The bonfires threw their orange light against the trunks of the oaks, and the drums had started somewhere deep in the Spring woods, a heartbeat under the laughing and the fiddles. Elain slipped free of the dancers, earth still beneath her nails, her spring-green dress hemmed in it, and the smoke found her before she found the gap between the fires where Tamlin stood alone, green tunic unlaced at the throat, a knife-baldric slung over his shoulder like he'd forgotten he wore it.
He didn't turn, but his shoulders knew her. "You shouldn't wander off," he said, voice low and rough from disuse. "The drums are the whole point of the night." She came to stand beside him anyway, close enough to see the firelight break in his bright green eyes—broad and tanned and too still, like a creature braced for the strike it's owed. "I've been told what the drums are for," Elain said softly. "No one ever thought to ask if I wanted to hear them."
Tamlin's jaw worked. He looked at her then, truly—at the gold-brown hair loose down her back, the curve of her waist, the earth on her hands—and something in his face went careful, and hungry. "You came alone." "I came to see the night for myself." The drums beat faster. "Careful," he said, quiet as a claw. "Spring is a different court tonight." "Show me, then," she said, and did not step back.

MyTales

What the Drums Are For

What happens next?