Page 72 of A Dance Macabre

“Wait here,” Wolfgang mutters softly.

Straightening to my full height, I turn to watch him. Brown hair disheveled, strands falling over his forehead, his trousers still unbuckled as he walks over to the long dining table. The image of him like this, unkempt, wild—it humanizes him. His wolfish face revealed under the Vainglory mask.

I felt my own mask dissolve tonight. Yet, the fear of Wolfgang seeing me like this does not consume me. Instead, I feel alive. Real.

Picking up a white cloth from the table, he dunks it into a silver carafe full of ice water. He returns to the window with a sly grin and an arrogant strut.

His steely gaze remains glued to mine as he slowly lowers himself to his knees in front of me. The same painful squeeze wraps itself cruelly around my heart. His smile turns heady. Strong hands smooth up my thighs, pushing my dress back up to my hips.

“Let me wash away any proof of me,” he says with the heat of a thousand suns. There’s light-heartedness in his tone. I hate it. Somehow loathing the thought of washing him off of me. Let him linger. Let him seep into me and sink into my bones.

But I say nothing.

I suck in a small breath when the cloth touches my burning skin, still cold from the ice water. Wolfgang’s other hand grips me tightly on the thigh, his thumb digging into the tender flesh just under my harness.

His gaze is now trained on his slow, meticulous movements. Over my thighs. Across my sensitive slit.

It’s then I feel it.

Between the hot breaths of his lips near my skin, his touch echoing the pleasure of how it felt to have him sink into me, knowing we were no longer dooming our fates, but sealing it instead.

Death summons me. Beckoning.

Wolfgang must feel my energy shift. His touch stutters, watchful eyes lifting. “What is it?”

I fix my dress, stepping away from the window as Wolfgang stands close by, flicking the wet cloth on the floor without a care.

Death drifts over and through my senses, and my skin breaks into goosebumps. “I need to go,” I say quietly.

Wolfgang’s hand snaps out as soon as my words are pushed out from my lips. Fingers curling around my wrist, they create familiar divots, his hand always finding my wrist lately.

“You’re not leaving my side, Mercy,” he says sternly, his eyebrows furrowing with concern. “Especially now, with the threat to our lives at its highest.”

“It’s calling me.” My voice should sound like a steel rod, unbreakable; instead, it sounds weak like a handful of straw.

I feel pulled apart. As if Wolfgang is holding my life force between his fingers. If he wanted to be cruel, he could ball his hand into a fist and turn me into dust.

I look out the window evading his questioning gaze. The rain streaks the window, blurring Pravitia and its shimmering, glittering lights.

“Is your god speaking to you?”

I shift my attention back to Wolfgang, his hand still holding me. Keeping me close.

“Yes.”

Letting go of my arm, he fixes himself with righteous resolve. The tug of his shirt into his trousers. The buckle of his belt. The smoothing of his lapels. It’s all done with such aristocratic grace that I realize then that Wolfgang has always been destined to rule. Has always been destined for such grandeur and worship.

I’ve always hungered for power, but I wonder if I’ll ever revel in it like Wolfgang.

There’s a melancholy attached to the feeling.

When he’s finished, his hair coiffed back to perfection, he offers me his hand. “Shall we?”

My stomach swoops in surprise. “You can’t come with me,” I say, my tone just as taken aback.

His laugh is dismissive. “And why is that?”

“Because …” I trail off unsure, after a long beat I shake off the feeling. “Because this is an intimate act, I worship alone. It’s how it has always been.”

---