Page 44

Not even Eamon knows that I’m called to ceremonial dance to feel powerful.

Aleana fingers the stem of a chalice. “The dance that floats.” Her smile is small, full of dreams. “The one that glides. Does it feel like that?”

I shake my head. “I feel every landing in my knees and in my ankles and sometimes my back. My feet burn. And the whole time, you are focused on two things—everyone can see I don’t belong up here and don’t trip.”

If Daxeel’s eyes were hot on my cheek before, they are blazes now.

I almost smile at the predictability of it, how he hangs on every word I say.

Dare must know him well. One scrap of veiled advice and Daxeel won’t, can’t, steer his focus from me.

Aleana’s face crumples. “So it’s nothing like gliding?”

The smile I spare her is a sad one, pulled tight like the strings of a violin. “It’s a weighted feeling.”

She pauses on it a moment before she returns her attention to her bowl. A grunt catches in her throat.

Eamon hooks my gaze with a solemn one of his own, then shakes his head only slightly.

A flush of shame heats me.

Aleana has lived her life weighed down like her bones are lead and her muscles are molten silver. She’s always felt heavy—whether in her body or the burden she thinks she is.

And I just cut down her glimmer of hope at loftiness.

“There is something,” I tell her.

She pauses. The spoon she holds near her parted mouth, it stops.

I avoid the sear of Daxeel’s silent gaze.

I add, “A way that you can both glide and float.”

Slowly, she lowers her silver to the broth. She doesn’t yet look at me. “How?”

“It’s an activity.” A sport? I don’t know. “It’s in the human lands.” I give a one-shouldered shrug. But my feigned blasé attitude does little to dampen Daxeel’s sudden tension.

His flare of anger clutches my insides in an icy grip.

Whether it’s a chill air that lashes at me from across the table or it’s that thing inside of me again, that little tug of his energy within me, I do not know.

Even all the reading on evate I’ve done in my week here, I’ve only made it halfway through the soul bond collection, and feeling the other’s emotions isn’t something I’ve come across yet.

Though, most of the tomes are unreadable with age and centre a lot around how the bonds are severed in death and no other way—and so I suspect that little collection belongs to Melantha.

Daxeel keeps his narrowed gaze on me.

It pierces into the flushed flesh of my cheek from across the table.

I look up as a sudden scuff of bootsteps stomp their way up the stairs. Came out of nowhere, as though ghosts reached the steps beyond the dining hall door, became suddenly too excited, then started to race the rest of the way.

I watch the doorway.

Rune is first to appear with a silent snarl and a stumble, as though shoved. He makes it just over threshold before Dare comes pushing past him.

And I meanpush, because Rune is thrown back a staggered step and he knocks into the doorframe. The flare of his eyes is enough to stiffen me.

Unfazed, Dare overtakes the blond fae. He flashes Aleana a grin-wink-combo, then sinks into the chair opposite her. “Looking fresh this phase, Aleana.”