Luna walked forward next to Lukas, striding across the room as the crowd parted before them.
Then the people stopped moving. On the edge of the stationary group, they were moving side to side, spinning around, and stepping up and down along an edge.
They had reached the dancers.
Luna wondered if Lukas was going to stop. After all, before when the nobles didn't part, he had stood still, waiting.
But not this time. Apparently, the momentum of them walking across about a third of the room kept him going long enough to punch through the first ring.
And it was quite nearly literally. When he shoved his way between two pairs, Luna was momentarily relieved that he hadn't gotten between a female and a male. But as stated, that was only momentary. Because it wasn't too long afterwards that both men, and then the women, turned on him and started shouting at his back.
Then he stopped. Cocked his head.
He turned a questioning gaze to Luna, who shook her head. Obviously she didn't know who it was, but they were probably insignificant. And if not, well, Lukas would deal with it, with her help if needed. And there was always a chance that he had been asking if he should kill them, to which her answer was also no. After all, if he came in and started killing people, well...
Luna wasn't actually sure that there would be consequences, but she didn't exactly want to find out. Yet. That would be saved for later.
Lukas Warwick slowly turned his head to the side.
Luna watched their faces pale with fear as soon as they saw the mask. And she smiled, slightly.
Then he turned back forward and continued walking.
Now through the outer layer, Luna could see that the depressed area that made up the dance floor was mostly empty between rings. As far as she could tell, there were concentric rings of raised flooring to the middle of the dance floor, each wide enough for about three people to walk on at once.
The dance style of this place clearly was quite focused on movement up and down it, although aside from that it was largely similar to ball dancing in Alaxia, just more fluid with the roles and a bit more liberal with the movements. Each couple was doing something slightly different, and whether some of them were just out of sync with the music pounding throughout the place Luna couldn't tell, but it was clear to her that they put their own individual flair on the standard dance. It really was rather refreshing, compared with Alaxia's stiff procedures for every dance. It did help to be the leader and know every step backwards, forwards, and sideways, but that didn't mean that she didn't want a change.
But she had had to be the perfect woman. For her father, not for herself. Not to say that she hadn't enjoyed being better than everyone else.
Her mother was supposed to be her coach, but she was better off doing it on her own. Within a week of being deemed "old enough" to mingle with the other noblewomen instead of watching their daughters (she was supposed to be participating in the inane activities, but she had never had a reason or a desire to) she had overtaken her mother's status in their eyes, and that status only grew larger, which boosted her mother's respect significantly, and would have done so even more if Luna had heeded her commands and requests.
Luna walked with Lukas through five separate layers of the strange corrugated pattern, and then they stopped on the sixth. Luna could tell that this layer was much smaller than the others by the fact that she could almost see where the line of people curved away when they moved out of her line of sight, and when she stepped up onto it, she discovered that it was, in fact, the center.
She turned to Lukas. He was looking at her, standing on the floor below her, but still taller.
With one final deep breath, Luna leapt up and spun around, hoping.
And then it happened.
His strong arms wrapped around her waist. His heat pressed against her body.
And the dance began.
Luna could clearly tell that every single woman around them was jealous of her. But she didn't care.
Because here, in this moment, it was her and him.
No one else mattered.