Exposed [Book 4 in the Expiring Series]

26 The Death Waltz

For the music inspiration for the dance in this chapter, it's the second song from the last chapter. 

My Love And... by Gaemi and Park Jung Hwan from The King: Eternal Monarch. The version in the YouTube video is the slowed and reverb. I'll include the original at the end of the chapter.

Jonas~~

The crowd parts, peeling back like pages in a book, before us. From the orchestra across the room, a drumbeat joins the violas and piano, or maybe it's only my heart, slowed to an unsteady thump. It doesn't race, not when this feels too much like a dream where walking feels as if I'm fighting against tar.

Iris's fingers cling to my hand. She keeps her head straight, eyes set forward as if the crowd doesn't lie around us, and I fall deeper in love with her; even when she's scared she'll keep her head up in the face of all these Amoris. When she first arrived at the Society's Estate, I told her she'd have to keep her head down. Now that the Amoris know what she is, she'll never have to lower her head again.

Even when the Head Order has forced us into red.

Gold thread embroiders the Amorian symbol for Expired onto the black band around her
waist. The same symbol is borne on my lapels. It's the symbol engraved on Amorian coffins.

Her eyes meet mine as she catches me watching her. All I see is emptiness in them.

We reach the center of the dance floor and stop. The Amoris are circled around us on the outskirts of the floor. Their gazes burn into the back of my neck and on my cheeks, and there's even the flicker of a flame against my Mark.

There's a shift in the notes, a cue that in a fewONLYONWATTPADBENDERseconds we'll be expected to dance.

"Jonas?" The word is a question, but the voice is the answer to a question I've been seeking for what has felt like eternity.

My brother would kill me if he ever heard me say that aloud.

I raise her hand to my lips. "My queen," I murmer against her skin and raise my eyes to hers.

As the notes and instruments blend into one entity, we step away from each other.

The Death Waltz.

A weight has been on my chest ever since those words passed through the Head Delta's lips. I've grown up learning it but never thought I'd perform it. The waltz wouldn't have been one Iris's orphanage would have known about, and as far as I know, no one at the Estate thought to teach it to her, unless they were feeling particularly ruthless.

But the Head Order wants a spectacle. They want Iris to perform it for them, and so I am certain they found a way for her to learn it.

Standing on those balconies was the first time I saw her after I was locked in my chambers.

We step toward each other, our bodies angled, and we each hold an arm in the air, the back of our hands facing out. Our arms cross at our elbows but don't touch. It's a greeting—a meeting, separated by the great gap between life and death.

We step back before repeating the move again—this time with our other arms raised—to the strike of the music.

Twice more we carry out the move.

Four times in total to represent the four stages of life: babe, youth, adult, elder.

On the fourth time, we clasp hands, and a shock rolls through my body like a storm cloud as we touch. I want to drag her away from here to somewhere no one can force us apart. She spins underneath my arm until I place my hand against her lower back, and we fall into a waltz.