“And I fear you’re almost too good at deflecting, Sir Hale. But I would love to revisit our previous topic of conversation.”
His grin fizzled out. “I...I don’t know if I’m equipped to explain the complexities of the situation between Tenny and Ric.”
“Yet you stopped me from asking one of the two people whois.”
“It’s com?—”
“—plicated. So you’ve said.” The back of Elyria’s neck prickled again, an energy pulsing in her chest, zipping through her veins. It made her mind feel noisy, her body restless. Like she had forgotten something, or like there was something she was supposed to do. She just didn’t know what.
Tristan grimaced. “But surely you must know that after the Crucible?—”
“Never mind,” Elyria said hastily, rubbing her hand over the silky material of her dress as though doing so might silence the noise in her head. “Please, forget I said anything at all. It’s none of my business.”
It is your business,her mind shouted.He is your business.
“It hardly matters,” she finished. Elyria regretted pressing Tristan on the topic, regretted every word they’d exchanged about it. This was idiotic. She had no claim on him. He wasn’thers.
Something deep inside her protested at that thought. She squashed it before it could blossom into anything more.
Tristan arched a brow but said nothing as the quartet began playing again—a new song, faster, more upbeat. She needed to move, needed to dance out the restlessness that these unanswered questions had stirred beneath her skin. So this time, it was Elyria who grabbed Tristan’s hand, pulling him back toward the dance floor, brows lifted in silent question.
Tristan barked a laugh and immediately launched her into a quick spin. The move drew a grin from Elyria’s lips, and she had to begrudgingly admit that this was rather...fun. The knight moved with a deftness and grace that Elyria didn’t often attribute to humans. And between the lively music and Tristan’s questions about whether the size of a nocterrian’s horns was indicative of the size of anythingelse, Elyria was actually enjoying herself. Enough so that she nearly forgot about the way the back of her neck still prickled and the knot in her chest still pulsed.
“You’re a surprisingly good dancer,” she said, slightly out of breath as the song came to a close.
Tristan’s brow furrowed as they slowed their steps. “Why is that a surprise? Do I notlooklike a good dancer?”
She smirked. “I think you look like trouble, Sir Hale.”
“Now, that’s the finest compliment I’ve been paid in a long, long while. Though, from what Ric’s told me, it’s perhaps a more appropriate word to describeyou.” His grin was bright, beaming. “I suppose we can ask his opinion once he gets here.”
“Once he what?” Elyria was mid-turn, already checking the room for Kit and Nox, to see if they were still conversing and whether she coulddeduce an inkling of whatever had them so concerned before, when Tristan’s words registered. When she felt another pulse in her chest, firmer this time, like her shadows were trying to untangle themselves.
The combination caught her off-guard, caused her footsteps to falter, her gait to slip. And suddenly the oh-so-elegant, regal, and supposedly graceful Victor of Nyrundelle was tripping on the hem of her own stars-damned gown, about to fall flat on her ass in the middle of the ballroom.
The reaction was instinctive, her wings materializing on her back in a burst of glimmering light, flaring out to right her faltering feet.
The ballroom was silent as a tomb.
Only for a moment.
Because just as Elyria’s eyes landed on a bemused Kit, the entire room erupted in a frenzy of whispers and titters and gasps that were all entirely too audible for Elyria’s liking.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Tristan’s voice cut through the haze, tinted with awe but still warm, inviting. “Those are...” His gaze roamed across Elyria’s purple-and-green wings from tip to tail.
She fought tooth and nail to bury the flush threatening in her cheeks, embarrassment at her lack of control—in more ways than one—roaring in her gut. “Whoops,” she said with an air of casualness that she hoped Tristan couldn’t tell was entirely fake. “Wasn’t supposed to show these off tonight. Where’d Beatrice run off to? She wanted to see them.” Elyria forced a laugh as she flared her wings wide for effect.
Tristan just continued staring, an expression of near-reverence on his face that she didn’t quite know how to feel about.
Elyria cleared her throat. “Have you never seen fae wings before?”
He finally pulled his eyes back to her face, and Elyria might’ve sworn they looked a bit glassy. “I have,” he said after a moment. “It’s just...I’m sorry. I’m staring. I’m being an unmitigated ass. It’s just that while we were dancing, withthosehidden from view...It’s so easy to forget that you’re...”
“That I’m, what? Fae? Really? This didn’t give it away?” She gestured to her hair. “These didn’t?” With both hands, she tucked her locks behind her ears, fully revealing their starkly pointed tips before disappearing her wings once more with a quick wisp of magic.
The display had another round of gasps surging for a moment, before slowly—too slowly—the room’s chatter began building to a normal cadence again. And thankfully, the excitement from Elyria’s reveal was eventually taken over by food and drink and party-appropriate conversation once more.
She cleared her throat. “You said, ‘once he gets here.’ ”
