Dance of a Burning Sea

by Mellow, E. J.

  “You had a spider on you,” Arabessa said coolly.

  “I like spiders,” said Larkyra, trying to slap Arabessa back.

  Dolion pulled them apart. “See what happens when you leave, my flame?” He laughed, his arms bulging to restrain his daughters. “We all know these two only have ever enjoyed fighting with you.”

  The echoes of their banter faded as the ball of smoke dissipated with the memory ending.

  The room hung quiet.

  “Niya?” a deep voice asked behind her.

  Caught off guard, Niya stood. She hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the words and image of her family.

  Alōs was by the door, regarding her from across the dimly lit room. His large form was wrapped in a finely sewn navy tunic and trousers, blue-and-green embroidery detailing the edges. He looked nothing like a nefarious pirate lord and everything like the prince he’d been born to be. The king he had been meant to become.

  “Yes?” she asked, quickly wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “I noticed you were lagging behind the others.” Alōs touched the marking on his wrist. “Came to see that you weren’t getting in your usual trouble.”

  “Stupid leash,” muttered Niya, pulling her hands behind her, as though hiding her binding bet would momentarily remove its existence. “I’m coming,” she added louder, her voice overly bright. “Merely needed a few moments with my outfit.”

  Alōs studied the space where her family had just been. When his eyes returned to her, they held questions. “Are you . . . all right?”

  Niya blinked. Alōs never asked anyone, let alone her, such a thing. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked.

  Alōs’s brows creased, his gaze making her believe he wanted to say something else, but he merely replied, “We’ll be making the switch tonight.”

  A flutter in her stomach.

  “I hope there’s more of a plan than that one statement.”

  “There is.” Alōs glanced behind him, out the door to the sound of passersby. He slipped farther in, shutting it quietly. “At dinner I will be gifting the princess with a diadem, which out of decorum she will hopefully replace her current crown with for the remainder of the evening. Kintra is to follow where they take the crown with the Prism Stone and report back to us.”

  Niya watched the pirate approach as he explained their plan. And though they’d been alone before, now that the door was shut, the air felt charged, dangerous. Niya became acutely aware that nothing but soft beds and lounges filled the space. The last time they had been alone in such an opulent bedchamber, Niya had given up her identity, her freedom. The memory had her muscles tensing, her walls of protection rising.

  Fight. Her magic stirred silky in her heart.

  “Much seems to be riding on propriety,” she pointed out, folding her arms over her chest.

  “The diadem I’ll be presenting is rare and beautiful,” explained Alōs. “The people of the valley value these two traits more than any other. I have no doubt the princess will want to show it off.”

  Niya pursed her lips, not knowing what else to say but, “Then it seems you and Kintra have everything under control. Are you sure you need me tonight?”

  Alōs raised a brow as he came to a stop a few paces away. “The night has barely begun, and already you want to fight with me. Must I remind you that we are now on the same side, Niya?”

  She scoffed. “The only side you are ever on is your own.”

  “The same could be said of yourself,” he accused.

  “Only because someone taught me long ago the consequences of trusting another.”

  “Oh, come now.” He smiled. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

  Niya’s grip on her arms tightened. Buuuurn, her magic sang to her. Burn him like he burned you.

  “No cutting response?” Alōs stalked closer. “Something must be wrong.”

  With wariness, she watched him approach, his contained power slowly wafting out, cool to the touch along her hot skin. His energy felt different tonight, languid, like it often was in the Thief Kingdom. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be on this side of his charms. She had become so used to the pirate captain, the stern commander. She preferred that version. It was easier to separate their past from their present when he was nothing but business.

  “I am in no mood for your games,” she said.

  “Niya—”

  “Stop saying my name.”

  “But you hate my nicknames,” Alōs pointed out. “Am I to call you thing, then?”

  “Please stop.” Niya suddenly felt tired. She rubbed at the new throb along her temples.

  “Stop what?” He was now directly in front of her, glowing blue eyes peering down.

  “Stop doing whatever this is.” She gestured toward him. “You no longer hold my identity over my head. There is no more reason to tease and poke as you do. You do not need to pretend that you know me. I am merely part of your crew, and until all this is over, let us leave it at that.”

  “It is not pretend,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “I do know you, fire dancer. Despite how you might hate it. I know you more than you probably know yourself.”

  His words slithered uncomfortably along her skin. An echo of ones he had once begged of her in the past.

  Let me know you, fire dancer.

  Niya tipped her chin up, steadying the magic that continued to swim with threats in her gut. “Highly doubtful.”

  “I know you despise corsets.”

  “Every woman despises corsets.”

  “I know you prefer night to day,” he continued, undeterred, “and can’t turn down a gamble. I know your vice for eating honey and apples after a performance. I know, above all else, you care for your family and wear a mask of indifference too large for your empathetic heart to handle. And those are merely the things I’ve gathered from watching you. Shall I share what I know from touching you?”

  Niya sucked in a breath. “You bastard.”

  “You’ve met my family,” countered Alōs with a sharp grin. “I am many things, but a bastard, you very well know, I am not.”

  “Why do you do this?” asked Niya, her body thrumming with her mixture of growing rage and frustration. “Why do you hate me?”

  He blinked, the question appearing to catch him off guard.

  “From the moment we met,” she continued, “you have been scheming for the upper hand. And even after you get what you want, you still go out of your way to elicit my anger. Why?”

  Alōs was quiet for a long while, so long Niya was about to leave when he finally responded. “I do not hate you.”

  She laughed, the sound harsh to her ears. “Fine, whatever you say. But know I am done with it. Done with all of it. Our past, our present. And if you try to anger me in the future, I will not rise to it anymore. Do you understand? I am here to complete our bargain, and that is all. You have broken your plaything. Go find a new one.”

  Niya stomped past him, but he snagged her arm, stopping her.

  “You want to do this?” asked Alōs, his body so close she caught his scent of midnight orchid and sea. “You wish to finally air out the truth of our past? Then let’s.” His eyes blazed as they drank her in. “But know it was never hate driving my actions. How could I hate someone I did not know?” He dropped his grip from her arm, but the brand still lingered along her skin. Niya breathed quickly. “I was after leverage when I first met you. I no longer had a home or a family. Everything was business to me, a transaction for a better standing in the pecking order. That first night I came to the palace, I searched for the most valuable thing in the room and saw you, Niya Bassette, dancer of the Mousai.” His gaze roamed the length of her, assessing, appreciating. A chill danced along Niya’s exposed flesh in its wake as Alōs’s magic began to seep from him unchecked, a green mist. “I sought what you hid so thoroughly, knowing the leverage it would bring me. I hurt you in the process. I know. But as we’ve seen, I came to require that bargaining chip. I am n
ot sorry to have done it. I would do it again. Regret is for cowards too weak to make amends in the present.”

  Niya’s heart beat loudly in her ears, her own red haze of power tangling with his. They stood trapped in a cocoon of their own creation. “Is this your attempt at making amends?” she asked, glaring daggers up at him. “An explanation for your behavior over an apology? Because I can tell you, it is not working.”

  “You were raised in the Thief Kingdom,” Alōs snapped. “You are a part of the Mousai. Do not pretend to be innocent of cruelty and sin.”

  Niya took a step back, attempting to sever herself from his pull. His pull that always curled deliciously, but with warning, around her. Too similar. They were too similar. Beast and monster clashing for dominance. For control. “I never have claimed to be innocent of such things,” she began. “But it is one thing to break someone’s heart, and it is another to continuously bully them so they can never forget. Yes, your charms worked on me. Yes, we shared a bed. Once. But I have had many lovers since you, pirate. So please, be done with me! For I am certainly done with you.”

  Alōs’s stare danced like the center of the nearby flames. “If my memory serves,” he said, “you have been seeking me out since that night. Not the other way around. I made sure to avoid you at all costs after our . . . encounter, but I always knew when you were near. I feel your energy as you feel mine, fire dancer, as soon as either of us step into a room.”

  “I sought you out because I had been trying to kill you!”

  Alōs smiled sharply. “It sounds, then, like it is you who hates me.”

  Niya groaned her frustration. “Of course! You held my life in your hands after that night. My family’s! Threatened us every day forth.”

  “An outcome I did not force from you. You always had a choice that night. Do not hate me because you made the wrong one.”

  Niya felt crazed, dizzy in her cacophony of emotions. She wanted to scream and cry and burn everything down because she knew deep in her heart Alōs was right. He might have played her for a fool, but she had not been raised to be an innocent; she should have known better.

  The enemy Niya had hated for so long was herself.

  Her magic burned like fire in her veins as she forced herself to ask, “Why, then, did you not leave the moment you saw me, knew my name? Why did you stay the night?”

  They remained a touch apart, and Niya watched Alōs’s gaze drop to her lips. “Because”—his voice came out a husky rumble—“you offered yourself. And it wasn’t just your identity I had grown to want.”

  Niya felt her body betraying her, felt it sway forward, closer to the beast whose cold magic made hers feel that much hotter. Memories of that night swam through her mind like a forbidden dream.

  Alōs’s hands were cool against her cheeks as he studied every inch of her newly exposed face. “Niya.” His voice was rough as he said her name for the first time. “So beautiful,” he whispered before angling her lips to his. Niya had been kissed before, stolen ones by young gentlemen in Jabari. But none had been like this. Alōs’s mouth was soft, his form solid. Having a man who held such power yet could be so gentle with her was intoxicating.

  Niya wrapped her arms around him, letting out a moan of greed, of desperation. She knew revealing herself was a risk, but after hiding herself away for so long in this palace, the forbiddenness of taking off her mask for another—the rebellious freedom in it—was too great. Especially with Alōs’s pining so devoted, his passion overwhelming, his words perfect. He never said he loved her, but how was this not love? Niya ran her fingers through his thick hair as she pulled back. “Take me to my bed,” she whispered. His blue eyes sparked at her words, his grip on her hardening as he bent to kiss her again, but he did not move them from being pressed into her dressing table, where they hid in her private rooms beneath the palace in the Thief Kingdom. “Alōs.” Niya rubbed impatiently against his thigh, her breast pressing against his chest. “I want to feel how much you cherish me. Take me to my bed and show me.”

  “Are you sure?” Alōs asked.

  Niya ran her hand down to where he was hard and strong.

  He groaned.

  “Is this answer enough?” she asked.

  With that, Alōs easily lifted her and walked the short distance to her bed. That night their magic danced with gives and pulls, of lust that reduced every sensation to a breath, a moan, a rake of nails along a back, Alōs’s dark skin contrasting beautifully against her pale—

  “And as I remember”—Alōs’s husky voice brought Niya back to the present, to the bedchamber within the mountain palace—“you were very glad that I did.”

  Niya was shaking now, her shame and rage and current confused longing too much to handle.

  She held Alōs’s consuming stare, felt his pressing power. He overwhelmed her. Always had. He was his own form of a gamble, she realized, for he made her feel more alive than any spill of dice or flip of cards. He made her feel as though she could burn as hot as she needed and he would merely stand there, soaking in her heat. But Niya was sick of always running hot, sick of forcing stakes high to feel alive. For this was where all that had gotten her. She was constantly running from lenders, currently separated from her family, and wrapped in a binding bet attached to another binding bet to the man she had been trying to escape yet had stalked for years.

  She needed to end it. She needed to move on. She needed to leave this room.

  “Perhaps I was,” said Niya. “But I am no longer that girl.”

  “As I am no longer that man.”

  “And who are you now?”

  “I am someone much worse.” Alōs’s glare bore down on her. “So you can keep hating me if that gives you solace, but we have fought as enemies for a long while, fire dancer. Perhaps it is time we see what happens when we work as allies.”

  “I could never be your friend.”

  “No,” Alōs agreed, his stare darkening, eliciting more unwanted heat in her belly. “Friendship was never our fate. But you promised me your absolute cooperation. So you might find it easier to point your hostility elsewhere until promises are fulfilled.”

  Niya watched him a long moment. “Very well. Until bargains are complete. Then we are done.”

  “Then we are done,” said Alōs.

  Niya pushed past him, striding from the room.

  As soon as she entered the hall, she breathed easier.

  The last piece of the Prism Stone was here. They would get it, and then this horrible game would be done.

  Tonight, thought Niya. I merely need to get through tonight.

  After which she’d be that much closer to home.

  And then Niya would never have to see Alōs Ezra again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Niya was surrounded by merriment and laughter, but her mood was similar to that of the stuffed and cooked pig on the table before her: rather annoyed to find herself here. The banquet hall was boisterous and warm, a spicy incense mixing with music and the echoing of guests. The pirates of the Crying Queen now mingled easily with the people of the valley. The endless fine spirits no doubt a tool in the loosening of suspicious walls. Exotic fruits and steaming vegetables passed quickly under Niya’s nose where she sat between Saffi and Achak at a table toward the back.

  Yet in contrast to her two companions, Niya slowly sipped her red wine and hardly touched her plate of food as her gaze continued to fall to where Alōs sat amid the royal family at the front of the room.

  The young princess was on his right, appearing to suffer the same affliction as Niya had once had at her age.

  Callista’s cheeks flushed anytime Alōs turned to engage her in conversation.

  There was no denying Callista’s beauty. Her dark skin was luminescent under the firelight, her prominent cheekbones complementing a long, graceful neck. Her hair was teased out with a plaited braid zigzagged in the middle, her outfit made of the finest silk. And her crown, no doubt the focal point of all of Alōs’s charm, gliste
ned as she angled her head close to his, the red of the Prism Stone a flashing temptation in the center.

  Despite the age difference, Niya couldn’t help but admit the pirate lord and the princess looked good together. Callista’s pureness balanced Alōs’s wicked allure.

  Both born to rule.

  Niya suddenly felt even more wretched, and she wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Perhaps seeing such an innocent beside the pirate reminded Niya of her younger self.

  She knew all too well how intoxicating it felt to draw the gaze of such a powerful man, to have Alōs’s sole attention in a room full of splendor. It was like a drug. Once you experienced the gentle touch of his glowing eyes, the heated curve of his grin, the prickle of his cool magic, you needed it like your next breath.

  She watched Alōs’s gaze slip up to the Prism Stone as Princess Callista tipped her head back, laughing at something he’d said. A desperate hunger seeped into his eyes then, a glint of pure danger.

  Everything he had searched for, had been banished for, was a mere touch away.

  What was he feeling? How much strength was he using to control his urge to rip the stone from its setting in her crown right then and there?

  Niya almost wished he would; the binding bet along her wrist tingled at the thought. She absently rubbed the mark with her finger. Freedom, it whispered. So close, yet still out of reach.

  “Kintra!” Achak’s deep voice brought Niya back to where she sat beside the brother. He raised a large hand, flagging down the quartermaster as she walked past their bench. “Come sit with us a moment,” said Achak, gesturing between himself and Niya.

  Kintra studied the tight space, which was mostly taken up by Achak’s ostentatious robe. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Nonsense!” said Achak, his gold-painted brows glistening as he moved over. “This one has been a complete bore.” He nodded toward Niya. “Hardly spoken a word since she’s sat down. You would be saving Saffi and I from any more of her dullness. Move over, child.”

  Niya was forced to scoot to the side as Achak pulled Kintra down between them.