The closing ball of the season seemed even more ostentatious that year. Marble glimmered with the reflections of what must have been ten thousand candles. The royal jewlers had crafted a massive from hundreds of rubies. Emeralds formed its eyes, sapphires the blue flame it seemed to breathe, and onyx its myriad talons. There stood jade statues of almost every Fire Lord, and somehow the fire sages had agreed to serve food and drinks to the noble guests.
The rumor mill claimed that Azulon was going to end everything with lighting both fireworks and the Great Gates of Azulon. I didn't know about that, but I was still on a high from Li Mei's absence. None of her minions had quite been able to take over her power, allowing me to reunite and reconnect with some of the friends, and social standing, I'd lost. At the least, everyone seemed to be used to me by then. Only the newest of noblemen still looked twice when they saw me, and no one ogled me anymore.
At least not obviously.
Ozai's noticeable absence, or more probably tardiness, threw me off for a while until Piandao offered a hand to me.
The swordsman could not dance at all. His atrocious moves left me in stitches beyond description. I barely had time to breathe before bursting from mirth again. His sincerity and total inability was so sweet and sad and absurd. My attempts to teach him only seemed to make matters worse. I would've thought he was doing it all on purpose if it hadn't been so obvious that no one could pretend to have that bizarre a concept of rhythm.
He seemed happy, however, because I was laughing. He could always make me chuckle with his wit and stories here and there, but he'd never been able to make me explode like that before.
A few minutes later, his smile fell into a face of utter serious while his eyes still shone.
"Lady Ursa." That always seemed to be a sign for me to beware. "There's something I want to talk with you about."
My brow furrowed and my lip pouted in pity.
"Piandao, we've talked about this—" I began, and it was mostly true. He'd given me a look of such… adoration a couple weeks ago that I couldn't ignore it. I'd tried to address the subject, but he waved it off, insisting that he understood and seeming totally resigned to his feelings forever being unrequited.
"It's not about that," he interrupted abruptly before seeming to correct himself. "Not exactly."
"All right," I agreed, unable to lower my eyebrow from its suspicious pose.
I heard, "Lady Ursa," again.
From that voice to end all voices.
She lit up in a way that every candle envied, and it took all my willpower not to kiss her right there, under the lights and in front of the world.
"Prince Ozai," she replied with a curtsy.
I grinned at the sound of my name and then remembered to acknowledge Piandao. I respected the swordsmaster and might have even liked him...
I wasn't jealous of him anymore than I was jealous of everyone able to hear that voice and see that face.
They exchanged proprieties, and I was surprised by how comfortable it all seemed. I could never feel the slightest guilt, of course, because there wasn't anything to feel guilty for. Not as long as Ozai existed in my memory.
"She'll talk to you in a few minutes," the prince excused him with remarkable… civility in his tone.
Piandao bowed out, and he nodded to him as though he not only tolerated but also accepted him.
It's still rude.
"I would appreciate it if you don't dismiss my friends and dictate what I'll do—"
"Well, you did want to talk to him, didn't you? It was a prediction. Not a command."
"Just because you can predict with accuracy what I'm going to do doesn't mean you should do it front of me and out loud. At least not regularly."
His lip almost twitched.
"I'll keep that in mind."
He hadn't asked me to dance yet, which all our observers found odd, but I used it to my advantage.
"Li Mei," she stated.
Ozai's expression hardened. On instinct, he scanned to see if she had returned. After a few seconds marked by a narrowed gaze and furrowed brow, he softened. Had he seen her though, I knew lightning would have flashed in suddenly ice-cold eyes.
"What about her?"
"Did you have something to do with why she left?"
"Why didn't you tell me what she did at the academy?
"Did you have something to do with why she left?"
There was a beat in silence in answer before Ozai deflected again.
"I've heard she's finally accepted a proposal from that suitor of hers. She's chosen well, though I'm sure he'll bore her to death. Just as Zhao's wife will, whenever he picks a new, dainty little lotus blossom. Li Mei is a female version of him really. Both are power-hungry and conniving, but they'd struggle for power between themselves in a marriage. Each would want to control the other. Oh well. I suppose they'll have to settle with a lifelong affair instead."
"Ozai," Ursa reprimanded, horrified because she could picture it perfectly and knew it was a valid, sensible possibility. "How can you say that?"
Ursa hated that I could jest about deceit so lightly, that I could find adultery so thoroughly amusing, that she could see the best in people, that I could see the worst, and that we could both be right.
"Is that cruel? Absolutely. It's also true. You've demanded my honesty, and there you have it."
That doesn't mean you have to force the truth on me.
But then, I'd never avoided it before. That was his hobby.
"Have you ever felt like…? Like you're losing yourself, or at least a part of yourself, and you don't even know it? I mean, you can't even remember what it is you were or had or—"
"Ursa, you couldn't lose yourself if you tried."
None of the tones he'd taken were unkind, but he apologized anyway.
"I'm sorry. That's not what I came here to… I will fight for us with the last breath in my body, but I beg you, Ursa. Do not make me fight alone."
He waited, but I just blinked at him for a few moments.
Finally, his back straightened with regal confidence, and he put on the princely mask I always saw through. Walking out to the center of the floor, Ozai called for their attention without having to raise his voice in the slightest.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you would spare a few minutes, it will be more than worth your time. I would like to demonstrate an alternative form of dance, and the generous and patient Lady Ursa has agreed to assist me. By that, I mean she is going to pretend that I asked her permission due to that generosity and patience. Her talent and grace will speak for themselves. Musicians, I'm sure you know 'Courtship of Dragons.'"
In the effort to prevent a slack-jaw, my bulging eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. I tried to stare a hole into the back of his mad head, but he remained unscathed. I put my entire spirit, energy, and will into a single, silent message of, "No."
You have no right, and I can't do it. I CAN'T. Not without a mask. Without makeup and a costume. In front of them! I dance for no one other than myself. I dance—
His gaze silenced my thoughts and pierced my heart.
Ozai began to bend.
It was a long, slender flame, and I sent it to her slowly. Entranced and, perhaps, awakened, Ursa responded to it as if she were bending it herself, gesturing for it to be higher, fiercer, wrapping herself around it as if it were a scarf. It was a scarf she could never touch yet seemed to dominate.
And with his fire at my fingertips, with his eyes of liquid gold on me, everything and everyone else faded away.
I was bending. I was awake and alive and a part of the spirit world itself. It wasn't intangible or superior or on some higher plane of existence; it couldn't have been more natural. It was just so much closer to reality and instinct, to the source of life, than this world of nobles ever seemed to offer.
And Ozai's spirit flowed with mine without thought, without the need for such a mental restraint. He was a canvas for art I felt more than knew. Spirals, rivers, mountains and volcanoes, flowers, ships, dragons… Fires that were fierce, and fires that were gentle. Fires steady as the sun, and fires flickering out on the verge of death. We all moved with the music, the tempo, the beat, faster, slower, louder, softer, short, and long. Our audience would gasp, fearing for my skirt or my hair, the nonbenders cringing at the closeness of the flame and sparks to my face even as they were in awe.
The music's crescendo and climax led to total exhilaration, and I finally managed to peel my eyes away from the fire to see its true bender.
Ozai wasn't just sending flames my way; he was bending around himself as well. For the perhaps the first time in his life, he was putting 100%—his entire being—into one thing, one form of art, bending so fiercely and fast and in so many different places that it actually took all the effort he had. No one else would realize it, of course. He still seemed effortless and devoid of even sweat, but his eyes were forest fires. Every one of his limbs was moving in bending or dance, yet he rotated the universe around me. No matter what either of us did, his soul and mine were tethered tautly, like a beam of the nation's strongest metal. Our souls were irreversibly intertwined in change, and I lived for every moment of it.
I don't know what everyone else saw; I never did. Yet I couldn't fathom that anyone could miss the life in her face, her eyes, her movements... She'd found herself again. She'd found the freedom and joy and ability to breathe. The dance brought out both her slow, swan grace and naturally regal strength. She was beautiful beyond something as shallow as her body or figure. She was beautiful like a force of nature. Like an angel with a heart for humans. She had effortless power and elegance. She was soft and gentle but blazing.
She was Ursa. Purified.
In the spirit and passion of the moment, in the perfect chaos of the music's shifts and emotions, in the distraction of my dancing and my watching of her, I realized she had miscalculated. She was about to slip and fall into a flame before the last note ended.
Every fire in the ballroom went out, leaving everyone in total darkness…
While Ozai caught me.
I grabbed her by the waist and dipped her as the last note rang out and some of the lights were lit again.
My heart leaped and melted and burned and skipped a beat as I tried to catch my breath, as those eyes, so soften and so clear and so crystalline, met mine with all the tenderness my prince was capable of.
My prince.
"I've decided," Ozai said, almost sounding breathless himself. "You are the sun. And the moon. And the stars. And every source of light in this universe."
She blinked rapidly. When her eyes met mine again, her expression read, "You are my sun."
The crowd, musicians included, burst into applause that thundered throughout the city.
I fled and tried to find Piandao, somehow much warmer and more flushed than when waves of heat enveloped me moments before. At last, I saw him leaning against a wall, eyes dull and drooping from a disappointment beyond words. He kissed my hand goodnight, insisting we talk in the morning instead despite the fact he was about to leave with all the other military members.
I agreed because I knew I wouldn't have been able to hear him. My heart still pounded in my ears, and the image of that carved-by-angels face reappeared every time I blinked.
She glanced back at me on her way home, and her expression had changed. "This changes nothing," it seemed to say, or tried to say. She was putting on a mask. The one constant in my life. The one person I knew to never change herself was drowning in a sea of masks and obligations… I wanted to be angry, but even then some part of me realized she was doing it for me. Some part of her knew it was all preparation for the necessities of a life with me, even if she couldn't name it herself at the time.
And I realized I had run out of ideas. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to manipulate her. I didn't want to force her or change or… scare her away.
I just wanted her to be her.
Even if that meant she didn't want me.