Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [119]
She did not intend a challenge, but he took it as one. He reached up to the delicate threads that, like gossamers of a spider’s web, secured the gown around her neck, and gave a short, sharp tug. They gave way easily to his claws, and Madrigal gasped. The dress stayed in place, but a cluster of its fragile fastenings were severed.
“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