Page 59 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

M y steps were shaky as the Wragg led us to the dancefloor. Through his firm grip on my hand, I felt it all. His envy and malice, his frustration. There was victory there too, something spiteful. He was glad to have taken me away, to be the one to dance with me.

Why had I said yes? My heart pounded, remembering the intensity in Langnathin’s eyes before he had turned away. Would he have asked me to dance?

All night he had been watching me, and when he was distracted, I found myself watching him, too. And when he stood behind me, I wanted to reach for him. Only, I told myself, to understand his emotions. To read him.

“You are not wearing your ribbons,” the Wragg said as he turned to me, his tone light but his emotions much darker.

I stared at my feet to stop him from seeing the way my eyes widened. He had sent the ribbons. He had sent them. The Wragg. Had the maid Daffinia known her deceit when she called him my prince? Or had she known something I did not?

Swallowing, I raised my eyes to him, placing one hand at his side as he raised the other high. “I did not know the custom of it, Your Grace, and what that might mean if I were to wear them tonight.”

He frowned, but I felt no suspicion. It was more as if he had forgotten I was a savage. “It was a symbol of my favour.”

I forced my eyes to widen with contrition. “I apologise, Your Grace. They are very beautiful.”

The maestros played, and I stumbled through the steps for the second time. Thankfully, the dances had largely just been variants on the Roundclave’s basse danse . I remembered some from the Thread’s tutelage, and the rest I adjusted to his lead.

The Wragg was a poor dancer, but he bullied his way through the movements and pulled me along with him. “Droundhaven must be quite the change from Sellador.”

“I have no memory of Sellador, Your Grace. I lived almost all my life in Gossamir,” I responded. “But it is very different. I am used to sleeping under stars.”

Amusement spiked, edged with cruelty. “From an animal to a lady, in only a week.” He grinned down at me. “You are a lucky girl.”

I suppressed the urge to defend myself. My life depended on selling my appreciation. “Indeed. Maybe my fortune is due to my fifth span. Your people believe that to be a lucky time, no?”

A temper flared, and my hand tensed in his. “Our people.”

“I’m sorry, Your Grace?”

The temper rose to anger, and there was no escape from him as he dipped my back and spoke into my ear. “You are loyal to the Sightlands, are you not?”

“Of course,” I replied, as he pulled me back up .

He smiled, but I sensed how his feelings had not changed. His grip on my back tightened. The man was double the width of me at least. “Then you are one of us. You believe in the power of the Five.”

I smiled back. “Yes. I’m sorry for misspeaking.”

Some of his anger quelled, but it was there, one stoke away from red hot. It was probably always so. “Good.”

“Have you spent much time in Sellador, then?” I asked in an effort to pacify him.

“More and more recently.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The thane welcomes you?”

Pride blossomed in him as he leaned in once more. His breath was unpleasantly hot. “The thane needs us.”

I nodded, and made no comment. Ivangor, Thane of Sellador, was not popular with the tribes.

The Euphons called him a traitor. He controlled everything west of the Ramelon River, including the port on Oktorok Lake.

If he was welcoming Banrillen, then the tensions between the Sellador Thane and the Euphonos King must be higher than ever.

The Wragg stared at my chest as he spoke. “Sorry, Vorska. Politics is no place for women.”

I nodded once more, pandering to him until he would leave me alone. “No, of course. I would not understand it anyway, Your Grace.”

“I would not want you to.” He smirked. “Your duty will be to your husband, and him alone.”

By my blood, he didn’t think… No. Why would this prince ever want me? This was only the second time we had spoken, and in the first he had accused his brother of creating a bastard within me. “My husband?”

Frustration flared. “You are an unwed beautiful woman. You will marry. You do want to marry, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied immediately. “Yes, I do. ”

“Good.” His exasperation dimmed as his feelings simmered back to the pot of nastiness they had been before. There was no peace in his pulse, no driver I could feel but hate.

The dance was nearly over when he thought about speaking again. “What think you of my brother?”

“The Dragon Prince?” I asked, as if I had not thought of him every hour for the last five years of my life. “In truth, he scares me.”

It was the wrong answer. I had hoped I might dissuade the Wragg from any notion of a connection between us, but apparently, a fear of him was not the way.

His resentment was as hot as the sun. “Why?”

I kept my answer clipped, scared of his response. “His reputation, his dragon.”

“I should scare you more.”

I had never felt envy and anger like it. It consumed him entirely; it motivated his every thought. This must have been why he asked me to dance, why he gave me the ribbons. He sensed something between his brother and I, or some benefit he might gain from me.

He needed to win, to beat him. I was a tool in that; I saw it now. His victory had not been in my acceptance, but in depriving his brother. Somehow I was caught in their war, and it was the last place I wanted to be.

I feigned confusion. “Your Grace?”

“His dragon is a tame thing he uses wrong,” the Wragg spat. “With the right control, the right hands on the reins, a dragon could be far more fearsome than Chaethor.”

My blood ran cold. The right control, clearly in his mind, was his own. I saw through it in a flash: he wanted to control me and my dragon. He wanted to hold my own reins.

I said none of that. “I’m not sure I’m understanding you, Your Grace. ”

“I would not expect you to.” His bitterness was still boiling over as he looked at me with false kindness. “It is fine, everything will be taken care of.”

The maestros ended, and there was nothing I wanted more than to pull myself straight from his grip. Instead, I held my body still as he softly pulled his hand away from mine, lingering against my fingertips.

He finally removed his hand from my spine, and I struggled not to back away. “I hope I may dance with you again, before the evening closes.”

“As you wish, Your Grace.” I dipped my head, knowing I would leave within the hour, and he would have no such opportunity. I had been away from my dragon long enough. “It would be my pleasure.”

On the outside, I smiled and turned, walking carefully away towards a refreshing drink. The picture of a guest pleased to have been selected by a prince for a dance. What an honour .

Inside, my chest burned with its own pot of vexations.

How dare he? Even if I was the simpleton he expected me to be, it was ridiculous to believe I would be so easily manipulated by so clumsy a man.

He was a lumbering axe, and his idea of politics was to slam a hand on a table and let the pieces topple where they may.

I would never listen to him.

And yet, for him to believe engaging me in such a way would bother his brother… Did he know something I didn’t? Did he play at my affections because he believed his brother held some?

Maybe there was a chance, yet. If the brute could move out of the way long enough for the Dragon Prince to consider me.

Tonight was not the night for it, though.

I took a cup and turned to the side, seeing the Wragg was no longer watching me. Good. I strode back into the hall. Inside, some of the guests still drank and ate, laughing loudly. Everything about the night suddenly felt overwhelming. Every clink of metal was grating, every joke abrasive.

I was close to the door when someone touched my arm.

“Vorsk—”

I flinched, pulling my arm away, even as I felt the concern and love from the touch.

It was only Seth. His white hair was pinned back, and the shadows under his eyes were made more prominent by flickering candles.

I breathed in through my nose, grounding myself. “You should not speak to me here.”

He nodded. “I know. Only for a moment.”

“What is it?”

He looked around us. Thankfully, the room was barely a quarter full, and the inhabitants were largely those too drunk to think to dance, let alone speculate on our conversation. None of the royal family remained indoors. “You must stop this, whatever you are doing with Langnathin.”

A flash of panic rose up, but I breathed through it. “It could still work, there is still time.”

Seth shook his head. “No, you must run.”

“Explain,” I said. I trusted him implicitly, and yet, he was always more worried for me than he ought to be.

Seth sighed. “I had a vision of you. You lay on the floor in a dark room, badly hurt. Langnathin stood above you, his hand dripping with blood.”

His words chilled me even as I wanted to refute them. “It’s not true. He wouldn’t do that.”

“If he finds out the truth?” Seth asked, the questions falling like tiny blows. “Who you are? That he did not Break you, that you have been lying to him, using him—”

“Stop.”

I couldn’t hear any more. Never had I believed I would begin to feel guilt towards the Dragon Prince. And I didn’t, I told myself. He had destroyed my Fate and forced the tribes to burn down their own forest. He was a bad person. His father’s whipping dog. Any kindness did not eradicate his crimes.

Seth reached up, as if to touch my arm again, and then let his hand fall back. “The man is dangerous. I will not let him hurt you. Kill you. Your power isn’t worth it.”

I breathed slowly, thinking through it all in the space of a second. Seth’s visions always happened, and I knew he would not lie to me. But there could be more to it. Maybe the reason he punished me was because I had succeeded.

“You might not have seen the whole story.”

“I saw enough.”

I studied his exhausted face, kept awake by the horrible vision of me. I believed him. But I couldn’t give up, not after everything. Not after five years of hoping to be exactly where I was now. “Let me think on it. Please.”

“I will help you run, I know a way out of the city.” Seth glanced around us, and there was no one in earshot. “Come to me tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” He looked at me with disappointment, an awareness I would not come to him. I gave him the best smile I could muster. “I know you only want to protect me, so thank you.”

“Do not die for your Fate.”

“I won’t, I won’t. Now go.”

Seth gave me a long look filled with such readable emotions I had no need to touch him. Then he turned and left the hall, striding back through the open doors.

I leaned back against the wall, catching my breath as the cold of the stone helped calm me .

I would not die for this power. But now I had my dragon, running would be near impossible. They would never stop searching for me, never stop seeing me as a threat. If there was anyway through it, anyway to him , I had to climb past all of it, not run away.

I would not give up because of a vision, nor because of the Wragg’s club-like words. I would not let them bully me away.

If there was truly no hope of Langnathin’s hand, I would leave.

No sooner had I thought it, did the very man appear.

As Langnathin stood in the doorway, I saw that he must have unbuttoned his white shirt another notch.

My eyes caught on the sliver of his hard pale chest visible above his golden dueling doublet and black trousers. The silk ruffled behind him as he lay a hand on the doorframe, his blood-red eyes passing across every face in the room.

Until they reached mine.