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With everyone safely back at the Lodge, Aubrey had declared they were still well into Yule and that goat men were no reason to abandon the holiday spirit. Barclay had agreed, spending the rest of the day in the kitchen until cookies and little cakes were stacked on every spare inch. Jake, pretending he wasn’t shaken, had stapled all the lights back onto the eaves of the lodge. Dani had helped, a little, until she’d had to take a break to drink a big mug of apple cider in the kitchen with Barclay.
They were all okay. Things were going to be okay.
Agent Stern, at least, had retreated to his room. Nobody really knew how much he’d seen of the Calamity storm, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to ask. So: holidays it was.
Moira was attempting to ring in the season with something that sounded more like the opening strains to What’s New Pussycat than anything Dani recognized as Christmassy, but she didn’t mind. It had been Deck the Halls in a minor chord earlier, which was about scarier than the abomination.
Aubrey had sprayed the ends of her hair with silver in honour of the party. It had scratched against Dani’s nose when she buried her face in Aubrey’s shoulder, too glad to see her up and smiling to remember she’d been fighting a bom-bom not too long ago. The hug had apparently pressed against more than a few bruises, which made Dani reluctant to reach out again. “Exploding tree,” had been the explanation. It hadn’t made Dani feel much better about the situation. Aubrey had gotten hurt protecting them.
They all had, the whole Pine Guard, but Dani wasn’t above admitting to herself that she cared about Aubrey more.
Aubrey had insisted that the hair and her sweater, which was covered in enough bells and pins that she could be heard approaching from across the lodge, were required by the holiday season. Judging by Duck’s metal-free sweater and Ned’s… well, holiday-ignorant activity of harassing everyone about the Cryptonomica while dressed like a used car salesman, Dani wasn’t sure.
After that, Aubrey had vanished into the crowd for a while. Dani knew she’d helped start the fire by the way it was crackling away, forgetting that it had been embers only a few moments before. Dani curled up in one of the rocking chairs as soon as it came free, Jake rocketing off for another armful of dessert. With the fire at her back and a mug of hot cider in her hands, Dani was starting to feel properly warm again.
“Hey,” Aubrey said. She offered a hand, still enough that Dani knew her thoughts had to be the ones doing the jittering. “Dancing? Thoughts?” She winced. “Do you want to dance, I mean? There’s music and everything.”
“Is there really,” Dani said. She grinned at Aubrey, tipping a head toward Moira. She accepted the hand anyway. “Did you have an idea for dancing then?”
“Waltzing,” Aubrey announced.
“I can’t waltz to this,” Dani complained. It came out almost incoherent with laughter as Aubrey settled a determined hand on her waist and started formally dancing them with all her might. “Aubrey.”
“Dani.” Aubrey said, just as serious. “Honey. We’re going to kick everyone’s asses at waltzing.”
“Like you stunted all over Keith?” Dani asked, but let Aubrey charge them onto the dance floor. Mostly it was the other lodge residents bobbing to the music as they danced, but Barclay and Mama had taken their conversation to a competitive round of unidentifiable spinning. “Or is dancing easier?”
“It’s easy with music,” Aubrey said earnestly. Moira banged away at the piano in seeming agreement. It was beginning to sound like Deck the Halls again. “Something to keep the beat. See-”
Dani almost stopped breathing when Aubrey pulled her close, the baubles on Aubrey’s sweater somehow not stabbing either of them. Her smile was even sweeter up close.
“Step out on the first beat,” Aubrey instructed. She guided Dani’s leg with her own, stepping them back. The press of her was making Dani feel like the fire roaring in the hearth, like if her magic was the kind to throw sparks she would have been set the whole room ablaze. “Then a sort of- wobble, or second step I guess.”
“That’s specific,” Dani teased. She wobbled best as she could. It definitely wasn’t Aubrey’s proximity making her knees a little jelly. She was the cool one here. Probably. Hopefully.
Aubrey snorted out a laugh, bumping the sides of their heads together. “And then back again,” she said. “Here- come here.”
Dani followed the pull, letting Aubrey guide her into another set of wandering steps. It seemed different from whatever nonsense Barclay and Mama were doing while they argued about the economics of scale and pastries. Aubrey was a lot closer to her than Barclay was to Mama and they were moving a lot slower. Dani could feel the way Aubrey was carrying herself stiffly, hear when Aubrey hissed through her teeth at a wrong step.
Dani wrapped her arms tighter around Aubrey where she hoped the bruises weren’t. “You’re okay?” she asked. “Really okay?”
“Nothing a good soak in the hot springs won’t cure.” Aubrey was smiling again, but it was different this time. She wasn’t laughing at some joke, she was smiling at Dani. “They aren’t magical for me but there’s nothing like that natural water pressure to take the ache away.”
Aubrey’s sweater jangled as Dani shivered. Dani pretended not to notice. “You’re sure.”
They’d stopped dancing, Dani finally noticed. They were just holding each other now in the middle of the lodge, the piano clattering peaceably. With her back to the fireplace, Aubrey’s edges blurred into the flames. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
“Dani, Dani,” Aubrey said. She bounced up to Dani like they hadn’t spent the past eight hours hiking up an endless mountain. “I feel like dancing. It’s a night for it.”
The stars twinkled at them, like Sylvain was laughing. Janelle muttered something about kids these days, laying out her sleeping bag under one of Aubrey’s new pudding trees. It was still weird to have the Minister of the Arcane as a chaperone on the road trip, but Dani was warming to her. It helped that Aubrey could chatter any and all silence into submission.
Speaking of. “Without music?” A minstrel band had taken up shop around the new Sylvain and serenaded Aubrey last week. They were long gone now, leaving their party in blessed silence. The mountain had intimidated them. “Aubrey, I love you, but without something to hold a beat you’ll step on my feet.”
“I do not-”
“You absolutely do, remember in that castle place-”
“Magic,” Aubrey appealed, hardly holding onto her laughter. She flung a hand out to the dusk. “Could you-?”
The first time she’d seen Aubrey, when she’d been flustered and conjured a spout of flames that would have put a a bonfire to shame, Dani had been taken aback. Almost nobody on Sylvain had that kind of power, and they had never seemed to embrace it so naturally.
Aubrey loved magic. It wasn’t different now that she knew she… well, was magic. Aubrey reached out to the world and it reached back, a gentle harp starting to strum in the branches of a nearby tree. She finished her movement, spinning back toward Dani and gathering the both of them up in the moment.
“There,” Aubrey said triumphantly. She was swaying to the melody already, her orange eyes wide and happy. “Music.”
“Not bad,” Dani allowed. Aubrey stuck her tongue out.
It was easier to dance now that they’d had practice. It didn’t hurt that she knew Aubrey’s body now, knew which way she’d twitch when tickled and when she’d lean in for a kiss. She knew Aubrey all the way down to the crinkle in her nose and the constant tap-tap of her fingers against Dani’s hip.
Dani could feel the lines of magic embroidery under her fingers all up Aubrey’s back. It reminded her of the party at the Lodge, when Aubrey had showed up for the holiday party ready to challenge the concept of metal detectors to a death match. Had that really only been six months ago? Less? It was hard to remember time existed when she was here, home, back in Sylvain with Aubrey in her arms.
“I have something to admit,” Aubrey told Dani’s hair.
“Oh?” Dani adjusted her grip, letting Aubrey pull back and rearrange them so both of their hands had fingers intwined, hanging low beside their thighs. “A deep dark secret for this deep dark night?”
“You’re only supposed to waltz to music that’s in three-three time. Deck the Halls is in four-four.”
“I didn’t understand most of those words, but I’m still judging you.”
“Fair.” Aubrey smacked a kiss on Dani’s cheek. She was humming along to the music now, swinging their hands back and forth with the beat. Dani’s heart was so full it was aching. “I love you.”
Dani kissed her for real, lurching in and landing on Aubrey’s lips through some miracle. Aubrey tasted like vanilla and chocolate and home, like all the things Dani hadn’t known she needed. “Love you too.”