“Just smile,” he said.
“You are telling me to grin and bear it?” she asked, and he looked at her over one shoulder, eyebrow cocked to match her expression. It made her laugh and hit him on one shoulder blade with a flat palm. “I hate you,” she grumbled, stroking her hands down his arms and back, smoothing out the fabric of the cloak in a gesture she had performed a thousand times before. More than that. And yet, this time, it sent a pleasurable tremor through him that made him turn to face her. If so only to get her hands to stop putting strange ideas in his head.
Then he followed the impulse, reached for her waist, grabbed one of her hands and pulled her to him. For a brief moment she looked shocked, but then she cottoned on and let him sweep her into the middle of the room in a trying set of steps. When she stumbled for the second time, he let her go.
“It’s the gown,” she said, defensively. “It’s heavy and cumbersome.”
“So is this cloak,” he remarked. “These clothes weigh half a dragonling. Am I complaining?”
“I was not complaining,” she shot. “Merely offering an explanation for why I shall not be doing that again this evening.”
“Of course, you must dance,” he said, growing serious. “It is custom.”
“Hang your custom,” she replied, tilting her chin up in a challenge for him to make her.
He tilted his head, then reached for her again, making her giggle as she stepped out of reach. Avoiding him she quickly headed for the door. “After you, your highness,” she said, holding the door open with a deep curtsey.
“I will get you on that dance floor with me, just you wait and see,” he said, accepting her show of respect with a slight bow to her curtsey before walking out through the door.
“Doubtful,” she shook her head, following him. “Very doubtful.”
But not an impossibility, he noted.
For the first time in their friendship, he was going to not only enter the great hall with her at his side, but he was going to escort her through every hallway on the way there. He was going to have her hold his arm down the steps for all to see. He was going to get to show her off.
It should not make him feel giddy with excitement, and yet it did.
All who saw her should be in awe of her, all who knew her should be so lucky. They would understand. If they only opened their eyes to truly see her, they would grow aware of why he wanted her to occupy the place he was offering her, the place right beside him. The place she was choosing.
She was going to be formidable.
The thought placed a smile on his mouth that was impossible to wipe out.
“What?” she asked, but he shook his head, knowing he would make her deeply self-conscious if he communicated what he had just so warmly concluded about her.
She closed the door behind them and, when he reached his arm out to her, she brought her hand up to rest it against the fabric of his jacket sleeve. The giggles of the training circle seemed long forgotten. The seriousness of the moment overcoming them both. It felt odd but right. This wasn’t a joke—this was their future.
His mind registered that they were both wearing blue silk of a slightly different shade. It made them look as much the couple as Ewan and Lady Shannon had earlier, but, of course, this was different. Blue was the color of their ruling house, of his house. Most people attending the dinner would be wearing blue.
She was barely touching him, he noted, as though scared to wrinkle the silk.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“You cannot know that,” she disagreed. Her hand landed more firmly on his arm, lightly clasping at it.
“You are going to do splendidly,” he insisted.
“You most certainly cannot knowthat,” she replied pointedly, jaws working as though chewing over the fact of her getting ready to enter the great hall wearing what she was wearing, looking how she was looking, and hanging off his arm for the first time in their friendship.
“Would you rather someone else escorted you?” he asked, suddenly wary that his presence was the problem. That it was him singling her out that was making her this uncomfortable, but her hold on his arm only hardened in response.
No, that was the last thing she wanted.
“I would hold onto you for the rest of the evening, if you’d let me,” she confessed, the words finally producing a smile. It reached her eyes and warmed them in the most stunning of ways.
She looked highborn. Someone who belonged in the great halls of all the kingdoms. But then again, she had always looked like that to him. Since they were both young, she had been fierce and powerful. She had always carried herself in a self-possessed manner that the courtiers could only dream of, combined with something wildly free that could overcome her at a moment’s notice and have her running through the gardens like a whirlwind.
And she was staying.
