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Her gaze was still locked with Andala’s. And there was something in the other woman’s look, now, something that said she knew what Oriane was thinking. But were her thoughts the same? Was shewanting, like Oriane was? Andala’s eyes dropped—
There was an explosion of clapping and whooping around them. The music had stopped; the dance was over. Oriane looked around like a sleepwalker woken from a trance. When she turned back, Andala was looking at the ground. She had let go of Oriane’s hand, her waist.
‘Thank you for the dance, my lady,’ she said to the floor. And then she was gone, weaving through the brightly coloured crowd like a ribbon of dark smoke.
166
Chapter 21
Andala needed to get out of the room.
Out of the room, out of this gown, out of her own treacherous body, out of her skies-forsaken mind.
She worked her way through the press of people in the ballroom, uncaring of the shoulders she jostled, the slippered feet she trampled. Already she felt guilty for leaving Oriane alone behind her. But she could not stop herself moving, fleeing, as she always did, from everything.
At last she burst out of the doors and into the courtyard. Her breathing was heavy, as if she’d just emerged from beneath deep water. She kept walking. Past the revellers. Past the fountains and statues. Through the white-gold glow of the gardens, ethereally lovely against the black night beyond.
That black night was where she was headed. It was her territory, after all, was it not?
She’d sung for the darkness hours ago, of course, so a cold hand forcing its way between her ribs was not what drove her to the woods again now. It was a different kind of ache in her chest, a new feeling of wrongness that had settled over her body like a shroud. It moved her feet beneath her, ferrying her far from the celebrations, away, away, away.167
When the woods had enveloped her at last, she stopped. Faint moonlight filtered through the gloom. Andala closed her eyes against it. She made herself draw long, slow breaths, one hand against a rough tree trunk to keep her steady.
Andala had worked hard to master the art of separation. She kept an arm’s length, always, between herself and every person she met. A barricade between her present and her past, built with years of time and miles of distance. And a wall, a bulwark, within her own mind, dividing what she thought from what she ought not to think about, what she felt from what she did not let herself feel. That wall was thin and transparent as glass, but stronger and sturdier than steel, so that it might stand, imperceptible, forever.
But one dance with Oriane – one proper look into her gold-painted eyes – and Andala’s walls and barricades had shuddered, threatening to collapse.
Oriane’s father had been killed. Her home burned to the ground. Everything she had, taken from her in an instant.
She was furious, righteously so. Andala had witnessed her flares of rage these past days, interspersed in sharp bursts throughout her debilitating grief. Anger looked strange on Oriane, out of place on that bright, open face, like a snowstorm brewing in the height of summer. But she deserved to be angry – with the soldiers who had invaded her home and killed her father; with the king who had ordered them to do it.
With Andala herself.
Oriane was not angry with her, though, because she did not know she should be. She had no idea of the role Andala had played in all of it. Andala was the spark that had started the blaze, the gale that had fanned the flames. The cause and the culprit.
The nightingale.168
And Oriane did not know.
Andala haddancedwith her. Held her hand and her waist and watched Oriane lean into her touch as if it were a comfort, a lifeline, when she should have shied away from Andala’s proximity as if it would burn her. Because it would. It already had.
Despite the time they’d spent together, despite the spark of connection between them that no doubt stemmed from their shared power, Andala barely knew this woman. But suddenly, she found herself willing to do anything that might staunch the flow of anguish that was bleeding Oriane dry.
But what could she do?
Even as she asked it of herself, she knew. There was only one thing left.
She drew another breath, straightened the fall of her gown. Steeled herself. Turned away from the shadowed woods and back towards the palace, enveloped in its corona of light.
Oriane deserved the truth. All of it.
And Andala was going to tear down her walls and tell it.
169
Chapter 22
After what felt like years, the first hint of warmth flared faintly, finally, at Oriane’s heart.
