Page 51 of Daughter of the Dark

A warm hand settled on her arm. “Fighting to avoid becoming the thing we fear most often brings it nearer. You cannot control fate, just as you cannot control love. All you can do is shape who you become because of it.”

Solana blinked at her. “Does your gift of discernment also include reciting romantic notions every chance you get?”

Laughing, Cora nudged her gently and then clasped her hand. “Come on,” she said, pulling her out the door. “I want to see the look on Reyes’s face when he catches sight of you.”

“Master Solana and Master Cora,” the guard announced.

The throne room was more extravagantly decorated than the last time she was in it, and livelier as well. There was staff carrying drinks and small dishes of food on silver platters, and people dancing in the center to a band of four men and women playing cuatros in the corner.

Above them all was King Killian, seated on a delicately carved throne on the dais with the endless abyss of sea and sky behind him. His attention latched onto her the moment she entered the room and followed as Cora tugged her past the staring strangers and toward the small group of people she knew.

Nikolas whistled low as they approached. “She cleans up nicely,” he said, his eyes dancing over her appreciatively.

“See? A fool,” Cora whispered in her ear before she slid away from her side and joined Suri. She looked stunning, with her thick black hair pulled back into a sleek tie at her neck, and a sheer black dress hugging her body. The two immediately fell into a whispered conversation, and Solana turned away, uninterested in giving Suri another reason to hate her, despite not knowing the first.

“What?” Nikolas was saying to Oskar. “It was a compliment.”

But Oskar shook his head and turned to Solana. You look beautiful, he signed quickly, the rings on his fingers flashing in the light.

“Thank you, Oskar.” She took in the coat and pants he wore, a red so dark it could’ve been black, the silver buttons dazzling against the crushed velvet. “You look very handsome.”

“Ouch.” Nikolas dramatically grabbed his chest and extended his free hand to her. “A dance for my broken heart?” he asked. Beside her, Cora and Suri slunk away from the group, hand in hand, and into the crowd. Oskar brushed her shoulder as he walked by, eyes fixed on something, or someone, in the distance.

There was nothing better to do. She placed her hand in Nikolas’s. “One dance,” she told him. It wasn’t as if she knew anyone else, and she was trying desperately not to canvas the room for Reyes. It was only because she had a bone to pick with him and certainly not because she also wanted to see the look on his face when he saw her in this dress.

Nikolas led her onto the floor, the line of his shoulders proud in the dark green coat he wore. His hand was firm but somehow distant, and she watched as his eyes roved over the room in the way she hoped hers were not. Except, it didn’t seem that he was looking for anyone in particular. Simply looking to see who was looking at him. Solana smiled and shook her head.

He was handsome enough, if a little plain, but he was tall and strong and confident. He could probably show her a good time, if she let him.

They were just about to step onto the dance floor when a body blocked their way.

It was Reyes, his usual cloak and leathered armor replaced with a deep blue jacket and matching pants. The king’s emblem was on his right breast, and the buttons of his jacket were extraordinarily shiny. It looked as though they had never seen the light of day.

It was such a stark contrast to the rugged lines of his face and the gray depths of his eyes. His hair, which was usually soft and flowing, was slicked back and artfully arranged so that not a single piece caressed his forehead. Solana wanted to run her fingers through it and tug it free, which was a problem.

She decided to make it his problem and sent him a vicious smile. “You’re in the way,” she said and made to step around him.

A hand on her waist stopped her. Solana looked down at it, at the swirls of ink sneaking past the cuff of his sleeve, and then up.

“May I speak with you?” he asked, entirely ignoring her dance partner and his friend.

Nikolas’s hand slipped out of hers. “I’m going to let you two resolve this alone.” And then he eagerly disappeared into the crowd eddying around them.

Solana stared at Reyes and waffled between her choices. Accept and let him think her entirely unaffected, or reject his request and leave him stranded in the middle of the throng of people.

But his hand was still pressed against her, and Solana was finding it increasingly difficult to remember why she had been angry with him in the first place. “You can speak while we dance,” she finally said, mostly so that his hand would move and her mind could clear.

It did the opposite, however, as his hand crawled from her waist to her back and settled firmly in the dip above her ass. She could feel each of his fingers pressing into her spine. A tingle of awareness shot into her belly with every brush of her breasts against his chest.

Neither spoke for a moment, as if unwilling to shatter the illusion. And then: “You’re upset about what the king insinuated earlier,” Reyes said.

Internally, Solana winced at his ability to see directly into her head. Externally, she dismissed him. “Hardly,” she lied. “I never believed that this truce was anything other than you playing a part.”

“I’m not playing a part.” It was said so decisively, so firmly, that Solana instinctively sought his gaze. There was only truth in his eyes. “Ask me anything, and I’ll tell you the truth,” he added.

“Fine.” Solana shrugged her shoulders, as if it meant nothing to her, even though she was burning with curiosity. So many questions, but how much time? “What do they mean?” she blurted, pointing at the ink on his neck and chest with her chin. The lack of a cloak allowed her to see them more clearly, and that the two wings on either side were connected by a body of words directly below the hollow of his throat. There was probably more useful information to have, but she couldn’t take the words back and found she didn’t particularly want to.

“They are stories,” he said, dipping his head so that he could murmur the words into her ear. Unnecessarily, as she could hear him just fine, but neither did she move away. “Of the people I love and the memories I want to keep close, written in the gods’ tongue. Wings for my mother and sister.”