Page 183 of A Dance of Water

She copied his stance, her smaller hands resting upon the rail of the balcony as she faced the ocean. Her legs wobbled. It stretched on and on and on?—

A tremor wracked her frame.

Finally, she spoke. "Distract me." She didn’t meet his eyes, held hostage by the sea.

"What were you doing out here?" Graves asked.

She exhaled. "Facing my fears."

"Did it work?"

Did it?

The undulating waves reflected the dark sky, filling her with unease.

"No." She shook her head. "It didn’t."

There were a million things to say, but she couldn’t find it in herself to say any of them.

She knew why he had come: time was a noose wrapped around her neck, tightening with every passing moment. Nightfall loomed. The King of Serpentis would wait for no one. She had sequestered herself in her room, afraid to see the icy change that would, once more, take hold of the castle. The air was thick with anticipation, starker, darker than before. Something about this night was different than the rest.

It was the fourth night of the Solstice.

Maybe the ocean rocks would be a better fate.

"How did your journey go?" she inquired, grasping at anything to distract herself. The Binding mark hummed; she had to be careful of her words, unable to ask freely due to the King’s order.

"It was…" Graves trailed off, and she looked at him. Even one for few words as he was, when he did choose to speak, it was always done unfalteringly. He ran a hand over his jaw. "Itwas."

She studied his profile.

His hood shifted as he turned to look at her under the dim light cast by the dark clouds. "I’ve missed your eyes," he mumbled. "They’re such a unique shade of blue, even better when every emotion flickers through them. Telling."

"Graves—" Her brows winged up as she silently implored him to extrapolate.

He cut her off. "Like that, sweetheart—a window to your thoughts." A warm hand cupped her cheek. She hadn’t realized he had removed his gloves. "How does it feel, to see?"

"It feels as though I’m flying," she whispered as he held her. A hand moved to hold her waist, and he shifted to stand behind her, his chest pressing into her back. They were facing out at the sea, the railing of the balcony dug into her stomach, and her bare toes brushed the edge.

"Have you thought about flying?" His fingers indented her waist, just below her ribs.

"Sometimes… In S-Solis, when it became too much to be trapped, I imagined I was a great bird, flying through the sky. It made my worries seem smaller, to imagine I was above it all." Speaking like this, without looking at him, it reminded her of the safety found in darkness, how freeing it was to be blindfolded—one thing she would miss.

His hips pressed into her back. She breathed out shakily, head turning to the side, trying to find him in her periphery. He caught her head and faced it forward.

Slowly, Graves took a few steps, just enough to make her toes hover over nothing. His hand brushed from her waist up along her side, tracing the individual bones of her ribs under her gown, before they skimmed along the underside of her arms, forcing them up and out.

His fingers laced with hers as he held her arms out by her sides.

Wet air tickled her cheeks, and wind lifted her skirts and made her white hair flap around her face.

Thunder rumbled like a rolling drum throughout the sky. Lightning zigzagged throughout, sparks of white breaking through the darkness.

"Beautiful," she breathed.

Graves’s hands tightened on hers as their arms were stretched out at their sides. He held her as if she were a feather; one sharp gust of wind, and she would be torn away from his clutches. "Nothing can replicate the feeling of soaring through the air, but if I were to try, this would be close." His stubble scratched against her cheek. "Close your eyes."

Her eyes fluttered closed, head tipping back onto his chest.

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