“Who was Brigham?” Aurelia asked.
I glared at Keres. It was an old argument, but not one to have in this particular room.
“Ask me later.” I pushed my chair back, letting it scrape as I stood. Aurelia looked up sharply, and I met her gaze evenly.
“Will you dance with me?” I asked.
“Is that wise?” she asked, glancing toward Patamoi.
“He wants us where he can see us.” I shrugged. “I’d thinkus being in the center of the room offers him the best view of all.”
I took her hand. Warm. Sure.
We stepped onto the floor. I felt the naiad watching us, but I no longer cared; all my attention was for her now.
I kept my palm at the small of her back and felt the small, deliberate push of her spine into it. Not an accident. An answer. An invitation.
Or maybe I was losing my mind down here.
We moved slowly. A rhythm in a foreign tongue; a feeling that had been building since a summer rooftop party more than seven years ago. When she looked at me, the lights swayed and threw a ripple across her cheekbone. Fire under skin that had nothing to do with a gods-given power and everything to do with want. Need.
“Your hip seems to be better,” she said.
“It’s healed,” I agreed, wondering at how she’d picked up on the slight injury when none of the others had.
“Tell me about your shadows,” she said quietly. Casual on the surface, but underneath, not casual at all. “When you call them… what do they feel like to you?”
I considered the question.
“They’re not so much a call,” I said. “More like… opening a door that’s been there all along.”
“A part of you.”
“Yes.”
“Did they come from your mother’s side then?”
“They are a gift of Midnight.”
“And is she… like you?”
“Stronger,” I said, which was true, and left out everything that wasn’t mine to say. “Smarter. Meaner when she has to be.”
Her brow lifted at that, but she only said, “She’s behind the wall, isn’t she?” I hesitated. “That’s why you didn’t wantto tell me about her. Before. Because you hadn’t told me about the gates.”
“Yes.”
“You must miss her.”
“Sometimes.” I let the memory in for a breath and then set it back where it belonged.
“Do you speak to her? Is that possible with the locked gate?”
“There are ways of sending messages through. Shadow-guards who pass messages. But… she keeps her own counsel lately.”
Aurelia held my gaze a second too long. The music shifted, and the floating lights swung low, their glow washing the floor in pale gold. She looked like something carved from that light.
A ray of sunshine that had somehow penetrated the depths.
