19. Chapter 19 #2
I’d agreed I would enjoy looking, but my body felt greedy as I was pressed against his. The music had made me drunk, and desire had made me weak.
I pushed off him until there was space between us, but I kept dancing.
His eyes hardened.
This was a mistake—all of it. Enjoying the sights was quickly becoming enjoying with all of my senses.
Denora appeared as if conjured from smoke. I hadn’t noticed her at all until she was right upon us.
“What is it?” Kaed’s entire demeanour shifted. His warmth turned icy, and he dropped my hands to step out of my space.
Denora looked between the two of us but didn’t answer.
They exchanged a glance, and then Kaed was ushering her off the dance floor with urgency. Leaving me alone. Bereft and humiliated as people watched.
As he left, I thought I might combust from the mortification of being abandoned in the centre of a dance floor. Without the connection to my partner, my movements stagnated.
My body just stopped flowing. Like a faucet being shut off. Thankfully, the music concluded and the heads that had been judging me turned away.
“It should be a crime to leave one’s partner like that,” a rich, male voice hummed behind me.
“He has enough of those on his plate,” I mumbled, more to myself. I’d spoken before I’d even cared to see who had approached me.
“I don’t believe we’ve met?” His voice entreated me to look.
A tall male with dusty brown folds of hair sprinkled with a few distinguished strands of grey, stood before me. He was tall and broad. Though his outfit lacked the flared shoulders or chest on display, he wore a similar outfit to Kaed’s, in a mesmerising colour that wasn’t blue or green, but both.
“Not difficult, seeing as Kaedian likes to either keep his things locked away or left entirely alone like a fool.” I smiled.
“Like I said, milady, a crime.” His grey eyes narrowed as he smirked, restraining mischief in his words. He was quite attractive. Refined. “Eryk.” He extended his hand as if to dance.
An offer I could refuse should I wish—a choice. But as the music began again, I took it, a little surprised at myself.
“Lord Eryk.” I smiled. “Imogen.”
“Just Eryk, Lady Imogen. My blood is not as noble as people might think.”
I smiled again. “Neither is mine.”
He smiled in return. “We have that in common, I suppose, then.”
“I thought this would be a place I wouldn’t need rescuing. But perhaps I’m a worse dancer than I thought, and Kaed couldn’t stand it.” I laughed, to my surprise.
Eryk responded with a throaty resonance. “This is the worst place of all. Society. Demands. Expectations. This is the first battlefield, Lady Imogen.”
And I relaxed then. Into Eryk’s laugh. Into the music. It was much freer than the last tune. This one lacked tension. It frolicked through the notes, carrying me with it.
“Seems you might be better at dancing than you give yourself credit for,” he said.
“The company helps.” My smile was timid as I looked at the male who was everything Kaed wasn’t. Respectful. Convivial. Unproblematic.
“Your dancing looked fine to me.” His eyes glimmered. “But I’ll take the compliment.”
He was dashing. That was the word for him. His grey eyes were playful. They flirted without effort, and it was charming, not stripping.
“You were watching?” The music slowed to a sway.
“As politely as I can put this …” Eryk paused and leaned in ever so slightly. “Most people here were watching you.”
I blushed a little and peered around as Eryk spun me with the music.
“You’ve become quite the point of conversation.” His hands came to rest high on my back. Not low. Not reaching. Not searching.
“Oh?” I said as Eryk twirled us around the dance floor.
“Lord Kaedian with a new bride on his arm is one thing. But one so lovely and captivating as you? One can only guess he stole you and doesn’t deserve you.”
A laugh escaped me at the truth Eryk had hit upon. “And what do you do, Lord Eryk? When you’re not swooping in to save people from their own dancing?”
Eryk’s laugh was full and loud, and it rumbled through his chest.
I liked him. There was something effortless about the way he spoke. Nothing seemed to have an undercurrent. From the lightning spark of dancing with Kaed to the warm evening breeze that was Eryk, the difference in their beings was staggering.
“I work for the city.”
“A councillor like Celeste?”
Eryk huffed a laugh. “Not exactly. I work for the city, not the council.” A distinction he took seriously, evidently. “I find I work best as my own master. Think of me as freelancing my skills to the city.”
“I see.” A smile tugged at my lips.
“There are many ugly things in this city; how the Four Corners thrive, there’s no beauty in it. But—”
“But you’re going to fix it all?” I interjected with a wry smile.
Eryk paused—a flirtatious curve haunting his lips. “But,” he continued, “I can see one thing that is very beautiful.”
I blushed again. My eyes didn’t know where to look.
A broad smile came across Eryk’s face, but I couldn’t match it. “I spend my time working to better this city,” Eryk continued, his eyes darting above and behind me occasionally. “There are many improvements a city like this could make.”
I smiled, inviting him to elaborate.
“The city’s waterways and drainage, for example. The irrigation and crop storage. Salt is vitally important to a city’s survival.” He paused, looking away. “I would see this city—the Corners—less dependent on trade and the Crown’s whim.”
I had stumbled into something Eryk was passionate about, and I felt a little abashed.
“I’m sorry. I must be boring you, my lady.”
“Not at all.” I smiled again as we continued to dance. “I just—”
“Eryk.” Kaedian clapped a hand to my dance partner’s shoulder as he came up behind him. “So sorry to interrupt, but my lady is leaving.”
My mouth hung open unattractively. “What gives you the right?” I had stopped dancing, and Eryk looked between the two of us.
Kaed levelled me a look that said, Not now. Don’t do this now.
“Well, then, if you won’t leave, then Eryk will. I must have a dance with my betrothed.”
Without a word, Eryk stepped back, and Kaed gripped my arm.
Once we were on the far corner of the dance floor, I stopped him short. “Do you always act like this? Possessive? Belligerent? Tactless?” What was he doing? He’d abandoned me there and was stomping all over the actual enjoyment I was having. Eryk’s conversation was easy.
“Anything else?”
I folded my arms, but he began moving with the music. “You’d better get a handle on that jealousy, my Lord. Or people might think you care.”
“I do care.”
That caught me off guard.
“I care about what is mine,” he clarified. “And keeping it that way. Eryk is a snake.”
Kaed pulled me into him until our hips nearly met, but I pushed off him. “Eryk saved me when you abandoned me on the dance floor.”
A tempest of unspoken things swirled in Kaed’s eyes.
“What did Denora want?” I wasn’t sure he’d even tell me, but there was something else in his expression that I needed to understand.
Silence answered me.
“I’m leaving,” I said, pulling away. “If you won’t tell me things and insist on ruining my night, then I’m leaving.”
Kaed snatched me back to his body. “Just dance with me.” He said, nearly without moving his lips. “Pretend for me now.”
“What’s going on?” I said a little quieter.
Something had shifted. I could sense it rolling off him in waves.
“Denora brought news of Hayden.” I waited as he exhaled a tight breath. “My brother—”
“Hart?” His eyes snapped to me. I had been listening.
“Yes, Hart”—he extruded his brother’s name with considerable effort—“has been dispatched to search the Western Corner for the faebane Denora brought my father.”
Understanding settled into my skin, and black ice filled my veins at his words. Would his brother search all the way to Shadowfall? Few ventured there. Ever. But if someone knew there was something worth finding in the Western Corner, they might not leave any stone unturned.
“You won’t be leaving the city,” he gritted out and looked away from me.
“I know that. Yesterday made that perfectly clear.”
“No.” His eyes were piercing as they held me.
“I mean, you can’t leave because Hayden—the entire Northern Corner—has closed its borders.
Denora delivered the faebane, and in an instant, my father reacted.
He’s going to stop all trade to Viverna and everywhere else.
And when news gets here of his actions, this city will close her borders and her gates in kind.
I can’t leave until I’ve smoothed this out. ”
“Over the faebane? Why?”
We’d stopped dancing.
“Until he gets what he believes is the advantage, he will cut off everyone else to try to put them at a disadvantage. If they’re worried about supplies and trade routes, they won’t be spending resources looking for what he wants.”
His father sounded like a bastard.
“He is a bastard.”
I practically snorted. “Reading thoughts now is a magic you possess?”
“No.” He grinned. “But it’s not hard to think that of my father.”
“How long?” My skin prickled with worry. How long would this keep Kaed here? Me. Would it make slipping away when I needed to more difficult?
“I don’t know. If you give me the location of the faebane, we can end this now, before it—”
“I can’t, Kaed. I can’t,” I said with a heaviness.
We stared at each other for a long moment. Kaed’s hand flexed on my waist, and his jaw tightened. I thought I might see him blaze with anger, but he just took a steadying breath.
“Kaed!” Gavrin’s voice cut through the music as he came towards us. “Time to go, brother.”
But it was too late.
Soldiers clad in clinking metal armour had surrounded us, their palms raised and glowing with magical umber light.