Page 128 of Heavenly Bodies
And then, as they reached flat ground, she drew her dagger from its familiar place by her thigh, struck out at Leo, and they began to dance.
Once they’d finished, Elara traipsed straight to her rooms, welcoming the ache of her muscles and the pounding of her head. The hour was late upon her return, the palace quiet with sleep. As she made to turn the corner of the corridor, she halted. Enzo was slumped against her door, a weary look on his face. She bit her lip, retreating as quietly as she could.
She couldn’t do this.
His face alone set her heart thundering, the pure despair that was engraved on it—the worry.Coward, a voice in her head whispered. It was right; she was.
Tiptoeing away, she circled back around to a corridor that led to the palace gardens, crimson-tinted by the Helion night sky.
She eased herself up the rose trellis that crawled up her side of the palace—thinking of the times she would sneak back to her room in Asteria. She scaled the wall with ease, landing softly on her balcony.
But as she crossed her bedroom floor she hesitated. Elara knew that Enzo was still on the other side, the usual candlelight that seeped through the small gap at the foot of her door obscured by a shadow. She knew she shouldn’t. That anythought of him was bound to open the floodgates that she had worked very hard to force shut over the last few days. And yet, her heart sighed as she made her way to the door. She sank against it, sliding to the floor, closing her eyes as her back pressed against the wood. Perhaps, just this once, she would allow herself this weakness. A tear rolled from her closed eyes of its own volition. Perhaps just this once, she would allow herself to be close to him, only a door between them.
As sleep gently embraced Elara, she fell into her own dreams. She was in Enzo’s studio. Yet in the usual, peacefully white calm of the space, there lay a gaping hole in the floor. She walked towards the yawning chasm, a storm raging in the dark depths below it, an abyss that seemed endless.
A ball of fire, hotter and brighter than even the Light, burned from across the chasm, and she felt with an icy certainty that there was another, shining silver, behind her. Then she heard screaming—ragged and desperate cries, shouted across the void. And there, hanging from the lip of the abyss, trying to claw his way out of it, was Enzo, his fingers slipping inch by inch.
Elara woke up dripping in cold sweat, her back and neck stiff against the door. She took a few deep breaths, reminding herself that her dream had been one of her own creation. She rose shakily, squinting over at the open balcony doors. The deep red gloom filtering through confirmed that it was the darkest part of the night. She looked over at the door, but strong yellow candlelight was again seeping unhindered through the gap. Enzo was gone.
Pacing the room and peeling her sticking gown from her clammy body, she decided to head to the palace baths, craving the calm of the peace, the water and the darkness.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
In the middle of the night, Elara had the bath house to herself, the quiet sound of indigo crickets humming outside and the dusky walls reminding her of the twilight of her homeland. She breathed a sigh, releasing one shuddering breath after another as she sank into the water until her heart rate returned to normal. She could think here, the sound of running water soothing her frayed nerves. However, her thoughts immediately flew back to Enzo. She tried to quash them, but without any distraction, she finally had to face them.
She was in love with him. And not only that, when he had kissed her in the clouds, she had felt a lightning bolt of power that she could not deny. It had felt familiar. A quiet recognition. As though after all this searching, her soul had said, ‘Oh, there you are.’
It was the words of her prophecy, now uttered by two separate seers, that fell so heavy on her. And the responsibilities that awaited her. The fact that her struggles hadn’t even really begun. War was looming. Ariete was near. And she was no closer to reclaiming her throne, helping her people. As she found herself caught up in her own tangled thoughts,she heard the distant sound of the door to the bath house opening.
‘Shit,’ she whispered, looking around wildly for a place to hide herself.There.A sheet of a waterfall hiding an alcove behind it beckoned to her. She swam to it as quietly as possible, ducking under the flow and sinking down to the heated bench. She strained her ears, unable to hear much over the rushing sound of water.
She peered into the shadows and saw a tall figure undressing, distorted in the stream of water. Her cheeks heated with embarrassment at the prospect of a man being here with her. Losing sight of the figure, her breath quickened as she tried to quietly swim further back into the hidden nook. A few moments of silence passed. Then suddenly, the curtain of water parted, and her heart stopped.
‘Well, princess, isn’t this a pleasant surprise?’
Enzo.
A slow grin spread over his face as he stepped out of the waterfall and slicked his curls back. His muscles rippled as droplets of water cascaded down him. He took in her wet hair and shoulders exposed to the air with a hungry smile. She sank further into the water, anxiety pumping through her body. She composed her face into a scowl.
‘Well, this is inappropriate,’ she muttered. ‘But I’d expect nothing less. I mean, whywouldn’tyou be here in a bath house in the middle of the night while I’m completely naked?’
He chuckled. ‘You say that as though you’re not also here…in the middle of the night…whenI’mcompletely naked.’
Elara tried extremely hard not to concentrate on his broad bare chest but failed. She’d hardly heard what he’d said, so focused was she on the rivulets of water making their way down his bronze torso and disappearing into the surfacethat only reached his hips. With visible effort, she refrained from looking further down, and glared at him instead.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said,’ his grin widened even more, ‘why are you in here at this time?’
She shifted along the bench as she sighed, drawing circles in the water, and finally decided to at least unburden some truth.
‘I had a nightmare.’
He looked at her with concern as she tilted her head back, looking up at the paintings of clouds and constellations that lined the ceiling.
‘So I came here, where it feels like home.’ She looked at him for a second too long. ‘You?’
‘I often come here to clear my head when I can’t sleep,’ he offered quietly. ‘So every night this week.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Although I wasn’t expecting a wet, naked woman to be waiting for me, one who just so happened to have her legs wrapped around me a few nights ago.’ He smirked, but there was a faint strain to it. Elara rolled her eyes and splashed water at him. ‘Are we just going to completely gloss over that, by the way?’