**CHAPTER 36 — Bom's POV**
**Title: "For Bob, We Fly"**
---
Daphne returned from the back of The Velvet Snare carrying two bundles of fabric like she was delivering gifts and not grenades.
She held them out.
I took mine first.
I unfolded it slowly.
It was a costume. Red — deep, vivid red, the kind that catches light and refuses to be ignored. Short in the skirt, voluminous below the waist, structured at the top with small gold details along the seams. Elegant, actually. If it had been on anyone else, I would have called it beautiful.
I held it up and looked at it for a moment.
Then I looked at Faye's costume.
Faye was holding a performer's outfit — sharp, structured, deep red pants with a matching fitted jacket. Clean lines. Strong silhouette. The kind of thing you wear when you want to look like you own the stage.
I looked back at my dress.
"Wrong one," I said pleasantly. "This is Faye's. Easy mistake."
I held it out toward Daphne.
Daphne smiled. "I didn't make a mistake."
The silence that followed was very long.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"You're wearing the dress, Bom."
My soul left my body. I felt it go. A quiet departure, dignified, unwilling to be present for what was about to happen.
"Daphne." I set the costume down carefully on the nearest surface. "I want you to hear me clearly. I am Bom. I have survived demons, ancient curses, a car-sized wolf, and an octopus with one eye and a personal vendetta. I have been immortal for longer than this kingdom has existed. I have maintained my dignity through every single one of those experiences." I paused. "I am not wearing a dress in front of an entire kingdom to save Bob."
Daphne waited politely until I finished.
Then she picked up the costume and held it out again.
---
Two minutes later I was in the dress.
The skirt moved when I walked. I was very aware of this. I stood with both hands pressed against my thighs at the point where the skirt began as if I could physically prevent the fabric from existing through willpower alone.
It wasn't working.
Faye stood beside me in her pants and jacket, looking composed and elegant and deeply amused. She turned to look at me. Her mouth pressed together in the way that meant she was having a genuine internal battle about whether to laugh.
She lost the battle.
"You look—"
"Don't."
"—really good actually. The red matches your eyes."
I turned to look at her slowly. "Faye. I will remember this."
She covered her mouth with her hand. Her shoulders were shaking.
Daphne approached from across the floor, holding her expression together with what was clearly significant effort. Behind her, Alex and Lena had abandoned all pretense — Alex had turned away entirely, one hand braced against the wall. Lena was looking at the ceiling with the focused intensity of someone trying very hard to think about something else.
"Pretty," Daphne said.
Then she lost it. The laugh burst out of her — genuine, unguarded, the kind that bends you slightly at the waist.
I straightened. Smoothed the front of the costume with both hands. Touched my hair once, setting it back into place with deliberate precision.
"Interesting," I said, looking directly at Alex. "I notice you're not wearing a dress. Is your costume a standard one then?"
Alex turned around, laughter fading slightly. "Obviously. I would never—"
"So Daphne only put me in a dress for entertainment purposes," I said. "Not because the performance requires it."
Alex blinked. "I mean—"
"She was having fun with me," I said, to no one in particular. "With the great Bom. Remarkable."
I let the silence sit for exactly the right amount of time.
Then I smirked — slow, controlled, aimed directly at Alex — and said, "It doesn't matter. I'm more handsome than you in this dress than you've ever been in anything you've chosen yourself."
Alex's laughter evaporated completely. He opened his mouth. Closed it.
Lena made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh aimed at him.
"Can we begin?" Faye said, with the measured patience of someone who had decided to be the adult in the room. "We're running out of time. Bob has been in that palace for days."
Daphne composed herself, wiped her eyes once, and nodded. "Yes. Let's start."
---
The floor of The Velvet Snare was smooth stone, worn pale by years of performers crossing it. Daphne stood to one side. Alex leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Lena sat on a low platform, watching.
"First," Daphne said, "show me what you have. Both of you. The stage at Iceswords Palace will have an audience of hundreds. I need to know what I'm working with."
She nodded to someone in the rafters above.
Music began — low at first, then rising. String instruments, I thought. Something with a haunting quality that fit the cold stone walls and the dim light and the silk banners moving in the draft.
I looked at Faye.
She looked at me.
Then I stepped forward and began to move.
---
I will say this plainly: I know how to dance. I have danced in courts across three kingdoms I no longer have names for. I have danced in celebrations and in grief and once on a table during an argument that ended better than it started because of it. I have had centuries to learn what a body can do when it moves with intention and what it looks like when someone who truly understands music decides to stop holding back.
The costume moved with me. The red skirt caught the dim light and scattered it. I let myself go — completely, without hesitation — and the floor became something else entirely.
The music built. I built with it. Turns that accelerated into something sharp and precise. Movement that looked effortless because it was — because I had done this ten thousand times in ten thousand places and this was simply the next one.
I heard it from across the floor.
Lena. Quietly. Almost to herself.
"...Wow."
I glanced at her. Her eyes were wide, and there was something in them — genuine, unguarded — that I chose not to examine too closely because it would only make Alex angrier and we needed him functional.
Then I looked at Faye.
She was already moving.
I stopped.
I watched her.
Her body remembered something her mind had not yet reached. The movements came from somewhere older than her current memory — fluid and precise and instinctively royal in a way that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with what she had been before she forgot it. Her arms moved like she had been doing this her whole life. Because some part of her had been.
The last princess of Lordor.
Even without the memory, the body knew.
I said nothing. I simply moved back onto the floor and matched her, and for a few minutes The Velvet Snare was quiet except for the music and the sound of two people dancing like they had always known how.
Daphne was very still when we finished.
Then she nodded once. "Good. Both of you." She paused. "Better than I expected."
Alex said nothing.
"Now," Daphne said, and pointed upward.
---
The rope ladder to the aerial platform was exactly as unpleasant as it looked from the ground.
I climbed it with full confidence, because I am immortal and confident and the dress was not going to be a problem, and reached the platform without incident. I stood on it. The rope swayed slightly. I looked down at the floor far below.
Fine. I would not describe the distance in specific terms.
Faye climbed up behind me. She stood on the platform beside me and looked down and then looked at me and said nothing, which was the correct response.
"The aerial sequence requires two things," Daphne called up from below, her voice carrying easily in the stone hall. "Height. And trust. You move together or you fall. There is no individual performance up there — only the pair."
"Understood," I called back, with complete confidence.
Then the music started again.
---
The first attempt was not successful.
I will not go into extensive detail. The platform swayed. I moved. Faye moved. We moved at slightly different moments and in slightly different directions and the result was that I grabbed a rigging rope to stabilize myself and my foot slipped and I spent approximately four seconds in a position that the dress made significantly worse than it needed to be.
Alex laughed. I noted this.
The second attempt was also not successful, though for different reasons.
The third attempt I stood on the platform and looked down at the distant floor and thought about what was waiting for us. Bob in a pink room. Bob in a wedding gown. Bob with his blue eyes and his popcorn and his complete, catastrophic, irreplaceable idiocy.
And then, for reasons I have chosen not to examine in detail, I looked at Faye.
She was watching me from her position on the rigging, her pink hair loose around her face, her expression steady and patient and quietly trusting in a way that did something to my chest that I was also not going to examine.
She looked — and this is purely an observational statement with no further implications — like a small and extremely determined chicken.
I blinked.
Then I moved.
I crossed the distance between us on the rope with a speed and certainty that surprised even me, caught her hand, and we began.
What happened next I can only describe as what occurs when two immortals who have been building toward something without knowing it finally stop overthinking and simply move. The rope held. The music held. We turned and lifted and crossed and landed and rose again with a precision that felt less like performance and more like something that had always been possible and was only now being allowed.
The costume moved. The light caught it. Far below, someone had gone completely silent.
We landed together — both feet on the platform, her hand still in mine, the rope barely swaying.
From below, two sounds.
Applause.
Lena's voice, clear and genuine: "That was extraordinary."
Daphne: "I'll be honest with you — I didn't think you could do that in one day. That was genuinely talented."
Alex: "It's not talent. He's immortal. It doesn't count."
I looked down at him from the platform with the calm expression of someone who had just performed something magnificent in a red dress and had absolutely nothing to prove to anyone.
I chose not to respond. The silence was more effective.
Faye was still beside me on the platform, looking out at the hall below with an expression I couldn't entirely read — something between wonder and something older, something that felt like the edge of a memory she hadn't touched yet.
I looked at her for a moment.
Then I looked upward at the dark above the rigging, where the ceiling of The Velvet Snare disappeared into shadow.
*Bob,* I thought.
*You had better appreciate what we just did.*
*Your blue eyes and your popcorn and your complete inability to function without us — you had better remember this one day, when someone tells you the story of two immortals in matching red costumes learning to fly in a frozen circus in a kingdom that hates outsiders.*
*We flew, Bob.*
*For you.*
*My friend.*