Forbidden Fruit

Outside, there was music. Dance. Laughter. Joy.

But inside? There was solitude. Calm from the preening idiots in court.

Delilah knew she might arouse suspicion by staying inside the castle. After all, the famed Spring Ball was a festival where all creatures, regardless of faith or fealty, were welcomed into Verdeen society without a second thought, if only for a day. Escaping the festivities was unusual, at the very least.

Delilah trod the floor lightly, the points of her silver heeled feet digging in the plush velvet. She glanced around carefully. And she ripped the wretched beasts off. 

If anyone caught her barefoot, it could be troublesome. The “ladies” of the court acted prim and proper, suffering through blisters and reopening wounds of bloody rivers. Through the monsters that made their toes cramp and their heels ache, through the asphyxiating demon corsets, through the heavy lustrous pearls and silks that weighed down upon their heads. Perfection incarnates. Those were the ladies of the court. 

Delilah scoffed. 

It wasn’t like she could say much. Her dress was of the finest peach-saffron foam, pooling at her knees in clumps of artfully arranged tulle.

Delilah set the monstrous heels aside, reveling in the simple comfort of being able to stretch her toes. She let her ankles breathe in the cool air, feel the skin prickle in hard-earned freedom. She had never felt such a soft floor before. 

Half-giggling, Delilah ran to the door. It was slim, gilded, polished. Curlicues of silver etched its sprawling length. She pushed it open, running inside with abandon.

It was like a cavern, the ceiling sloping upward, the walls circular and concealed under wine-colored drapery.

The ballroom was one of the more unloved places in the castle. Most from wealthier kingdoms in the North, where Delilah was lucky enough to have a home, would gasp in shock. But Verdeenians here claimed they had no use for trivial things like dancing. They preferred finer aspects of art, like sipping shimmery, magicked elderberry wine in crystal goblets while admiring rich tapestries.

Lorelei, her best friend in the North, had tried to teach her how to dance the Verdeenian style. The bubbling sprite had been too eager to get Delilah and herself husbands this spring.

But the dancing Lorelei taught was unbearable. The plain, formal, emotionless dancing, with an awkward male stiffly resting his hands on your waist or his sweaty palms clutching yours. The type where the female perched her arms on the male’s shoulders, hoping to not get a neck cramp.

No, Delilah hated those formal, perfunctory ballroom dances.

She liked improvisation. Or, as most liked to call it, the Forbidden Dance.

Magic had been outlawed since the beginning of the decade when Delilah was eight. Only the royal family could use it, and subjects could use it for royal missions, which were rarer than the genuine smiles Verdeenians let approach on their cold, barren features.

But with her parents gone, and the orphanage woman indifferent as to whether the children died or lived, Delilah was granted large amounts of freedom. She would write the glyphs anywhere—smooth riverbed rocks, in mossy forest undergrowth, scattered through the wooden walls of her cramped bedroom.

As her magic became stronger, Delilah had no need for the glyphs. She learned to sing them, dance them, paint them in her mind.

Different glyphs had different power, varying in degree and use. And the strongest of them could surface in the Forbidden Dance.

And so, Delilah started to dance. At first, it was a swaying, a slight movement of the hips, an elegant twist of the neck, a quick spin accentuated by swan-like arm movements.

And then she conjured up a picture of a vast, starry night sky in her mind. Delilah spun her arms in a circle, once, twice, three times.

Night exploded in the room, silver flooded the ceiling, and glowing stars lit up the darkest corners in the room. Even the broken chandelier, which earlier emitted a weak halo of rosy light, was now exuberant as the Augustian sun.

Delilah brought her leg up behind her head, arching her back. Music, like the last sweet drops of honey in a pot of Carnellian nectar, dripped from the walls and floor in sweet, echoing notes.

Delilah matched her steps to the soulful melody that poured out of the long-forgotten, previously creaking, velvet-covered floorboards.

The tempo increased, spinning her feet into a frenzy, and Delilah gasped.

The music would control her.

The magic would not control her.

She tightened her steps and reined the magic back in.

The sky was still as luminescent, the music still poignant. But it was slightly muted. Delilah sighed in relief.

When she was younger, the magic controlled her. Left her unconscious, unseeing eyes glowing with gold power.

The coma-like trances she slipped in and out of lasted for hours at most, minutes at least. But over the years, Delilah learned that controlling magic involved ruling and spelling glyphs with an iron fist.

She twirled around twice, imagining strands of glimmering bronze winding around her.

Delilah’s steps became slower, more purposeful. She leaped, her bare feet scrabbling at the curved wall’s almost-invisible ridges for purchase. She made it up five feet. Eight. Eleven.

The dome was slippery and cool to the touch. Delilah had not anticipated this. 

She didn’t make it to the ceiling. She didn’t even make it halfway. 

Delilah was a comet hurtling to the floor, and she was going to explode. Then the air felt inconsequential. Gravity was certainly not on her side anymore. 

She mentally sighed. 

The fall was ten, maybe twelve feet. She deserved it.

Lorelei had always chided her for being too daring, too risky.

Delilah ran into fights eagerly, she approached danger, tussled with it, then claimed the lion as her own and sheltered it. Headstrong and defiance was who she was. It was built at her very core. Unshakable. And now it was going to nip her in the heels. 

Delilah closed her eyes and braced herself. 

She landed into a pair of strong, solid arms. The air oomphed out if her in a heave, her lungs turned into a pair of shriveled butterflies, her mouth sucked in, and her eyes rattled in their sockets.

“Breath,” a voice instructed. It was sharp and hard and soft all at once, like honey and glass and crushed rose petals.

She inhaled. The air hissed into her lungs with the intensity of a punctured balloon, slowly blossoming back.

Delilah cracked an eyelid open lazily. “Thanks,” she said dryly. 

Delilah tilted her head upwards to view the male. He was wearing a mask, just as she. His was in vibrant hues and shades of green and gold. It had no patterns, save for some embellishment of emerald tinged fire stretching across the bridge of the nose and rimming the eyeholes. On the left side, it was a solid, brassy gold adorned by glittery ochre swirls and diamond shapes; on the right an ombre base hue ranging from all shades of viridescent—mint to chartreuse to deep pine, augmented to by a basil-seafoam colored hyacinth design surrounding the eye. Pale, glittery tears bled from the stamen of the hyacinth.

The mask was made of finely crafted metal, covering his forehead and all facial features, save for the tip of his currently wrinkled nose and his pursed lips. His features were almost Egyptian. His eyes curved gently, bearing long, feathery lashes; his plush, pouty, rosy lips quirked to one side as if resembling a scythe—dangerous, beautiful, curved. Ready to strike. 

“I would expect you to have more gratitude for your benefactor.” There it was again, the smooth, sharp voice resonating with refined aplomb. 

Delilah smirked, the portrait of indifference. “And why would that be the case? I could have easily caught myself. You merely ruined the spectacle.”

“Ah, I see.” his eyebrows shot up. “Indeed, I did. I ruined the spectacle of you being discovered by a throng of simpering royals. I ruined your prospects of getting caught and humiliated.” His eyes crinkled up with hidden laughter.

Delilah hadn’t noticed those before. His eyes had the most magnificently colored irises she had ever seen. Onyx pupils, slowly fading into shades of dark brown and auburn. The same ombre was evident in the outline of his iris. His irises could have been considered to have a feminine sort of prettiness in them, if not for the middle of his iris, a vibrant cerise, limned by small gold and mahogany lines extending from his inky pupil.

“And what creature might you be?” Delilah asked.

“Sardini.” His eyes glowed wickedly.

Delilah scoffed. “Prove it.” Sardini were deadly shapeshifters. Trickery flowed in their blood.  

He raised an eyebrow. “Right here, right now?”

“What else could I mean?” she added a hint of boredom in her voice, just for the added effect of riling him. 

“No,” he dumped her on the floor. 

Delilah flew down and landed like a cat, limbs arched gracefully, mouth sneering. Outraged, she jumped back up and glared at him.

They were almost eye level. He towered over her by one, maybe two inches.

“The spring dance is starting. I’d rather escort you outside, where most guests will be present than leave you up here to stumble around on your own. And decide to unpredictably flip off the ceilings,” he cut in sharply, knowingly. His eyes searched Delilah’s face. “Yes, watching you leap about is quite amusing.”

“You were watching.” An accusation. 

He shrugged indifferently. “I was admiring.”

Delilah strode past him with a huff.

Outside, the ladies looked positively devious. Different species gathered in their inner circles, occasionally mingling with someone outside their group. Dryads, wood sprites, swamp dwellers, pixies, ocean mermites, and other species Delilah couldn’t identify.

No matter their species, they were all adorned in ribbon and glitter and splendor, as if they were presents, ready to be given away as presents.

Knowing that some of them were scheming to trap a husband, Delilah couldn’t blame them. Only curl her lip with disgust.

She abandoned the man who’d caught her, making her way to the dessert tables.

There were eight different tables in all, each holding a different dessert. Cocoa filled brownies, dusted with powdered sugar. Fruit tarts with dashes of fresh maple syrup. Red velvet cake with white chocolate sauce. Little brown swirls of spherical globes, holding precious milk chocolate ganache. Lemon cookies and vanilla meringue tarts. Mango mousse with dark chocolate swirls, and pulverized, candied violets made to look like purple amethysts. Puddings flavored with lavender, rose, and figs. 

Delilah grabbed a few of each and retreated to the shade of a weeping willow tree, eating her feast in hiding.

She did have some regard for her dignity, after all.

Something light and rough plopped on her shoulder. Delilah looked up curiously. A chameleon perched on her shoulder, looking slightly miffed.

Wait.

Delilah scrutinized the little creature slowly.

Its eyes were familiar. Red-gold. Powerful.

“You’ve proven your point. You’re sardini, through and through.”

The chameleon grinned wickedly and cannonballed off her shoulder, straight into her dessert plate.

“Now that was just rude!” Delilah pouted at the little idiot.

The now multi-colored chameleon backflipped and as soon as it contacted the ground, a shimmering pop sounded.

The man lounged lazily at her feet. “Surprise.”