In Doon-speak, he had to choose a fiancée in order to be king. Sharron had said something about the tradition being born from a need for balance and equality, but to me the reasons didn’t justify the end result—Jamie choosing a bride in less than two weeks.
As we made our way down to the feast, I dropped back, only half-listening to Kenna and Fiona’s plan to go shopping the following day. My head spun with dark emotions and I trailed farther and farther behind. Outside the wide double-doors, I stopped, poised to run back to the safety of the turret suite.
Lively music poured from the Great Hall, punctuated by the stomping of feet and the occasional hoot and holler. But for once in my life, I didn’t feel like dancing.
Kenna got halfway into the room before realizing I wasn’t beside her. She turned and pursued me as I backed away from the open door. “I don’t think I can do this.” I spun on my heel, but before I could take a step Ken looped her arm through mine and pulled me back toward the party.
“Relax, scaredy-cat.” We moved through an arched doorway and into the assembly hall at a leisurely pace, though my heart was sprinting at full speed. “Vee, do you remember our first junior high dance?”
I nodded. “I was afraid no one would dance with me.”
“And …”
“And I ended up meeting my first boyfriend.”
“And …” She made a rolling gesture with her hand.
“And what? He forced his tongue into my mouth, which I accidentally bit because I didn’t know what he was doing, and then he dumped me the following week.”
Impatiently, Kenna finished the story. “And yet you’ve been popular ever since.”
I shrugged. Popular and alone. Since that seventh-grade dance, every one of my relationships had been short-lived and lopsided—either the boy wanting more than I could give or being totally indifferent to my aching heart. Like Jamie.
Kenna squeezed my upper arm and sighed. “I know things aren’t working out like you thought, but this is still the chance of a lifetime. Doon’s a freakin’ medieval kingdom—and we’re stuck here for two weeks. We wanted an epic summer, and it doesn’t get any more epic than this.”
Before she could say anything else, Duncan came barreling across the room and skidded to a stop in front of my friend.
“You’re a right vision, Mackenna Reid. Care to dance?”
“To this?” Kenna gestured to the revolving mass of people on the dance floor. Her eyebrows pinched together above her wrinkled nose to silently declare Think again.
At first glance, it was chaos; people spinning and stomping, couples twirling through the crowd in a vigorous two-step to the raucous tones of a fiddle. Then the sparkling notes of a flute joined in, cranking the tune up even more, and I could see the order in the chaos—the sublime composition in the movement. The beat of drums layered into the song, and my body began to move in time.
I gave Kenna an encouraging smile, which she answered with a head jiggle before answering the hot boy anxiously waiting before her. “Thanks, but I have two left feet.”
Duncan looked vaguely appalled. “Ye have what?”
I chuckled while Kenna explained. “It’s an expression. It means I can’t dance.”
I leaned in toward my friend, infusing fake innocence into my tone. “But you were in all those musicals, Kenna. The video clips you posted online had very complicated dance steps.”
She rolled her eyes in my direction. “Just because you waltzed your way out of the womb doesn’t mean the rest of the world did. Have you ever heard of choreography? I had to learn each step and practice it over and over. Even then, I still managed to mess up something at every performance.”
Duncan raised his eyebrows in curiosity. “Performance?”
“Kenna’s a stage actress.”
“But Vee’s a dancer.” As Kenna shifted the conversation away from herself, I felt as if we were caught in a game of verbal table tennis.
Duncan smiled politely at me. “Then perhaps you should join in the dancing, Veronica.”
“So you’re not dancing, Ken?”
“No!”