Reagan leaned back, far from satisfied. He wished he had held this conversation with a level-headed emissary, someone who might have sought common ground, instead of forcing an alliance by backing proud lords into a corner.
His eyes drifted to Jane. She still danced with Arun, magelights glimmering over her hair, casting the copper intothe colour of fire. Arun leaned close to her ear, whispering something.
Reagan felt a burning pressure rise inside his body, but for a moment, he allowed himself to imagine what courting would mean for her life. He forced himself to consider whether everything would be easier if she chose an elven warrior instead, someone who would not place a target over her head, no burdened position. A man who could protect her.
The thought seized him by the throat. He rose from his chair and strode for her before it could choke him. She was mid-turn when he reached her, a little breathless from the dance. The music was slow, and they both stilled.
“Dance with me?” Reagan asked, extending a hand.
“This song isn’t even over,” Arun chimed in.
“She looks too bored to finish.” Reagan let his voice drop low, poisoned by the jealousy burning him.
He might have seen her mouth twitch if his gaze hadn’t been fixed on the elven warrior.
Jane shrugged one shoulder. “I have to. I work for him.”
He hated that, but he still smirked at Arun, who was not pleased, though he assented. Not without holding Reagan’s eyes once more, as if he wanted to say something.
The nearly finished song faded, and the next began.
When Reagan drew her into him and she rested her head against his chest, the rest of Vassar Island could have sunk beneath the tide, and he wouldn’t have noticed.
He was giving away everything with this dance, all the ways she mattered to him, his face far from guarded.
He didn’t care. He wanted every dance, every night.
“These musicians play back home too,” he murmured.
“They’re very good,” she replied. Her voice told him she hadn’t entirely recovered from the siren scare, for all she allowed him to see.
Reagan considered what they were doing, how completely Jane unwound whenever she danced. “Do you want to give them a show?”
At the offer, her eyes brightened, her gaze darting around them before returning to his. “What are you thinking?”
She probably assumed this was an emissary-lord move, and he decided not to correct her. “Follow my lead.”
Reagan hadn’t made it to twenty-five as lord without learning how to command a dance. He had attended dozens of balls and led hundreds of women, not all of them with her skill.
Reagan knew that the same way he needed to run, Jane needed to dance.
So he tugged her closer, lifted their joined hands, and spun them across the grass-covered ground. The cold green blades underfoot helped carry her, sliding their feet to the music until their surroundings blurred.
Stars burned like silver pinpricks against the black sky, and the smell of brine in her hair filled his lungs.
Her fingers bunched lightly in his shirt. Jane followed his lead easily, so easily that his mind had space to raise concerns.
If they found the Order’s hidden locations and followed their movements, they could wait for a misstep. They needed real proof to justify dismantling the Order. They would gather the previous cases of leniency toward mageborn transgressions versus hybrids.
Still, any actual change might take years. He would need even more time to truly move the needle regarding the deep-seated hatred.
Was this cause salvageable at all, or would he be staking all their lives on a dream that would never come true?
He would have to do this while bonded to someone else, because he had failed. Because he couldn’t find an argument thatwould keep Jane here unless she showed them she could wield at will.
It would likely be better for her, present less risk to her life, with no threats like Clodagh Foley at his gate. If they hurt Jane again, what would stop him from answering with violence? Would that save her, or pull her straight towards an earlier grave?
He tugged her closer the next time he swept her. It didn’t help. His thoughts didn’t relent.
