CHAPTER 98: STANDING IN TWO NIGHTS AT ONCE

One dance wouldn’t hurt, would it?

That was the lie I fed myself as Rion’s fingers threaded through mine and drew me into the warm center of the music.

My blue skirt skimmed my ankles, catching on the rhythm. I lifted my chin and pretended my pulse wasn’t already sprinting.

He didn’t ask. He simply took. A hand at my waist, sure and authoritative, and my body answered as if he had pressed a secret switch hidden under my skin.

He angled me with a light pressure, guiding my left foot back, my right to the side. I hadn’t danced this pattern in years, yet my muscles remembered the logic of it once he set the frame.

One-two-three, turn. One-two-three, breathe. He was unyielding where I needed him to be, relaxed everywhere else. It made following him disarmingly easy.

Rion smelled faintly of rain struck stone and something darker beneath—shadow warmed by heat. Every time we turned, that scent pulled a thread through me. The room blurred at the edges.

I told myself it was because the music had gathered speed, that the flicker in my chest was only nerves.

He lifted our joined hands. I spun beneath, the skirt opening like a flower.

When he caught me, his palm closed over my waist, and my back met the solid line of his chest. His breath brushed the top of my ear, not quite a touch, only a proximity.

"The blue dress suits you," he said.

"It does?" My voice was barely more than a whisper.

"Yes."

"The seamstress should take the credit," I said, because praise from him felt like a hook and I didn’t know where it would drag me.

He smirked—brief, crooked, like he’d tripped on something amusing I couldn’t see.

"What’s funny about it?" I asked, eyeing the curve of his mouth.

His mask cast a neat shadow over his cheekbones, sharpening what didn’t need sharpening.

There was something familiar about that angle. The thought slipped past me and was gone.

He shook his head. The smirk faded, his gaze turning solemn, as if we had stepped from candlelight into a darker corridor.

"I didn’t say the dress made you beautiful."

My brows knit before I could stop them. The music carried us through a turn while my mind stuttered.

What did that mean? That I wasn’t beautiful? But he’d said the dress suited me. Did he mean the seamstress had done poorly and the dress merely... tolerated me?

Was this his very polished way of insulting me?

"You’re overthinking," he said.

I froze, my eyes widening.

"What—can you hear my thoughts? Read my mind?"

Talking to me on my mind was one thing. Reading every stray, embarrassing thought was another. Who wanted an intruder in their head anyway?

He tipped his head, just a fraction. "It was obvious on your face."

Air left me on a small, relieved laugh.

"Right. Of course." I smoothed my expression into something bland and composed, then ruined it by glancing back at his mouth.

"What does it mean, then?" I asked, because I hated the way the words had edged under my ribs and stayed there.

He didn’t answer immediately.

He lifted our joined hands again, a signal I didn’t have to think about anymore, and turned me.

The floor slid by in a circle of light and murmurs, and when I faced him, he drew me in. His hand at my waist firmed, the other guided me a step closer than politeness required.

He bent, just enough that his face descended to mine, the mask’s lower edge nearly grazing my cheek.

"You made the dress look beautiful," he said softly, "not the other way around."

My knees forgot they had bones. The next step went missing from my head, and the floor tilted.

I would have stumbled, maybe fallen, if he hadn’t steadied me with an effortless adjustment—fingers flexing at my waist, a subtle shift that put me back exactly where the music wanted me.

I hated that my heartbeat thundered like it meant to break free. Hated more that he felt it, he must have, with how close we were.

Rion Morrigan could be playful, sweet even, when it entertained him. It wasn’t kindness. I wasn’t foolish enough to file it under that drawer. He was twisted in too many ways.

Charm, for him, was a lever. Still, the lever worked. I felt it working.

"Thank you," I said wryly, because what else was there to say to a compliment shaped like a trap?

He slanted me a look that made the back of my neck prickle.

The smirk wasn’t there anymore, amusement was. A cool, attentive amusement that said he was cataloguing every shift in me, every breath I took too quickly.

He liked getting under people’s skin. It fit him, the way a knife fit a sheath.

We moved. Steps braided and unbraided. The music climbed a degree, then settled. My body had learned him by then. I didn’t have to think about where my feet went. He pressed when I needed to draw back, released when I needed to advance.

I hated how right it felt.

Around us, people spoke in low threads. The Alpha was dancing, said one voice shaped like awe. Another hissed something and then went quiet when Rion’s attention flicked their way.

I fixed my gaze on the line of his jaw where the mask ended.

A lock of dark silver hair escaped and brushed his temple when he moved. The shape of his mouth dragged another memory forward, half-formed, irritating, like a word on the tip of my tongue.

It wasn’t the jaw or the mouth. It was the way he watched, the patient, predatory stillness beneath the ease.

I felt like I had seen his masked face before. Not here. Somewhere else. Another place. Another night...

The realization was a slow turn, the same speed as the dance. I pressed closer to the thought the way he pressed me closer to avoid a passing couple.

He didn’t need to look down to know where I’d go; his body was already speaking to mine in small corrections and invitations. It was almost comfortable. The word shocked me when it entered my head.

He leaned in slightly, and his breath traced along my cheekbone. The warmth of it made my skin tighten.

Instinct said to pull back, pride said not to. I held my place. He said nothing for several measures, and neither did I.

The music slid into its closing figure. He guided me through it with the same unruffled command he’d had from the first step. Only now I felt something else in it.

Recognition cracking its shell.

I kept staring at him.

Memory snapped into place.

My stomach dipped. The corners of the hall blurred, not from nerves this time, but from the sudden sense of standing in two nights at once.

This one, with its light and music. And that other one, not in the middle of a dancing crowd, but in the shadows.

"You were that man," I breathed. "The man in the masquerade ball at Finn’s manor more than a month ago."