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She throws him a scowl, one crumpled enough to hike Dare’s brow and glitter his eyes, but then she turns to me, voice low, “The humans?” she prompts. “Is it a pretty thing?”

I look at her for a heartbeat before I catch up.

The stare and rage of Daxeel, the scuffle of Rune and Dare, it distracted me from our chat of humans and their dances.

Before I can answer, Rune scoffs a guttural sound that catches at the back of his throat. He drops into the chair at Daxeel’sright and stretches his arms above his head. I hear the pops and cracks of his joints.

“Humans,” he snarls the word. “Children running before they can walk.”

If Daxeel has taken his gaze off me, I haven’t felt the soothing loss of its burn. The growl of his voice matches the icy warning of his energy, “They murder their world.”

I ache to look at him—to throw him a frown because I know he’s speaking directly to me, he’s raising the memory of his visit to that realm, the one he blames me for.

I don’t give him the satisfaction, and instead I empty my mug’s tepid water into my mouth.

Tris has bustled her way to the table from the wall, where I honestly forgot she existed at all. She begins tending to Dare.

Dare’s gilded gaze slides to Tris’s hot face. “Oh, they aren’t so bad.”

The blush darkens her freckles, but I see the coy smile she fights, like she’s very much enjoying his attention.

He slumps in his seat, but even that gesture looks as elegant as a panther sliding onto its side. “Once they are kept where they belong.”

Those words wipe the smile clean off the slave’s face. Her mouth puckers tight, as though she bites down on the insides of her cheeks.

She smacks his freshly filled mug down beside his hand. Hot splashes escape the mug.

I bite back a smile.

But Dare doesn’t so much as hiss at the burn of pain he’s surely feeling. Entirely unflinching, he watches her draw away and make for Rune instead.

That familiar glint still glitters in his eyes, an insatiable hunger stirring within him. The better I know him, the more I understand that need he carries. It’s not lust. It’s not desire to bed every female he can.

It’s his sun. The search for her.

And he searches in all the females he can get his hands on, knowing he won’t find her in them, but chasing those flickering feelings all the same.

He’s a cave feeding on echoes.

The thought twists my heart for him, the bloom of pity in my chest.

At the end of the table, Daxeel stiffens. Eyes on me, his hand tightens on the handle of his knife.

Now, I know—when we are together, he feels me as I feel him. He just doesn’t knowwhyI feel that ache in this moment.

I don’t tell him.

I turn to Aleana. “It’s called ice-skating,” I say. “It is gliding like nothing else I have ever seen.”

It’s no secret to anyone at this table that I’ve snuck off into the human realm from time to time. So no air of surprise comes at my words. But it’s plainly as obvious that I might be gently guiding Aleana towards a trip to the other realm.

If Aleana wants it, I have a better chance of going. I got Daxeel to come with me himself once upon a time, but those days are gone—there are no days now, just phases, and the phase we are in, Daxeel isn’t so forgiving with me.

Still, a new ache has bloomed in my chest, one for an ounce of freedom—and I feel freest sneaking around the human lands, doing all the things I’m not supposed to.

Eamon taps his long, brown finger on the edge of his glass chalice.

It’s all the gesture Tris needs before she abandons Rune’s full mug of cinnamon coffee for Eamon, and she fills his chalice with that ghastly plumwine.