“You are a prince.”
“And?”
“You have been trained since birth to tell people what they want to hear.”
He chuckles. His Threads flare pink. “I would think that you, of all people, would sense my sincerity.”
Iseult’s lips sink deeper. “I am not a Truthwitch.”
“No.” He taps his lips, gaze sliding to meet hers. In this warm, Firewitched light, his eyes are the same shade as her gown: seafoam green. “You are much more dangerous, Iseult. You see emotions.”
“And Safi sees truth.”
Leopold twirls his hands, conceding. “But how often do people make choices based on truth? Based on facts or what their logic tells them?” His mouth twists with a smile. “Not nearly as often as they should. People start wars based on what they feel.”
Iseult holds her silence. Leopold is in one of his trickier moods—they come more and more often these days. He prods her with words, testing just how much he can say before she rises. It is her least favorite version of him.
Stasis, she tells herself. Do not react.
But he is not done yet. “You are far more powerful than she.” He motions vaguely toward the thrones. “Yet she is the one they all desire.”
Stasis, stasis, stasis. “Do you say this to hurt me? Is your intent to cause me pain?”
“No.” He frowns. Red frustration shimmers across his Threads. “I simply … You must realize you are more powerful. Yet you have been relegated to a servants’ balcony while she—”
“I chose this servants’ balcony.” Somehow, her voice is smooth as snow. “I wish to observe the dancing, Leopold, but I have no wish for the stares.”
“And that is exactly it.” He spins about so his back is against the railing, elbows braced. “You are the witch in the shadows, Iseult, while Safi lives in the light.”
Iseult’s nostrils flare, and though she hates herself for it—and hates Leopold too—she cannot deny that he’s right. She has always been the one who hides while Safi displays. The one who must drape her hair in scarves and keep her eyes downcast, lest anyone see their shade. And she has always had her heritage to damn her, while Safi has had her title to protect her.
But Iseult doesn’t blame Safi for this. She has never blamed Safi for this.
She squares her body toward Leopold’s. “You wish to drive a wedge between us. Admit it.”
For half a moment, his lips part. The frustration winks brighter. Then he sighs, and his shoulders sink. “Forgive me. That is the last thing I wish to do.”
“Then why say such things?”
“Because I merely think … no, I know that in your shoes, I would not be so kind.” He runs a hand through his hair. It tousles the curls. “Forgive me,” he repeats, and he offers her a hand.
Iseult stares at it. Long, pale fingers. “What is that for?”
“The dancing is about to begin.”
“I do not dance.”
“By choice or by force?”
“By choice,” she is about to say. But then she bites her tongue. He is poking again, but this time, the question stymies her. Because of course it is not by choice that she has never danced. Gretchya would not let her—a Threadwitch would never dance!—and in Veñaza City, Nomatsis were not welcome.
Dancing was only ever for Safi, never for Iseult.
Leopold’s lips quirk. His hand still waits between them, while below, music thrums. A heavy sound draped in strings with a somber beat to twirl by.
“I do not know the steps,” Iseult says at last.
And Leopold’s smile widens. “You do not need to.” Then he takes her hand in his, and she does not resist. His skin is soft and warm. The touch of a prince.
The balcony is small, the space shaded. But the music carries, vibrating the stones as if the orchestra were only paces away. Leopold leads gently, and Iseult tries to follow. To match. But it’s like learning to fight all over again; her mind sees what needs doing, but her body refuses to follow.
It does not help that Leopold’s Threads blaze brighter. It does not help that the lilac shimmers have returned, a latticework to encase everything that makes him who he is. They burn so brightly, Iseult almost has to squint against them.
“Your Threads,” she says when—yet again—she stumbles on a half beat, “are very bright.”
His eyebrows bounce high. “Is that a good thing?”
“Sure,” she replies.
And he laughs at that. A pleasing sound, a real sound that replaces the lilac with amaranthine delight. And Iseult realizes, with a tiny hitch in her chest, that he might be right: she can see feelings, and what a power that is indeed.
For half a moment, Iseult’s spine unfurls. Her lungs expand. She is glad the Leopold she knows and likes has returned, and she pretends that she and Leopold are truly alone with no Hell-Bard Threads tucked into the narrow hall outside. No Threads of elated Cartorrans to wave like the ocean below.
It is the opposite of reaching for her magic. It is shrinking. It is forgetting. It is stasis. And it is dancing.
She and Leopold spin and slide, dip and sweep. The moves repeat every twelve beats, and Iseult quickly starts to remember them. Each step becomes easier than the last. Each worldly reminder more distant. Until at last, the final refrain of the dance susurrates against her skin. Leopold stops his dancing, and she finds herself facing him, her hands still clasped.
“Forgive me for my earlier comments,” he says, and there is an urgency on his face and in his Threads. There is something darker too: a deep, frozen blue. “You are the last person I wish to hurt, my … friend.”
Friend. It is such an odd word to fall from his tongue, and yet there is undeniable need scraping across his Threads.
Then she understands. “You are lonely.”
He tenses almost imperceptibly. “One man’s loneliness is another man’s freedom.”
“Not yours, though.”
His lips part, and though he does not move, cold seems to swoop between them. After several moments, he pulls away. “Let a man have his secrets.”
But Iseult will not. For once, he has worn honesty with her and she refuses to let that pass. When he moves to the balustrade, she follows. “You are am-lejatu, Leopold.”
“I am?” He arches a wry eyebrow, his usual mask sliding into place. “And pray tell, what does that mean?”
“It means ‘the life-sleeper.’” Iseult rests her elbows beside his. He watches the people below, and she watches him. “It is one who goes through this life, never fully awake. Never fully connected. The Nomatsis believe it is a fate worse than death.”
He sniffs. “And you think I am a ‘life-sleeper.’”
“Well, you certainly aren’t living awake.”
His Threads flash darker; blue unspools, and Iseult knows she has found the spot that even he does not study too closely. She keeps her secrets behind her left lung; he keeps his buried even deeper.
“You have no Thread-family,” she continues. “I see it, you know.”
He bristles. “And here I believed you were my friend.”
“I am,” she admits. “We have been through too much together for us to be anything else. But friends are not Thread-family, Leopold. One is knowing someone well. Laughing together and sharing interests. The other is risking your life for them—and knowing they will risk theirs for you. You must know that when storm and wildfire come, they will stay beside you.”