Shadow Caste (The Melderblood Chronicles Book 2) by E.A. Winters

Author:E.A. Winters [Winters, E.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DragonLeaf Press
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

22

Darsh rounded the pool and approached her, bowing with a flourish. He took her hand and kissed it, and Aviama’s stomach churned at the polarity between the man who had broken into her room through the lattice window—cool, collected, and mysterious, tossing out orders, dictating to her what the future would hold and what deals would be struck—and the charming smile he had oiled on now.

Aviama allowed the gesture and painted on an answering smile, but did not curtsy in return. It wouldn’t be proper. And Darsh was no king, no authority over her. The regality of their would-be queen only seemed to whip the gawking crowd across the pool into an even higher frenzy as she stood before them with their leader.

Darsh straightened and smiled again but kept his voice low as he spoke just for her. “Take down your hood, Princess, and give them a show. Something to remember you by. Something to be inspired by.”

She returned a tight-lipped smile and allowed herself a slight inclination of her head in acknowledgement. “I want to see Murin.”

“She’s here. Do this first.”

Aviama set her jaw and turned to the fifty people across the way, lifting her hood from her hair and dropping it down her back. They dropped into bows and curtsies in response, and someone threw another handful of petals into the air. Aviama raised her hands and caught the petals in the air, pulling the wind and swirling the colorful fragments in a high arc over the pool. Holding one in the center, she sent the rest in a circle around it, then pooled the petals together in a ball before blasting air from the middle, sending them spiraling off in every direction.

The crowd oohed and aahed. Aviama winced. Dance, monkey. Sing, minstrel. Entertain me. A powerful urge overcame her then, not to be free from the palace but to be back in it, protected by its walls and finding small escapes to the menagerie, to Makana.

Beside her, Arjun straightened and angled toward her right. Aviama turned to follow his gaze, and her heart leaped for the first time in a long while. Murin.

Darsh offered Murin his arm and led her toward Aviama. Murin dropped into a formal curtsy, but she was grinning from ear to ear. Aviama’s chest felt as though it would split open. One safe person. My safe person. Someone who cared about her for her. Someone who’d known her for years, encouraged her, heard her.

A lump lodged in her throat. Biscuits, convention be tossed. Aviama rushed forward and pulled her maidservant into a bear hug to the roar of the watching gaggle. Murin wrapped her arms around her, and they embraced for a long time. Aviama bit back tears and angled away from Darsh. He didn’t deserve to see her face in a sensitive moment like this. And she had needed this.

Aviama squeezed Murin harder. “I’d hoped you’d gotten free and gotten home. I thought if you were in Radha, you’d be lost.”

Murin pulled back and wiped tears from her face as she looked at Aviama with those familiar, sweet brown eyes.

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