I drop a plush cloth over his head and tell him to clean himself up.
He stands wiping his face while I flit about the room, lighting lamps and opening the silk curtains to let in the cool night air. I can still feel his neck’s pulse in my fingertips. What would Nardukha do if he saw me running my fingers along Aladdin’s jaw? I shudder to think of the answer.
“We should go soon,” I say. “The dancing will begin in an hour.”
“Dancing. Wonderful.” His tone is deflated.
With a sigh, I shut the glass door on the last lamp. The flame burns steady and bright, casting flickering lace patterns through the metalwork encasing it. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how.”
“Oh, sure, because I’ve had so much time for dancing, in between not starving to death and not getting thrown in prison.” He tosses his facecloth aside. “I know plenty of dances. My favorite is called Not Getting Your Legs Broken for Stealing Figs from That Baker on Pearl Lane.”
“That’s sure to charm the princess right into a wedding pact.”
Grinning mischievously, he crosses to me and takes my hands, trying to draw me onto the open floor. “You can teach me how to dance.”
“No.” I wrench my hands away and turn my back to him.
“I thought the whole point of Fahradan was that everyone has to dance.”
“Wish for it, and I could make you such a dancer you would charm the fish out of the sea.”
“Zahra. Are you angry with me?” He walks around to face me. “Is this because I beat you at dice the other day?” His eyes going wide, he drops to his knees in front of me. “I apologize from the bottom of my soul, O great and powerful jinni of the lamp.”
“You didn’t beat me. I let you win.”
“Zahra.” Aladdin shuffles closer and takes my hands. “I need your help.”
With a soft groan, I pull my hands from his and throw them in the air. “Fine! Just stop groveling! You’re supposed to be a prince, you idiot. Anyway, you’ll get your fancy clothes dirty.”
His face blossoming with delight, he lifts me by my waist and spins me around before I have a chance to dodge him.
“Put me down!” I shift, and his hands close around white smoke. I reappear behind him, barefoot on the smooth tiled courtyard, dressed in a Fahradan gown of red and gold to match Aladdin’s coat, a turquoise comb set in my hair that drops a tear-shaped ruby over the center of my forehead.
Aladdin turns and stops dead with a soft “Oh.” His eyes scan me from head to toe, his mouth slightly ajar.
I wave a hand. “Come here.”
He hurries to me, stopping a pace away. The lamps that hang from the pillars around us cast delicate patterns of light across the white walls and floor, painting glitter like trapped stars. But for the clicking song of a nightjar in the trees behind us and babble of the wall fountain, all is silent.
“The dance of Fahradan,” I begin, “is a dance of paradoxes. It is restraint versus passion. It is desire versus purity. It is push versus pull.”
I lift my arms, which are bare of jewelry. “This dance is born in the wrists. They are the points upon which the rest of the body hangs.”
Demonstrating, I begin rotating my hands, shifting foot to foot, my hips swaying to unheard music. My gown whispers against the tile, my bare feet lifting only at the heel.
“It is one of the few dances shared by a man and a woman,” I go on. “Step closer.”
He does, swallowing, and he holds up his wrists at shoulder height. Without pausing, I step to him and press the inside of my left wrist lightly against his right.
“Nothing touches,” I whisper in his ear, “except the wrists.”
I can feel his pulse beating through the delicate skin of his wrist, warm and strong and vibrant. The power of his energy pours through me like a rush of wind.
“When you dance with the princess, you must resist her and at the same time let her entice you. You are stone, and she is water. You are the earth, and she is the sky.” With a swift spin, I reverse directions, locking my other wrist to his. “See? Push and pull. Restraint and passion.”
He nods and licks his lips, his eyes locked with mine.
“Now,” I say, “when I step forward, you step back. When I turn to the left, you go right. We are mirrors of one another, do you see? But always we come back, wrist to wrist. Imagine an invisible ribbon tying us together, always bringing us back to where we began. This dance, like time, is a circle.”
He begins to dance with me, mirroring my movements, until we are circling one another, turning, twirling, and always returning to the starting position, opposite wrists pressed together, vein to vein, pulse to pulse.
“The woman leads, and the man resists. The woman invites, and the man follows. Your part is easy—let Caspida lead. Mirror her movements, and you will fall into synthesis. Your bodies will read each other’s heartbeats through the wrists, and your pulses will become one rhythm.”
“I think I understand,” he says hoarsely.