* [This scene contains content some might find upsetting. Please check the post/chapter titled Episode Five: “Broken Earth” Content Warning List and Pronunciation Guide for a list of content warnings.]
[This scene also has a plot summary at the end for those who need to skip this scene but still want to know the important plot points of it. Happy (and safe) reading!]
Dance was something holy and profound to Belle. The movement with and through magic itself—both Mothers moving together to create pure art. It was holy, and yet so human. The muscles, the skin, the sweat, the stumbles and missteps. It was a celebration of the flesh, of the beasts named Human.
And so, Belle never felt so at odds with herself as she did when she was dancing with Richard. Especially because he danced so well.
It felt perverse, blasphemous even to move with him around Muse House’s stone floor, warm beneath Belle’s bare feet by the bodies packed within it. It felt wrong to let him show her off, to celebrate her flesh and all that it could do in this sheer silk dress. It felt like spitting in the Mothers’ faces—or maybe like they were spitting in hers.
But the worst part was that it was so fun, and they were both so good at it.
Lady Belle let herself perform for Richard, with Richard, rolling her hips, picking up her feet, feeling the beat of the music and the ecstasy of the singing, pressing herself against him, because she did not want to die.
This was Richard’s party, thrown for the benefit of the four women that had caught his eye at the Primaspectalia. They stood together, whispering and glaring at Belle—not that she could hear or see them with all the bodies dancing by them and the music so loud. She just felt them.
Belle couldn’t let his interest in those women last longer than this night.
She moved through his magic, pulled it around her, sent ripples through it with her body, let it caress her and never once flinched from it. She traced a finger down Richard’s torso, guiding the flow of his magic through him and keeping it firmly in her grasp. She tugged on his magic, and he bent to kiss her fiercely, thinking it had been his idea.
The strange thing about playing this role so well, Lady Belle thought as his tongue drew across the roof of her mouth and his arms clamped her body so tightly against his that she felt every carved muscle, was that sometimes she managed to fool even herself. Sometimes he felt good.
Tomorrow, she would be beyond ashamed. Disgusted with herself. Betrayed by herself. But tonight, she leaned into it. She used it—to stay alive.
Richard pulled his face back, but kept her body pinned against his. He watched something over her shoulder, a smirk on his lips—the furious women he’d invited here, no doubt.
In between pecks along Richard’s jaw and neck, Belle whined into his ear, “My groom … let’s leave. Forget those vapid creatures. It’s my legs and mine alone that you belong in.”
“My bride,” he said, one powerful hand sliding down her back to grip her ass, “your words name you Jealous.”
Her head spun with how well the name fit. Some twisted part of her was enraged that he had ever looked at those women with anything other than vague disinterest.
Nausea swept through her. Though they had stopped dancing, the room still whirled around them.
“My words name you Mine. My groom.”
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She watched the words bleed satisfaction through his magic—but that was dangerous. Give him too much, and his own power would intoxicate him. Then, there would be no controlling him.
Manipulation magic wasn’t just about reading what someone wanted and giving it to them. Just as often, it was about taking it away.
Belle melted from his grasp before he knew what happened. “But who am I to dare name a king?” And then she had slipped into the crowd.
She passed Jac, goblet tipped back and wine so dark it was purple spilling from the corners of her mouth as she danced. She saw the turmoil in Jac’s liquid gold magic, even beneath the rosy, wine-numbed edges. And she had to ignore it.
“Is every night in Muse House so…” some young, unfamiliar face was asking as they gaped at Raquel upon her pedestal, swirling sheer silks in shimmering ribbons around her naked figure, “…delicious?”
Someone whose magic looked suspiciously Vultian answered, “Hold tonight up against our coming celebration beneath the Full Dry Moon, and you’ll name this nothing at all, my young lord.” But Belle had to ignore that too.
She kept her attention instead on the magics behind her as she wove through the crowd, toward the hall of bedrooms. Richard’s magic crackled, surging after her and parting the crowd like a sharp blade through soft flesh.
He caught her arm and yanked her back to him—but the pain just became another thing Belle ignored. His magic burned, angry, but just the right kind of angry. And all of it was focused on her. All his attention was focused on her.
“Who are you,” he said through gritted teeth, “to dare walk away from a king?”
“Just Entertainment,” Lady Belle replied evenly, without a speck of fear in her tone. “A whore who could never be your queen.”
“I decide that!” he snapped, utterly unaware that heads were turning, bodies stilling, ears perking to catch their words.
“And so you have,” Lady Belle spoke low, holding his gaze. “You named the decision when you invited those eligible ladies here.”
He shoved her against the wall, only a tapestry to cushion her from the hard stone. His magic popped across her skin—she wouldn’t be surprised if she looked down and saw raw, red burns across her body.
“A king does what he wants,” he said.
Lady Belle repeated, “And so you have.”
Richard used his body to pin her to the wall—it could be seen as a way to trap her, but she saw it for what it really was. He wanted her to feel how hard he was.
“Tame your tongue,” he said.
It was twisted, how she felt so confident in this moment. She saw the hundreds and hundreds of long, strong tendrils of her own magic that had silently invaded his, and wrapped tight around all the important pathways through his magic, and through his body. A whisper in one, and a tug on the other, and she was in control.
Still, she needed to get him alone. There were too many variables here, amidst the Chaos of this party.
“There are eyes on you, Your Highness,” she reminded him.
“I don’t care.”
“You should,” she said. “Your mother’s are among them. Anyone here would whisper in her ear about what they see tonight—anyone other than me.”
Richard narrowed those gray eyes at her and forced a thumb into her mouth, hooking her jaw. “This pretty little mouth of yours is insolent enough to get you killed, my bride.”
She closed her mouth on his thumb, and let him feel her teeth.
Somewhere deep within her, another Belle, a Dark one, told her to snap his bone within her jaws, to stick her own thumbs deep into his eye sockets and pop his pretty gray eyes like grapes. To take her knives and hack his dick off, and then sink a blade into whatever mangled mess was left between his legs, and carve her way up his torso until she reached his throat—
“And yet, it’s still protecting me from my own monstrous nature,” he said, utterly oblivious to the carnage of her thoughts. He drew the thumb from her mouth and used it to smear her own saliva over her lips. “As a bride should.”
Rough, he pulled her down the hallway, toward her room.
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SUMMARY FOR THOSE WHO NEEDED TO SKIP:
A party was thrown in Muse House for the benefit of the four women who caught Richard’s eye at the Primaspectalia, and Belle had to work hard to keep Richard’s attention fully on her to secure her own safety.