E I G H T Y E A R S L A T E R
1, 2, 3…
When I danced, I never stopped counting.
The truth was, I was a terrible dancer. I wasn’t sure that I believed in the concept of talent at all, but even if I did, I could recognize that I didn’t have any. At least when it came to dancing. But talent, I had learned, was optional. It could be substituted with long nights and early mornings, bleeding feet, obsessively memorized footwork.
No one needed talent when you had brute force. And, despite my willowy size and my unassuming doe-eyed smile, I had more brute force than anyone.
…4, 5, 6…
Twirl.
And— fire.
I smiled at the merchant man seated in front of me, opening my palms to let blue fire unfurl from between my fingers. The audience, Esmaris’s party guests, ooh-ed and aah-ed appreciatively. There were several hundred people mingling about the large marble room, all dressed in their finest clothing. Lots of gold thread and floaty, sheer chiffon. Lots of white. Rich people loved white, perhaps because it proved that they had the money to spend on a small army of slaves to keep it clean.
All of those white-clad bodies bent towards me in that moment, rapt, as I unleashed a wave of my signature translucent butterflies into the air. Four dozen of them fluttered to the high ceiling and disappeared, unraveling into puffs of blue smoke.
All except for three.
Three fluttered to three separate men in the audience, circling their necks, flitting against their cheeks before they disappeared.
Every one of the men flinched as the butterfly approached, then laughed with varying degrees of enthusiasm when they realized they felt like nothing but air. Their gazes had been glued to me this entire time, and I could tell that they were itching for the opportunity to throw coins in my direction, if I used what I had correctly.
I focused on the youngest one first, a merchant man perhaps only a few years older than myself. He had something to prove. New money. I danced closer to him, and as my fingers reached out to flirtatiously touch his shoulder, my mind did too — tasting the air for his thoughts, his preferences. This one, it turned out, had no preference for me at all. In fact, I could feel his attention being constantly pulled toward Serel, one of Esmaris’s handsomer bodyguards, who lingered in the far corner of the room.
That was fine. He didn’t have to want to screw me to serve my purposes. If anything, it made things easier for me — he would be overly eager to prove his virile interest in a scantily-clad dancer like myself, rather than a scantily-clad guard like Serel. And he wouldn’t try to get me alone once the dance ended.
The strings of the harp plinked on, but there might as well have been no music at all. My dance was memorized. My feet didn’t stop moving as I coiled my arms around the merchant’s neck. “I left something over here,” I purred, pulling my fingers from behind the edge of his jaw and
revealing one of my twinkling butterflies. “She likes you. Would you like to keep her?”
The young merchant smiled at me. He was handsome, with curly brown hair and big amber eyes framed by lashes so long that they made me jealous.
He and Serel would make a beautiful couple, really.
“I would,” he said, staring at me too-intently, even though his thoughts told me that he had no interest in keeping her at all. What he did have an interest in was showing that he could hold his own in this room of wildly rich and wildly successful people — even against Esmaris himself. He lifted a hand as if to take the glowing butterfly from me, but I twirled backwards, smirking at him coyly.
“What will you give me for her?”
I caught a glimpse of Esmaris over the young man’s shoulder. He was clad in a shock of color — bright red — which stood out in a sea of white. He didn’t need to prove his wealth or status, after all, with his choice of clothing. But even beyond the shade of his shirt, there was still something about him that separated him from the crowd. A certain cool, authoritative air, like he strode through the world expecting it to bend to him. It usually did.
He was engaged in a conversation with one of his guests, looking vaguely bored. His hair — black but streaked with grey — was bound back in a low ponytail, with one unruly strand that he kept sweeping behind his ear. Mid-movement, he glanced up to meet my eyes. Our eye contact lasted for a fraction of a second before he looked back to his guest, unconcerned.
Good. He wasn’t usually possessive, but better to be careful.
“You already have my admiration,” the young merchant said, and it physically pained me not to roll my eyes.
“Valuable indeed,” I cooed instead. “But so is she, isn’t she?” The butterfly’s wings trembled against my fingertips. I closed my fingers around it, and when I opened them, a
little glass version of my illusion sat in my palm. For a moment I couldn’t help but admire it, proud of myself. This was a new addition to my routine.
The merchant’s eyebrows arched, and I felt his impressed surprise rippling the inches between our faces.
“For you.”
“That is incredible.” The man’s pleasant smile split into a full-on grin. In that awestruck gaze, I could see what he might have looked like as a child, enthralled by some circus acrobat or shiny bauble. When those beautiful eyes met mine again, we shared a moment of genuine connection.
And then he reached into his pocket. “For you.” He took
the glass butterfly from my hand, and in its place, dropped five gold coins into my palm.
Five.
Gold.
I blinked down at them, momentarily speechless. I wasn’t a fool — I knew that there was a reason why he dropped the pieces so loudly into my hand, why he was doing this while everyone’s eyes were on us. It was bold, even rude, of him to give me money without so much as seeking a glance of wordless permission from Esmaris, never mind money like this. Many did not like their slaves to have money at all, and more still did not like that money to come from other men. In both of these ways, Esmaris was quite liberal, but five gold was skirting the bounds of respectability by any measure.
One thousand and two.
I wasn’t expecting to hit that number that night, or the night after, or after that. I was lucky if I left one of Esmaris’s parties with ten silver pieces.
One thousand and two. One thousand and two.
“Thank you,” I choked out, forgetting to be coquettish. I closed the coins in my palm, relishing their weight as I slipped them into the tiny silk purse at my hip. “Thank you.”
The man smiled and nodded at me, oblivious to what he had just done for me.
Excitement and elation bubbled up inside of me. For a moment, I was lost in it. Then the sound of the harp came roaring back, and I realized that I almost missed my cue.
I wanted to jump up and down and spin around and laugh. But I had hours of performing left to do. So I began to count again.
1, 2, 3, 4…
Before I twirled away, I ran my fingertips along the merchant’s cheek, through his admirable thick curls. And I smiled, and smiled, and smiled. As I cascaded across the marble floor, Serel caught my eye from across the room and cocked his head, asking me a silent question. In response, I only grinned. Perhaps he would know what it meant.
One thousand and two.
One thousand gold was the price of my freedom.
