thiago. “Don’t worry, my lady, I’ll help you hold it up.”

His hand was over her heart, just above her breast, and Madrigal trembled. She was furious at herself for trembling. She was Madrigal of the Kirin, not some blossom caught in a breeze. “That’s kind of you, my lord,” she replied, shrugging off his hand as she stepped away. “But it is time to change partners. I’ll have to manage my gown on my own.”

She had never been so glad to be handed on to a new partner. In this case it was a bull-moose of a man, graceless, who came near to treading on her hooves any number of times. She barely noticed.

A different sort of life, she thought, and the words became a mantra to the melody of the Emberlin. A different sort of life, a different sort of life.

Where was the angel now, she wondered. Yearning suffused her, full as flavor, like chocolate melting on her tongue.

Before she knew it, the bull-moose was returning her to Thiago, who claimed her with his clutching hands and pulled her into him.

“I missed you,” he said. “Every other lady is coarse next to you.”

He talked to her in that bedroom purr of his, but all she could think was how clumsy, how effortful his words seemed after the angel’s.

Twice more Thiago passed her to new partners, and twice she was returned to him in due course. Each time was more unbearable than the last, so that she felt like a runaway returned home against her will.

When, turned over to her next partner, she felt the firm pressure of leather gloves enfold her fingers, it was with a lightness like floating that she let herself be swept away. Misery lifted; wrongness lifted. The seraph’s hands came around her waist and her feet left the ground and she closed her eyes, giving herself over to feeling.

He set her back down, but didn’t let her go. “Hello,” she whispered, happy.

Happy.

“Hello,” he returned, like a shared secret.

She smiled to see his new mask. It was human and comical, with jug ears and a red drunkard’s nose. “Yet another face,” she said. “Are you a magus, conjuring masks?”

“No conjuring needed. There are as many masks to choose from as there are revelers passed out drunk.”

“Well, this one suits you least of all.”

“That’s what you think. A lot can happen in two years.”

She laughed, remembering his beauty, and was seized by a desire to see his face again.

“Will you tell me your name, my lady?” he asked.

She did, and he repeated it—“Madrigal, Madrigal, Madrigal”—like an incantation.

How odd, Madrigal thought, that she should be overcome by such a feeling of… fulfillment… from the simple presence of a man whose name she didn’t know and whose face she couldn’t see. “And yours?” she asked.

“Akiva.”

“Akiva.” It pleased her to say it. She may have been the one whose name meant music, but his sounded like it. Saying it made her want to sing it, to lean out a window and call him home. To whisper it in the dark.

“You’ve done it, then,” he said. “Accepted him.”

Defiantly, she replied, “No. I have not.”

“No? He’s watching you like he owns you.”

“Then you should certainly be elsewhere—”

“Your dress,” he said, noticing it. “It’s torn. Did he—?” Madrigal felt heat, a ripple of anger flashing off him like a draft off a bonfire.

She saw that Thiago was dancing with Chiro, and was staring right between Chiro’s sharp jackal ears at her. She waited until the revolutions of the dance brought Akiva’s broad back between them, shielding her face, before answering. “It’s nothing. I’m not used to wearing such fragile fabric. This was chosen for me. I crave a shawl.”

He was tense with anger but his hands remained gentle at her waist. He said, “I can make you a shawl.”

She cocked her head. “You knit? Well. That’s an unusual accomplishment in a soldier.”

“I don’t knit,” he said, and that’s when Madrigal felt the first feather-soft touch on her shoulder. She didn’t mistake it for Akiva’s touch, because his hands were at her waist. She looked down and saw that a gray-green hummingbird-moth had settled on her, one of the many fluttering overhead, drawn to the expansiveness of lantern light that must seem like a universe to them. The feathers of its tiny bird body gleamed, jewel-like, as its furred moth wings fanned against her skin. It was followed shortly by another, this one pale pink, and another, also pink, with orange eyespots on its lacework wings. More floated out of the air, and in a moment, a fine company of them covered Madrigal’s chest and shoulders.

“There you are, my lady,” said Akiva. “A living shawl.”

She was amazed. “How—? You are a magus.”

“No. It’s a trick, only.”

“It’s magic.”

“Not the most useful magic, herding moths.”

“Not useful? You made me a shawl.” She was awed by it. The magic she knew through Brimstone had little whimsy in it. This was beautiful, both in form—the wings were a dozen twilight colors, and as soft as lamb’s ears—and in purpose. He had covered her. Thiago had torn her dress, and Akiva had covered her.