Page 112 of Crown of Darkness
I shoot Thiago a helpless smile. “Vanquished by the threat of dancing. Surely you’re made of sterner stuff than that?”
He takes my hand and presses a kiss to the back of it. “Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll dance with you later. If I don’t let Thalia have you for an hour or so, then I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I intend to hold you to that!” I warn as Thalia grabs my other hand.
She drags me into the dancing, the laughter on her face so infectious that I can’t help laughing back. But it’s Eris who shocks me. Eris who whirls and leaps with such grace that fae pause to watch her for a second. She’s always been so elegant with a blade, but I didn’t know she could move like this.
And I lose myself in the music, in the laughter, in the sway and bump and grind. There are cobblestones beneath our feet, and every so often someone staggers into us. It’s such a far cry from the formal balls my mother held. Such different dancing. A riot in the streets as fireworks crash and shatter in the air above us.
This. This is what it feels like to rule a kingdom with love and not fear.
A pair of handsome fae males push into our group, one of them slinging an arm around Eris’s waist. He’d probably faint if he knew who she was. “I like the way you dance,” he yells over the music.
“Think you can keep up with me?” she demands.
“Oh, I know it.”
With a wink in our direction, she whirls him into the flurry of bodies.
“This way!” Thalia yells, grabbing my wrist and hauling me onto the ruins of an old city wall that looks like it’s been gobbled up by little houses and turrets. People have built onto it, underneath it, over it…. But I catch a glimpse of ivy-choked walls and an ancient city arch that bridges a street.
The view from the top of the arch is glorious. The city square is packed with fae, and I catch a glimpse of Thiago drinking with Baylor and laughing at something Finn says. Our eyes meet across the crowded square—he’s known exactly where I was the entire time.
“Enjoying yourself?” he murmurs.
“Immensely.You should join us.”
He glances at Finn, who’s scowling into his drink as he rests both elbows on the bar in front of him, his back turned resolutely to the crowd.
And I remember what Finn said about violence and the anger he fights each and every day.
“Stay with him,” I tell my husband. And then I dare…. “Does she know?”
“I don’t think he even knows.I’ll find you later, once he’s got a rein on it.”
And then he’s gone, with one last caress against my mind.
It’s quieter up here, and sweat slicks my skin, so I’m glad of the respite. Eris has vanished. Thalia leans against the wall, a glass of wine she’s stolen from someone in the crowd in her hand. “Want some?”
I take a sip. Sweet, fruity. And then I hand it back.
The music has died in the courtyard below. It seems a lone harpist struck a few chords, and everyone turns toward him. The dancing stills. The loud singing vanishes.
It’s merely the harp.
And a song so bittersweet that my heart squeezes, even though I don’t know why.
“The Lament of the Golden Dawn,” Thalis says, closing her eyes and leaning into the music. “The last dance of Araya of Evantine.”
Thiago’s mother.
It’s so beautiful. So heartfelt. Faelights flicker to life as the fae in the streets below lift their hands and conjure them. A sea of flickering lights fills the night. These people loved her.
I reach for him, just a psychic brush against his mind, full of warmth and love.
His touch is a mental squeeze—a silent thanks.
A soft hum echoes in Thalia’s throat, and the sound…. Sweet Maia, it almost seems as though she’s hitting two different pitches at the one time. There’s something slightly mournful about the music, and the next wave that strikes the sea wall crashes up the beach, further than it’s ever been, foam chasing toward us as if it can hear her call.
