Page 98 of The Iron Flower

“Another thing my mother taught me,” he says. “Lasair dances. The dances of her people.”

Her people. The Lasair Fae.He’s been closed off for so long, it’s a revelation to have him finally speaking so openly about being part Fire Fae.

“What are Lasair dances like?” I wonder, imagining a group of beautiful people, all with vivid green eyes and brilliant red hair, dressed in scarlet clothing and dancing inside a ring of flames.

“They’re complicated,” he says. “With a lot of steps. Fae dances are difficult to learn, but once you’ve mastered them, they’re...fun.”

“Are they like the Gardnerian dances?”

“No,” he says with a shake of his head and a slight smile. “Your people are a bit...stiff.”

I mock frown at him. He’s one to talk, so incredibly reserved all the time. But it’s true, I have to admit—the Gardnerians do take the prize for stiffness, along with cruelty perhaps.

“Do you think I could learn to dance like that?” I ask, hesitant.

He looks me over, as if seeing something new, something pleasing, then squeezes my hand affectionately. “I could teach you. We’d have to go somewhere very secluded, with a large, open space.” His eyes light with mischief. “Perhaps the circular barn.”

I consider this, the deserted barn so often a way station for fleeing refugees, its floor littered with pages that Yvan angrily tore fromThe Book of the Ancients.

“We could dance on the pages ofThe Book,” I suggest with a wry smile. “A fitting gesture of defiance.”

Yvan laughs at this. “It’s an appealing idea, actually.”

“I’d probably step on your feet more than I would onThe Book.”

Amusement sparks in Yvan’s eyes. “I stepped on my mother’s feet a fair bit when she was teaching me.”

I look at my sock-clad feet and pick them up off the floor slightly before setting them down again. “Yvan,” I wonder, “if you’re Fae, why doesn’t iron ever bother you?”

“It does.”

“But I’ve watched you in the kitchen. You handle it all the time.”

He narrows his eyes at me, amused. “How long have you been watching me?”

I swallow self-consciously. “A while.”

“It’s irritating, that’s all,” he says with a small shrug. “If I touch it for a long time, I break out into a rash. But I’m only a quarter Fae, Elloren. My father comes from Keltic stock, and my maternal grandmother was a Kelt, as well.”

“So, your mother’s father...”

“He was full-blooded Fae, yes.”

“Has your mother taught you a lot about her people?”

He nods. “Their history, stories, customs...their language.”

Intrigued surprise lights in me. “You can speak a whole other language?”

“I don’t speak it often. It’s too dangerous to speak any Fae dialect these days.”

“Would you say something to me in it?” I ask shyly.

Yvan smiles at me, a sultry edge to his grin that sends warmth sliding up my spine. “What do you want me to say?” he asks, his voice a silken thrum.

“Anything. I just want to hear what it sounds like.”

He stares at me thoughtfully, then starts speaking. I’m instantly entranced, the words of the Lasair tongue fluid and full of elegant sounds. It sounds like I imagine the Fae dance would be like, incredibly complicated but beautiful when mastered.

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