Dance with Madeline.

You leave the card table with Madeline’s arm in yours and head for the dance floor beside the dais. Something slow is playing. You put a hand around her waist, hold one of her hands in yours. She’s unpracticed in ballroom dancing and stumbles through the motions a little, stepping on your feet a few times. It’s uncertain who is leading who. You both chuckle at the awkwardness. You feel oddly warm and relaxed despite the many mistakes, despite the eyes on you both, like any capacity to be embarrassed vanishes under her humble-yet-confident smile.

“I fear I’m an awful title-bearer,” she whispers, as the pair of you badly sashay past a better-oriented pair, “not knowing how to dance and all.”

“Dancing’s not so important,” you say. “Did you want to stop?”

She laughs. “Of course not! I may be bad at it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not having fun!” She holds you tighter, grinning.

You grin with her, continuing to move with her through the motions you were taught since childhood. You wonder what it must be like, not to grow up as nobility, to instead be thrust into it as an adult, with nothing but the wild and the tribe behind you. You think, as you correct her footing once again, and she laughs once again, that she might be the bravest woman you’ve ever met. You hug her, as the song begins to close, smelling the sweet earth in the crook of her shoulder.

Dancers and onlookers alike politely applaud the band as the music stops.

“Did I get better?” Madeline asks.

You smile. “You did,” you say, and lead her away from the dance floor.