“Why would he need to?”
“You’re wrong,” was all Taven could muster. He needed to get to her, to be near her so all these terrible postulations could be dispelled.
“See that we are, or the result will be more than a slight to your arrogance,” Dasha said. “Keep them away from each other. It will be devastating for everyone of the blood, including her, if they get any closer.” She laughed. “Closer than they already are.”
“Why?” Taven demanded. “Why will it be devastating?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Acheron snapped, looking more at Dasha. “She’s going. She agreed.”
“And how am I supposed to keep them apart when your pretor has put them together?”
“For the bond, he had to.” Acheron sighed, but he’d grown distant as the conversation wound down. His attention was fixed on something in the box. “We’ve kept them apart all evening, yes? It’s to prevent the bond from planting roots not so easily pulled. More of that, Considine.” He clapped him on the back. “More of that, until the matter is sorted properly.”
All Taven could do was shake his head. Acheron and his insolent lover were unbelievable.
“You’ve spun the cloth of her life for nearly two decades,” Acheron said, no longer as pleasant as before. His words were an arrow, aimed perfectly. “If you’re not up for the task, say so. There are others. It doesn’t have to be you.”
What task? What was he supposed to do? Did they think he wanted the two staying together, that he had any say in it? And what others? “But we could be here for months. Years.”
“Oh, no, it will not take that long!” Dasha remarked. “Just do as we say. When the time comes, and it will come soon, I’ll even kill him for you.” She grinned. “To express our gratitude.”
The brew Elloven had taken in the field had unbalanced her, but she wasn’t as drunk as Jesstin and the others thought. She wasn’t drunk at all. She was remarkably aware. Heightened. Awake. More awake than she’d ever been, yet less attached to the world than she’d ever thought possible.
She felt a kinship deeper than blood with the aerialists. Even as she’d protested, from embarrassment, from fear, she knew she could do what they’d asked of her. She wanted to do it, to trust the cool air to carry her flesh, to make her return to the deep sense of self nascent within her.
The moment the aerialists had introduced themselves, she’d already forgotten their names. Standing under a tent in her golden leotard, which fit just right, she didn’t think names mattered at all for what they were about to do. All they needed was instinct, trust, and awareness.
Instinct and awareness she understood. She was still working on trust.
“You will hear the moves in your blood. Heed them, surrender to the call, and your body will do what it must,” said one of the two males in the group.
“I know.” She hoped she didn’t come across as haughty, but she needed them to see she was already one of them.
He answered with a nod. “Every second of this show is one of deep knowing. Do not let the knowing drop. That is all there is to the magic of the Odeon. It’s all there ever was.”
Esmeray had said something like it before. You can practice all you want, my darling, but you already have everything you need. It was there all along and will be there when you need it.
She’d never performed at such heights before, but the instinct was the same whether she was ten feet off the ground or a thousand.
It wasn’t herself she needed to convince. She shouldn’t give a whit what Jesstin thought, but she needed him to understand that while maybe none of it made sense to him as an outsider, it was innate to her. She’d been so impatient to get back to him, to be close to him... but then he’d treated her like a petulant child. In his fixation with protecting her, with needing to be right about every damned thing, he no longer saw her, and it was unutterably devastating.
The cursed bond had done a number on her, but their bond could be broken—would be broken.
Then, and only then, would she be free of the spell of his approval.
Of anyone’s.
“Aelloven, have you any uncertainties before we call to the skies?” asked one of the other performers.
“No,” she answered proudly. “None.”
Hands from both sides linked with hers. The troupe formed a circle and murmured a chant she didn’t know but felt strongly that she should know, and her not knowing planted the first seed of doubt.
“To the Odeon,” one of them said.
“To the Heavens,” the rest answered.
Her mumbled words trailed theirs. Were they as disappointed in her as she was in herself? Like the talent, the instinct wasn’t learned. It was known.
