He never made it to her. The musicians playing on a second story balcony overlooking the ballroom struck up a familiar tune. The crowd bellowed its excitement and surged together like the inhalation of a great, heaving beast. The dance of Sun and Rose had begun.
Emerence no longer saw Gaeres in the crowd. He was tall but so were many other men in attendance, and it was easy to lose sight of someone among so many. The sea of people broke up into four huge circles. A master of ceremonies held up a bowl to pick the first of four names, men who would act as avatars for Yalda, god of the sun and creation. The four would dance with many of the Beladine maidens in attendance until the music stopped and the lucky woman still dancing with one of the Suns received a Rose of blessing as a token of luck that she might be married by the following Delyalda.
Emerence abandoned her place in the corner, not to join the dance, but for a better view of the dancers, and a better chance of seeing Gaeres in the crush of bodies. She laughed aloud when his name was one of the four called to act as one of the Suns. He wore a resigned expression as he stepped forward to the crowd’s cheers and wagged an admonishing finger at an older woman Emerence recognized as Dahran Sulti. No doubt it had been Sulti who’d entered his name into the lottery.
Emerence almost pitied Gaeres. He and the other three men chosen were in for a long slog of it, fun though it was. While the women either waited their turns to dance with the Suns or bowed out after a time, the men acting as the Suns danced continuously. It was a grueling exercise in stamina, especially when the crowd was this large.
The master of ceremonies raised a hand and signaled for the musicians to begin again. Just before Gaeres’s first partner approached him, he found Emerence. The tiny tilt of his head encouraged her to join the circle. She refused with a quick shake of her head and a smile. As she’d told him before, this dance was no longer for her though she was happy to watch.
He was a graceful dancer, even when it was obvious he was learning the steps as he went. Even as the dance grew progressively faster and wilder, with partners switching at increasing speeds and the musicians played with a gusto only matched by the crowd’s enthusiasm and the dancers’ flying feet, Gaeres didn’t falter or stumble. People in the crowd shouted encouragement to their favorite dancer and the four Suns, two who looked ready to faint from exhaustion.
When the master of ceremonies finally called a halt, the musicians could hardly be heard over the crowd’s roar. A deafening cheer went up, along with a round of applause for the Suns who managed to make it through the entire event and the four women who’d won their Rose of blessing. Emerence clapped and whistled her approval at discovering that Gaeres’s final partner was one of his cousins. He gave her a brief hug, then nudged her toward the master of ceremonies who presented her with one of the roses.
It was Emerence’s turn to be enveloped by the crowd, and she lost sight of Gaeres a third time. Hemmed in from all sides, she managed to shove her way to the perimeter of the ballroom where a set of doors led outside to the gardens. Spotting freedom from the crowds and the heat, she slipped outside, grateful for the shock of cold air that suddenly buffeted her face and cooled her skin.
Snow continued to fall, blanketing the gardens so the white landscape took on a sparkling, ethereal quality. It was only a matter of time before the cold became too much, even for her heavy dress, and she’d retreat inside once more. Until then she followed the line of neatly manicured bushes iced in white to where they stopped just shy of a towering conifer whose sloping branches defied an accumulation of snow so the tree stood tall and black against a night sky made charcoal gray by snow-heavy clouds.
“Emerence.”
She turned at the sound of her name behind her. Gaeres stood nearby. She’d hadn’t heard him come outside. He stood in a pool of lamplight, dressed in the warm colors of autumn, his dark hair tousled from the wild dancing,