A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,210

violins, the clashing cymbals with the counter-beat, the horns and reeds with their high-arcing song.

There wasn’t enough space inside her for the sound, for all it made her feel—not enough space in her mind, her heart, her body; and all she could do to honor it, worship it, was dance.

Eris, to his credit, kept up.

She held his eyes throughout each step, let him feel her supple body, how pliant it was as she arched into a cluster of notes. His hand tightened on her, fingers digging into the groove of her spine, and she let a small smile rise to her red-painted lips.

She had never worn such a color on her mouth. It looked like sin personified. But Mor had done it, along with the swoop of liquid kohl over her upper eyelids. And when Nesta had looked in the mirror at last, she hadn’t seen herself staring back.

She’d seen a Queen of the Night. As merciless and cold and beautiful as the god Lanthys had wanted to make her. Death’s Consort.

Death herself.

Eris released her waist to spin her, and it was no effort to time her rotation to the flutter of notes, her gaze locking back to his exactly as the music returned to the melody. Flame simmered in his eyes, and he spun her again—not a prescribed move in the dance, but she followed through, snapping her head around to meet his gaze once more, her skirts twirling.

His lips curled with approval, his test passed.

Nesta smirked back at him, letting her eyes glitter. Make him crawl, Mor had said. And she would.

But first she would dance.

Cassian knew the waltz. Had watched and danced it for centuries. Knew its last half minute was a swift frenzy of notes and rising, grand sound. Knew most dancers would keep waltzing through it, but the brave ones, the skilled ones would do the twelve spins, the female blindly turning with one arm above her head, rotated again and again and again by her partner as they moved across the dance floor. To spin was to risk looking the fool at best, to eat marble at worst.

Nesta went for it.

And Eris went with her, eyes blazing with feral delight.

The music stomped into its crashing finale, drums striking, violins whirring, and the entire room straightened, eyes upon Nesta.

Upon Nesta, this once-human female who had conquered death, who now glowed as if she had devoured the moon, too.

Between one beat and the next, Eris lifted Nesta’s arm above her head and whipped her around with such force her heels rose off the ground. She’d barely finished the rotation when he spun her again, her head turning with such precision it took Cassian’s breath away.

And her feet …

One spin after another after another, moving across the now-empty dance floor like a night storm, Nesta’s slipper-clad feet danced so fast they were a near blur. He knew that Eris turned her arm, but her feet held her, propelled them. It was she who led this dance. On the seventh spin, she twirled so swiftly she rose fully onto her toes.

On the ninth spin, Eris released her fingers. And Nesta, arm still stretched above her head, rotated thrice more. Each one of the sapphires atop her tiara glimmered as if lit with an inner fire. Someone gasped nearby. It might have been Feyre.

And as Nesta spun solo—on the toes of one perfect foot—she smiled. Not a courtier’s slick smile, not a coy one, but one of pure, wild joy, brought by the music and the dance and her wholehearted yield to it.

It was like seeing someone being born. Like seeing someone come alive.

By the time Nesta finished the last rotation, that absurd defiance of basic laws of movement and space, Eris had her hand again, spinning her three more times, his red hair glinting like fire as if in echo to the unchecked, dark joy bursting from her.

Nesta’s mother had wanted a prince for her. Cassian now thought she’d undervalued her daughter. Only a king or an emperor would do for someone with that level of skill.

She was seducing Eris within an inch of his life. The murmuring of the Hewn City confirmed that Cassian wasn’t the only one noting it.

Eris’s eyes gleamed with wanton desire as he drank in Nesta’s smile, the glow about her. He knew what Nesta might become with a little ambition. The right guidance.

If he learned that the Dread Trove answered to her, that she’d Made his new dagger …

It was a mistake,