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I was being beckonedto Esta’s quarters. Amory came to get me, only me. Dex followed behind to stand guard, but Amory told me to bring no one else.
“What is going on,” I whispered to Amory as we rounded a corner.
“I do not want to say yet,” was her response back.
I put up a moving sound barrier around us, even cutting Dex out of it. “There. Out with it. Is Malachi all right?”
She had helped us move him to a room two down from mine yesterday. A guard Esta trusted and one of ours monitored him round the clock, though we knew from experience he would need to sleep it off. John and Archer were taking turns observing him and he was due to wake up any minute now.
“Oh, he is fine. I just need your help.”
“With?”
She let out a sigh. “Esta. Please don’t make fun of her for this.”
She was telling me absolutely nothing. “Amory. I don’t derive my joy from her stress. Just tell me what it is you need.”
“She is nervous for the ball. She has not danced with anyone in nine years. Fears she has forgotten how. Her first ball back is not one she will be able to avoid dancing in.”
I was quiet a moment. “And this is what you need me for?”
Amory gave me a nod. “I was practicing with her, but it is not the same. I know for a fact you are an exemplary dancer. And your height will help her remember a proper frame.”
“You could have asked Zaire,” I offered. He was also tall.
“But I didn’t.”
My eyes went to hers. How much of what was going on did she realize? Did she see the battle within me of what I truly wanted versus what I could have?
“Esta will likely have to dance with him tomorrow though. Just so you know. He has also knocked on her door and requested to see her every day.”
I tucked that away for later.
“She deserves to be vulnerable in this way with someone who will not be sniffing out her weaknesses as queen,” Amory finished.
“She has none,” I said honestly.
Amory smiled at me and looped her hand in the crook of my arm. “This is precisely why I asked you, Keir. You understand her struggles more than most. And you are not even a shifter.”
“Crowns and castles are a curse, a magic all of their own,” I said on a sigh.
“Exactly.”
Dex waited outside with the other guards already there as we entered the room. I could have stood outside the doors a while, taking in the massive dragon carved across the two black wooden doors, but it was opened before I could finish gawking at it.
Esta was gently playing the piano in the corner of the massive room. She was in a light pink gown, her hair down her back, the black crown of Dra Skor sitting on her head. The rest of the room was lovely. I vaguely noted bookshelves, huge windows with what was guaranteed a good view out of them, a fireplace, and a massive bed covered in purple silk bedding. There was more than enough room for a makeshift dancefloor in her room. But all of it paled in comparison to the vision of Esta sitting at that piano. She didn’t just steal the attention away from the lavish markings of a royal bedchamber, she demanded it.
She stopped playing as we arrived, her eyebrows up.
Amory shrugged. “I brought help.”
“You do not need to recoup your magic more?” Esta asked. “After switching Malachi?”
I gave my head a shake. “I slept soundly last night. So no. And I don’t believe we really need my magic for this either, though we can depending on how fast you would like to move.”
She smirked.
Amory said something about Arava, which people she would like invited to the ball, and Esta got up from the piano to speak to her.
