Chapter 6 Balls #3
Elyria cleared her throat and fought the urge to race out of the room.
“My goodness, such praise.” She turned to Tenny.
“And you know the, uh, Lord Victor as well?” She tried to suppress a snort of laughter as his title spilled from her lips.
Her obvious failure had Tristan’s face lighting up with delight.
The blush Elyria had thought Tristan’s earlier embrace might have brought out finally crept into Tenny’s cheeks. “Oh, well, yes . . . I suppose that is one way of putting it.”
Elyria felt suddenly itchy, like her very skin fit wrong.
That damn attendant really did tie her dress entirely too tight.
Her grip constricted involuntarily around her goblet—errantly, she thought she might have felt the metal start to buckle beneath her touch.
And her tone was far sharper than she intended when she said, “Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning,” Tristan interjected pointedly, “that we are all very good friends. Have been, since we were little. The three of us grew up together.”
“Yes, right,” agreed Tenny, a bit quickly. “Exactly.”
“Mmm,” said Elyria, moving to take another sip from her cup before realizing with disappointment that it was, in fact, entirely empty. She set it down on the table just as the musicians began a new song, slow, simple, and bright. “Then, Tenny, are you two—”
“Shall we dance, my lady?” Tristan was bent at the waist, his hand extended.
Elyria hesitated, her eyes first darting around the room to the numerous people trying to pretend they weren’t looking at her, before landing on Tenny, who only smiled and made a shooing motion with her hands.
And before Elyria could invent an excuse, Tristan had already grabbed her wrist and was leading her onto the floor.
Attention was pinned on Elyria from all directions.
Half of the stony-faced nobles observed her with detached interest—an eyebrow raised here, a pursed lip there.
The other half was openly gawking, and Elyria found her capacity for remaining on her “best behavior” was starting to feel rather strained.
Her eyes landed on a scowling man who was whispering in the ear of a woman to his right—harshly, Elyria figured, based on the way the woman was actively cringing away from him.
Elyria narrowed her gaze on the man, who fell silent the instant he realized she was looking at him, slinking backward until he hit the wall.
“Keep glaring like that and you’ll frighten everyone in attendance into stupefied silence before the king even arrives,” Tristan teased, keeping her one hand in his, and placing the other on her waist as they began to dance.
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Elyria muttered, resting her palm on his shoulder.
He chuckled. “You wouldn’t find me complaining.”
She pursed her lips, her gaze going back to Tenny, who now appeared to be laughing at something Thraigg was saying.
One of his classic, outlandish, and highly entertaining stories, no doubt.
Elyria envied the ease with which the dwarf seemed to be operating tonight.
She wished she could bottle up just a little bit of it for herself.
“You didn’t want me asking Tenny about her and—”
“As I said, all three of us have been friends for a long time,” Tristan interjected before she could finish her sentence.
He followed her gaze, something like a sigh deflating his chest even as the music swelled.
“Tenny is wonderful. Smart, funny, loyal. A level of compassion that rivals even Ric’s.
Honestly, it’s a marvel they both ended up with such bleeding hearts, given who raised them. ”
“Raised them?” Elyria asked, her head tilting. “As in, they were raised by the same person?”
Tristan hesitated, chewing on his bottom lip as though he realized he just said something he shouldn’t have.
“Not like siblings, if that’s what you’re getting at.
But in the most literal sense, yes? Cedric came to us as Lord Church’s ward.
Not that the lord paramount bothered spending much time with him until he was old enough to begin training for the Crucible. ” His jaw tightened.
“He was Lord Church’s ward?”
“Well, a ward of his estate, at any rate. Since he was little more than six or so. After his parents were murdered by—uh, after his family was killed.”
A wave of heart-wrenching pity for a young, parentless Cedric swelled in Elyria’s gut, followed by a surge of defensiveness. “I didn’t kill his family.”
Tristan’s expression softened. “I know. He told me all about the literal nightmare that was the Trial of Spirit. It seems as though many truths were revealed inside the Sanctum, even if the question of who exactly was responsible for orphaning our poor boy remains unanswered.”
Elyria’s heart clenched at the thought, at the memory of that burning cottage, of her pulling him from the flames.
“But I’m getting off topic. Apologies, I tend to do that. You want to know if there is specific history between Ric and Tenny and for that, I do, of course, have an answer.”