Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(32)

“I am a Domna of Cartorra.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“I see,” she drawled, “that you have learned how to work a button. Congratulations on this no doubt life-altering feat.”

He laughed—a surprised sound—and bowed his head. “And I see you have cleaned the bird crap off your shoulder.”

Her nostrils flared. “Excuse me, but Prince Leopold fon Cartorra is expecting me—and surely your prince needs you as well.” She spoke flippantly, barely aware of what she said.

Yet the result was extreme, for the young man smiled. A true, beautiful smile that made everything in the room fall away. All Safi saw for a single, stuttering heartbeat was how his dark eyes almost crinkled shut and his forehead smoothed out. How his chin tipped up slightly to reveal the muscles in his neck.

“I have absolutely nowhere to be,” he said softly. “Nowhere but here.” Then, as if she was not stunned enough, the man swooped her a half-bow and said, “Would you honor me with a dance?”

And just like that, all of Safi’s shields crumbled. She forgot how to be a domna. She lost control of her cavalier cool. Even the Nubrevnan language seemed impossible to wield.

For this man seemed to be mocking her—just like the doms and domnas from her childhood, just like Uncle Eron. He intended to embarrass her. “There is no music,” she rushed to say, launching past the man.

But he caught her arm with the ease of a fighter. “There will be music,” he promised before calling, “Kullen?”

The enormous man from the pier materialized beside them.

“Will you tell the orchestra to play a four-step?” The Nubrevnan’s gaze never left Safi’s face, but his smile eased into mischief. “If you don’t know the Nubrevnan four-step, Domna, then I can choose something else, of course.”

Safi held a strategic silence. She did know the four-step, and if this man thought to embarrass her on the dance floor, then he was about to be very surprised.

“I know the dance,” she murmured. “Lead the way.”

“Actually,” he answered, voice rippling with satisfaction, “I don’t move, Domna. People move for me.” He flourished a single hand, and suddenly all the Nubrevnans cleared away.

Then Safi caught the words of nearby viewers: “Do you see with whom Prince Merik dances?”

“Prince Merik Nihar is dancing with that fon Hasstrel girl.”

“Is that Prince Merik?”

Prince Merik. The name swirled and licked across the floor and into Safi’s ears, glowing with the pureness that only a true statement could.

Well, hell-gates, no wonder the man looked so smug. He was the rutting prince of Nubrevna.

*

The dance began, and it did not take long before Merik realized he’d made a mistake.

Where he’d hoped to teach the girl some manners—she was supposed to be a domna, after all, not some street urchin—and perhaps to relieve some of the ever-present rage in his chest, Merik was only serving to humiliate himself.

Because this foul-mouthed domna was a far better dancer than he could have ever anticipated. Not only did she know the four-step—a Nubrevnan dance popular between lovers or performed as a feat of athletic prowess—but she was good at it.

Each triple stamp of Merik’s heel and toe, she repeated right on beat. Each double twirl and flip of his wrist, she managed to throw back as well.

And this was only the first quarter of the Nubrevnan four-step. Once they actually moved body-to-body, he had no doubt he’d be sweating and gasping for air.

Of course, if Merik had paused to consider this offer of a dance before making it, he would have seen the humiliation coming. He’d watched the girl fight, after all, and he’d been impressed by her use of speed and wiles to best a man bigger and stronger than she.

The music stopped its simple four-beat plucking and shifted into the full sliding sound of bows on violins. With a silent prayer to Noden upon His coral throne, Merik strode forward. The March of the Dominant Sea, it was called. Then he paused with one hand up, palm out.

The young domna swept forward. She winked at Merik two steps in and added an almost effortless twirl before meeting him with an upright palm of her own. The Waltz of the Fickle River, indeed.

Their other hands flipped up, palm to palm, and Merik’s only consolation as he and the domna slid into the next movement of the dance was that her chest heaved as much as his did.

Merik’s right hand gripped the girl’s, and with no small amount of ferocity, he twisted her around to face the same direction as he before wrenching her to his chest. His hand slipped over her stomach, fingers splayed. Her left hand snapped up—and he caught it.

Then the real difficulty of the dance began. The skipping of feet in a tide of alternating hops and directions.

The writhing of hips countered the movement of their feet like a ship upon stormy seas.

The trickling tap of Merik’s fingers down the girl’s arms, her ribs, her waist—like the rain against a ship’s sail.

On and on, they moved to the music until they were both sweating. Until they hit the third movement.

Merik flipped the girl around to face him once more. Her chest slammed against his—and by the Wells, she was tall. He hadn’t realized just how tall until this precise moment when her eyes stared evenly into his and her panting breaths fought against his own.