Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 61

Some news! I am planning on hosting a Calore Dance Academy review game this weekend--it will be live at 7 CT/8 EST, and will probably take about a half hour. Head over to my profile to check it out; I will post the link to it on Sunday evening. 

As always, enjoy!

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"But anyway, I'm super sorry for hitting on you, Mare," Tyton continues.

He has his usual easygoing expression pasted back on. His smile doesn't have anything lurking beneath it, and his eyes have cleared, the storm in them giving way to a wonderful fall afternoon. His voice is casual, but not quite apologetic.

It unnerves me.

"No problem, Tyton," I say a bit breathlessly.

Looking very similar to Cal in his black T-shirt and training pants, Tyton Jesper stands behind me with his hands on my hips. His white hair is held in place by his god-awful sweatband, even as wisps of it stick over the red, white, and blue stripes.

"For future reference, though, you should probably ask somebody if a girl's taken or not before you kiss her hand and ask her to be your girlfriend."

The TikTok dancer stares back at me through the mirror. "Yeah, I'll double-check next time."

For but a moment, when he knows that his face is angled away from our little audience, does Tyton give me a look. I don't have to describe it.

But then my feet are returning to fifth position from my arabesque. Tyton's hands on my waist are steady, and I rise from the floor, extending my other leg out. We move together in surprisingly fluid movements as the pianist plays her somber melody.

Blonos's studio is nearly empty. Tyton and I dance in its center with a pianist at our backs and a peanut gallery to our side. I've traded in my skirt for a pretty pink tutu, which Blonos handed me along with an apology. The glittering tarlatan fabric encircles my waist, poofing out in gauzy layers to make me look like a real princess. If only Tyton had a tiara on hand.

The peanut gallery, of course, includes Maven, Cal, Blonos, and one of Tyton's interns. They occupy four chairs that lie in a neat line. Maven looks on, trying to hide his disdain, while Cal has his arms crossed. Blonos keeps on glaring at Tyton's intern, having already asked what's wrong with the boy's jeans. Their rips are so big that they leave his knee caps hanging out in the open.

Blonos didn't want everyone's day to be wasted. Most of the company is with Arven in another technique class. Somewhere upstairs, Elara is sitting through a pas de deux rehearsal between Ella and another Principal man, and Carmadon is enduring similar torment with Rafe and the Soloist woman he chose.

"Good, Tyton"

I smile, and the sugary grin that I attempt looks more like a cringe in the mirror.

The wooden blocks of my shoes return to the vinyl with grace. It seems that Tyton's been wasting his talent.

He only watched me and Maven dance through the pas de deux in Act Two of Giselle a few times. It's a dance of death, of lost love. I'm supposed to be a ghostly Wili while Albrecht is my prince, doomed to dance to his death. The soft ballad that washes through the studio reeks of this magical darkness, the kind that you'd find all alone in a forest somewhere.

It isn't a particularly difficult dance for the male partner, to be fair. I do the dancing, and Tyton does the lifting. But he has this natural sort of grace that makes his love of TikTok a real tragedy.

Tyton nods, looking me up and down. I can't figure him out. For the camera, he's this out-of-control, charismatic, flirtatious playboy. When we're here, in the quiet of the studio, he's calm and almost disinterested in me. And then, there's that third side of him I see in flashes when nobody is paying attention.