Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(9)

I looked around him to see Danae slipping away into the crowd.

“Calix?” I asked hesitantly.

“I’d be honored,” he said, smiling.

I drew him into the crowd of dancers, and I let go of his hand to hold up fistfuls of my robes. The dances of my people were fast, complex, and intoxicating, stomping and jumping, twisting to brush against the person you were dancing with. We barely entered the crowd when I was overcome with cousins and brothers and even my sweet little Catryn, swinging me around and laughing, pulling me away from my husband.

I saw a flash of silver-blond hair, and I turned away from Aiden, finding it again and going toward it. Kata’s hood had only fallen for a moment, but I saw her face in the crowd and pushed my way toward her.

By the time I got to where I’d seen her, she was gone. I looked through the crush of people, but I couldn’t see her.

My husband came to my side, catching my arm. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Who?” I asked.

He squeezed my arm. “I saw someone. A girl who looked like an islander. You were walking toward her.”

I pulled my arm away from him. “There are no islanders,” I said sharply. Too sharply, perhaps, but his father had eradicated Kata’s people.

His eyes cut to mine. He drew a deep breath, and the edge in his eyes faded. “Forgive me,” he said. “It must have been the light. Would you care for a drink?”

I tried to force myself to smile, but it felt like a flicker of fire over my face, barely there and gone again. “Yes. Come; we’ll drink together.”

He nodded.

When I took him to the tables of wine, I saw his brother at the tables ahead of us. Smiling, I opened my mouth to call to him, but his eyes flicked over both of us with quick efficiency, and he turned away.

“So this isn’t made from grapes?” my husband asked.

Shaking my head to try to forget his brother’s slight, I told him about the ilayi wine and cactus wine from the desert plants and offered him a glass of each to drink. Rather than sip as I expected, he upended each, much to the encouragement of the other men drinking.

I smiled and laughed, and he put the cup down, smiling back. “Your people are easy to impress,” he said to me, looking at the other men raising their glasses to him.

That stung a little, but I ignored it—surely he meant it as a compliment, and even if he didn’t, all the resentment between the Trifectate and the desert would not be erased in a single night. “They are far more impressed by dancing,” I told him, offering him my hand in invitation.

He hesitated and opened his mouth, but my family interceded, Catryn tugging me into the fray as my brothers pulled Calix, showing him how to dance. I even saw my cousins trying to force Calix’s stone-faced brother onto the floor, and the rock floor rumbled as we pounded it with our feet. I watched my father and mother dancing close in each other’s arms, and my heart swelled with joy—my husband and I were married, my people were safe, and it wouldn’t be long before my husband looked at me in the way my father had always looked at my mother. We would be safe, and I would be loved.





Heavens and Stars

I danced until I couldn’t breathe, and my whole body was hot and damp with sweat. I saw my sister sitting on a bench to the side of the hall, and I went to her with a laugh, sitting down beside her. “My feet are going to fall off,” I told her.

She kicked her own feet up. “Liar. Our feet will never fail us.”

“Maybe they will after a wedding. Are you having fun?”

She gave me a bright smile. “I like the dancing.”

I grinned back. “I like it too.” It struck me suddenly that tomorrow I would leave her, and I wouldn’t see her for a long time. Tugging her closer to me, I pressed kisses into her hair.

She tried to twist away. “Shy!” she whined. “What are you doing!”

“Kissing you,” I told her. “I’m going to miss you.”

This stilled her. “You’re really going away tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“But you’ll be back, won’t you? As soon as you have babies, they’ll need to be blessed here.”

Babies. Stupid, foolish idiot that I was—I’d forgotten about the night, where he would put his hands on me in a way no one ever had. In a way no one else ever would. I’d been so nervous about everything else I’d forgotten to be nervous about that.

Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” I said softly. “They’ll need to be blessed here.”

“Then you’ll be back soon. And you won’t treat me like a baby when you return,” she told me, wriggling away and pecking my cheek before she ran off to join the dancers.

My head spun, and I stood, going outside the hall.

The desert night was brutally cold, but it was the only thing that kept me from heaving. My blood seemed to pound so heavily behind my eyes that it hurt.

I gasped for breath, drinking in the cold, trying to soothe some part of myself.

“Rough night?” Kairos drawled, appearing from the darkness like a wraith. My brother had that strange way, always sliding about the world like he knew of secret passageways the rest of us couldn’t see.

I jumped, but he grinned at me and tucked my hair behind my ear. “What are you doing out here?” I asked.