Page 14 of A Dance of Water

She merely looked at him.

The King’s eyes flickered with rage. She was taken back to another time, standing amid the ruins of the throne room, staring up, up, up into the same green eyes, but wrapped within a body of onyx and flame. Her lips parted.

"Answer me," he ordered.

Words tumbled from her mouth. "What do you want me to say?"

He sighed at the sound of her voice, soft and filled with pieces of everything and nothing. "Call me by my name."

It was not a question.

And she did so, her blue eyes never breaking away from his. "V-Vale."

His nostrils flared, smoke curling in the air between them. Her gaze dipped to his mouth, and she saw a small, triumphant smile there.

"You are like a ghost. I see no fire in you anymore, just rain." And with that, the King pulled away from her, and she remained leaning toward him.

When she did not move, Bastian pulled her back with an arm on her shoulder, forcing her to sit back against her chair.

Tharen cleared his throat, and in a caring action wholly unlikehim, he gestured to her plate. "The food will get cold. I know it’s winter, but hot food is best." A tanned hand came up to sweep away one of his braids after he spoke, as though he was lamenting showing concern for her.

She looked down, the knife was still in her hand.

They were right. She could not keep going on like this.

Luella searched for a fork and, when she found one, lifted it in her hands, cutting a small square of her toast and bringing it up to her lips. She chewed, but it tasted like nothing. Chewed some more, and it grew to be pasty mush in her mouth. Swallowed, and it was dry.

Her face scrunched up with a grimace, and silent Graves used the tip of a gloved finger to push his half-full glass of juice across the table to her. His dark blue eyes gleamed, and an unspoken order simmered within them. She looked away but took the stem of the glass and brought it to her lips. Cool, sugary liquid slid down her throat, and she barely noted that Graves had had his lips on the same glass.

Slowly, their conversations resumed while she was distracted and overcome, chewing and swallowing with a falsified intent. Faint chatter about nothing more than the weather. An entirely innocuous conversation, juxtaposed with the terse air that hung about the dining room.

Washing over her was the cadence of their voices; she found herself drifting, eyes fluttering shut.

The cutlery no longer warmed her palms—she didn’t know when she had set them down.

Her mouth split with a wide yawn, and she looked up in the middle of it. Tharen’s ice-blue eyes dipped to watch her open mouth. She barely had the sense to slap her hand over her lower face to cover her indecent state.

Graves was the first to address her after most of their food was gone, and they sat, none of them willing to part, called by her just as she was them. "You rested well last night. Why are you still tired?"

Bastian glanced at her from the corner of his eye, pouring her some more juice silently as he, too, waited for her response.

"I—" Luella blushed, the first real reaction since she had entered the dining room.

The raven shifter gave a secret smile in reply.

Tharen braced his hands on the table and leaned over it, getting right in her personal space. He inhaled the air between them deeply. "I’ll say she rested well."

She turned her head away from them, from their knowing looks, only to find Bastian with a finger pressed against his sensuous lips, stifling a laugh.

Luella crossed her arms over her chest indignantly. "What of it?"

The King saved her with the clearing of his throat. "I had a reason for asking you to attend breakfast this morning, Luella." He said her name like a prayer, and her hands clenched at the fabric of her skirts to stave herself off from reaching out to touch him.

He was so close to her. She watched the fluttering of his pulse on his neck and smelled the scent of burning wood and crackling embers. The call thrummed, and she tried to drown it out by focusing on the shape of his lips as he spoke.

"The Winter Solstice is in three days," King Vale began. "We will be holding a celebration, as we do every year…"

"Okay," she responded quietly.

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