Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(99)

He was meant to be waiting for her here, she thought. He who had chosen her. But the cave was empty save for herself, and the stone pedestal on which she’d had her rest. Still, as her gaze swept through the corners, in one she caught a flickering she hadn’t seen before. There, right there, the air seemed bright and blurry, like the shimmering of a heat mirage above an asphalt road.

As she watched it, it gathered more unto itself, until she made out a silhouette. It seemed to her like a shadow play, the way it grew and shrank and changed its shape. But the closer she looked, the more it seemed like something—someone?—that she knew. As soon as she’d thought it, color flowed into form, and the flicker became a breathing boy.

“You,” she said, and her heart began to race. It was nice to know it could still do that.

“Me,” the shadow-boy agreed, and stepped from the corner in full flesh. She wove her hands in her lap and cowered against the nothing stone. He crossed the cave to crouch in front of her, dark curls falling over his brow.

“You’re just like I remember,” she told him. He’d been so staggering, so unforgettable, that day Salia showed her the Bolshoi Ballet. A Russian boy with near-black eyes and a patrician face, cheekbones like facets and a cleft chin. He was tall and broad-shouldered, dancer-slim. “But how can you be here?”

He offered her his palm, dark eyebrow raised. She laid her fingers on it, and he was so warm and there her insides quickened again. He wrapped his long fingers around her hand and brought it to his lips, tracing their crests with her own fingertip.

Even as her eyelids went heavy she jerked her hand back, frowning at him.

“Too forward?” he asked, one side of his mouth quirking. “I’ve been known to rush. Usually in the sense of ‘untimely,’ but I don’t like to limit myself.”

“You’re not that boy,” she concluded. “Even if you do look like him.”

He laughed out loud, rich and deep. “No, I’m not. But you do know who I am, you who danced so well for me. You who won me fully with your dance.” He watched her warmly, brow furrowed. “I could hardly wait to have you here.”

The thought of his anticipation made her giddy. “And how long have you been waiting for me?”

“Two days, and forever,” he said. “A very long time, all things considered.”

She put her hands on his knees. It felt outrageous, to do so to a near stranger, but this boy belonged to her already. “What do we do now?”

“Well, you’re meant to be my gift.” He gave her a broad grin, his teeth straight and very white. “So, I expect you’ll woo me, show me all that you can do.”

“Is that so?” She pouted at him, tilting her head. “Perhaps it won’t work that way, this time. Perhaps you’re the gift, meant to be mine.”

“Then, maybe, if I’m going to be your gift,” he said, drawing so close their foreheads nearly touched, and she could smell the warmth and boy of him, “you should tell me what you mean to call me.”

SHE WOULD CALL him Artem, like the boy who danced. She knew it even before he brought her to the strangest desert she had ever seen.

“Is it real?” she asked, turning in a circle. The sand wasn’t any color it should have been; the dunes around them blazed with rainbow bands of turmeric yellow, magenta, lilac, violet, and vermilion. In the distance rose rich, green mountains, surrounded by what looked like the tangle of jungle. She couldn’t remember how they’d gotten here. He’d touched her, maybe, in the cave, cupped her face and told her to close her eyes.

Or maybe not. It didn’t matter.

He reclined against one of the dunes, all in white, a loose shirt and pants that looked like they kept him cool. It seemed like it should be hot here, though of course she didn’t feel heat anymore. “Certainly it’s real. At least for me, and now for you.”

She looked down at herself. A white band sparkled over her breasts, as if the ground dust of diamonds had been woven into the fabric, throwing icy facets of fire from the sun. The pants that ballooned around her legs, cuffed tightly at her ankles, were silk so fine they felt like water on her skin. “Where are we, then? And did you pick this”—she gestured at herself—“all this for me?”

“These are the Seven-Colored Earths of Mauritius. I thought you might like it here.” He ran a hand through his hair, haloed by the midday blaze. “Makes a nice change from all that cold. And no, I didn’t pick your clothes for you. That was what you wanted. Seems to me you like to shine.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, raising her chin. “You don’t know me.”

“But I’d like to, if you’ll let me.”

“Seems to me I have no choice.”

He laughed again, that deep, warm rumble, and she liked the surprise that washed like waves across his face. He wasn’t used to laughter, then. That was something she could change.

Then she danced the desert for him, painted its dunes with a brush of flying hair, its colors with each flick of the wrist, and with the skin that she laid bare. She should have felt the sharp grains under her soles—arcs of color sprayed with each sure step, so she knew that they felt her—but it was as if she danced on nothing at all.

As if all the world slept around her, and she its dancing dream.