Chapter 13
Call to the Skies
“They’re saying it’s going to be canceled.
” Lexsea flopped back on her gold-draped seat.
She glanced at Jesstin with a fatalistic pout, but there was something disingenuous in her words, as though her internal feelings didn’t match the show she was putting on.
“How many years have they been doing this? They’ve really trained no one else? ”
Jesstin didn’t care what they were waiting for, what was being canceled, or what Lexsea was actually upset about.
She’d been a menace from the moment they’d taken their seats in the pretor’s box.
He’d tried to listen as Estelar had explained the event, but his fucking daughter had his willpower in a psychic vise.
He’d tried so hard to ignore her, to repel her, he’d been focused on nothing else.
“Patience,” Ryquin said. He picked at a bowl of round, plump fruit that had been waiting for them when they’d arrived. The juicy orbs looked like grapes but with a deep-bluish hue. Jesstin gawped at the man like he’d lost his mind when he offered some. “They’ll have a plan. They always do.”
A sly grin formed as Lexsea moved one hand to Jesstin’s leg, wasting no time before traveling it to the interior of his thigh.
He started to tell her to stop, but his mouth couldn’t form any words of objection.
He hadn’t seen Elloven or Sesto—or Taven—in hours, though Elloven couldn’t be too far, or he’d feel her absence like a splitting headache.
The division was intentional, and so was whatever the hell Lexsea was doing to him.
“Ry says you’ve agreed to help us. Can I just say—”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Jesstin said, cutting in. He’d resisted women twice as attractive, three times as charming, but none had used magic to control him.
“That wasn’t very lovely now, was it?” Her nails dug gently into his thigh, and he throbbed harder, horrified.
He was so desperate, he even considered trying to catch Ryquin’s notice in a way that would convey what he couldn’t actually say because of the witch’s block.
But what exactly could he even convey, that a beautiful woman wouldn’t leave him alone? No one would take him seriously.
Jesstin squeezed his legs together and craned, searching for anyone he knew, but the crowd was too thick to see more than a few rows on either side of their box. “Where are my friends?” he asked, squirming, his voice broken.
“Friends.” Lexsea chuckled. “The woman you’re bound to by magic, the eunuch bound to you by honor, and the man you dream of sending to join all the lost souls in the Infinitum?”
“Aelloven will want to see this. Don’t worry,” Ryquin said. “And there she is now.”
Elloven came stumbling up the small set of steps, catching herself on the railing with an ungraceful yelp.
She covered a belch with an inelegant giggle.
Her cheeks were bright red, and her eyes were so glossed, it immediately had him straightening in attention.
The woman from the night before, who’d said nothing at supper, was behind her but didn’t follow her up the stairs, or help her. No sign of Taven or Sesto.
“Is she drunk?” Jesstin knew the answer already. He’d seen the same sloppy behavior in newcomers to the Row who didn’t know their limits.
“I see our aunt has indoctrinated Elloven with that morbid tradition. Great timing, Velanthe, as always,” Lexsea joked. “This should be fun. Unsafe and utterly deranged, but fun.”
Ryquin made a snickering sound. “She’ll be fine.”
“In her altered state?”
“It’s not unsafe, Lex. Leave it.”
“What’s unsafe?” Jesstin asked, but he was drawn toward movement in the center of the arena, and he had his answer.
Bodies flew through the air in fluid bends, connecting with other bodies, arcing and dancing through space.
It reminded him of the way stars sometimes streamed across the heavens, flashes of brilliant, dazzling light.
Like stars, the bodies were connected to nothing but the sky.
“Aerialists,” Ryquin explained. “Part skill, part magic, part wonder.”
“Where are the ropes?” Jesstin asked.
“Why would they need ropes?”
Jesstin had seen acrobats before, when the traveling circus had come through Riverchapel. But they’d been performing on a smaller stage, connected by supports.
Elloven flounced onto the seat beside him after Ryquin moved over one. She squinted, scrunched her face, then squinted again, wriggling like she couldn’t get comfortable.
“You, uh, all right over there?” he asked from the corner of his mouth. Lexsea pinched his thigh. He knew the strength to repel her existed somewhere within him, but she’d blocked access.
“I don’t know. I expect so?” Elloven ran her hands down the arm of the chair, her wide eyes following the aerialists. “I used to be so good at this.”
“At what?”
“That.” She tipped her head at the performers.
Jesstin’s brows shot upward. “You? You were an aerialist?”
Elloven’s harried hands slid faster down the wood, like they needed something to do. “My mother taught me. I never met anyone else who could do it.”
“This is their practice. For the Odeon of the Heavens,” Ryquin said. “Though, quite sadly, they’re down a performer tonight due to an unfortunate accident, so we might end the evening disappointed if they can’t muster a replacement quickly...”
“Ryquin.” Lexsea sighed and shook her head.
Elloven’s mouth hung wider. The aerialists had caught her in a spell, and the joy was written all over her.
He wished he’d remembered her when times were simpler, before the world had tried to destroy them both.
All he had were flashes of the redheaded girl who had indulged his and Gennady’s nonsense. “I would have so loved to see it.”
“They’re practicing, aren’t they?” Jesstin asked, trying to pretend Lexsea’s fingertips weren’t crawling slowly inward as everyone watched and did nothing.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ve never lost a fight before. Why start now?” Gennady barked.
Jesstin couldn’t risk answering aloud. Because all my energy is directed toward not fucking her right here in front of all of Rivenholde.
But Gennady was gone, again. He’d been slipping in and out in brief flashes since they’d entered Rivenholde, as though he couldn’t hold his connection the way he did back home.
Elloven looked directly at him for the first time since she’d joined the group. Her gaze traveled to his leg; her eye twitched at the corner as she frowned. “It’s good to see you’ve found your own amusements here.”
“It’s not what—” Jesstin grimaced. Did no one else care that Lexsea was practically servicing him right there?
Or were they judging him for how poorly he was deflecting it, how he wasn’t saying no?
If they had any idea the self-control he was clinging to in that moment, he’d be given a fucking medal. “Look, Lexsea, I need...”
“Need what, love?”
“Oh, quit it, will you?” Ryquin groaned. “You’ve made your point, Lex.”
Lexsea snatched her hand back with a huff.
Jesstin wilted. The tension dissolved from his body in a flash.
Elloven swayed in her seat, blinking erratically like the messy socialites who appeared on the Row in hopes of scandalizing everyone by their presence. But when she turned her head his way again, she seemed clearheaded. “Was she touching you without your permission?”
The question was so brazenly astute for someone in her state that, at first, he thought she was mocking him. He never got to answer, because two aerialists in skintight gold suits joined them in their box.
One of them, a slender man younger than Jesstin, leaned in and whispered in Elloven’s ear.
Her eyes lit up seconds before her entire face creased in dread.
“I’m honored, but no. It’s been so many years.
..” She stared at the arena, looking past the performer who’d spoken to her.
Her fingers moved as though she were playing the piano, but after their last conversation in the Night Soul, he knew what she was really doing. “So long ago. I wouldn’t even know...”
Jesstin caught Taven hovering several boxes away with a man and a woman Jesstin hadn’t met yet. They weren’t even looking toward the box with Elloven and the others, which was strange.
“It’s in your blood,” the other performer, a woman with hair the color of her uniform, said. “You were born knowing. Practice made you stronger. No one forgets.”
Elloven nervously switched her gaze to Ryquin. “I don’t even know the routines.”
Jesstin leaned forward. He had to have misheard. “You want Elloven to go out there and throw herself in the air, drunk as she is?”
“Don’t overcomplicate what is simple,” the woman said with a dismissive wave. “The aerialists commune intuitively. They feel the routine as one. There are no mistakes. No falls. No problems. Anyone with aerialism in their blood could do this.”
“There’s an entire village. Ask one of them,” Jesstin retorted. How was no one else concerned? “Someone who isn’t sloshed beyond sense.”
“She’s not drunk,” Ryquin said.
Elloven gripped the arms of her chair and pushed up with a wobble. She batted Jesstin away. “I came here because this is my home, and if I can’t be myself at home, then I should never have come.”
“Elloven, bloody hell.” Jesstin hissed, shooting to his feet. “Have you even been watching them? You really think you can do this? Right now? As you are?”
Elloven swept him in pure contempt. “You have no idea what I can do,” she said and followed the gold-clad acrobats down the stairs.
“Are you not going to do anything?” Jesstin demanded of Estelar, Ryquin, and Lexsea, who exchanged stoic glances like he was the unreasonable one.
Then it hit him. This was planned, like everything else so far, right down to the unfortunate but all-too-convenient “accident” that had placed Elloven in the unique position to save the show. If they hadn’t gotten her drunk out of her mind, she might have seen through it as well.