The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) by K.C. Finn Read Free Book Online Page A

quite some time before he’d have the opportunity to question Ed about his curious new creations.
    “Would you care to dance, Monsieur?”
    The question shocked Lemarick almost as much as the sight of the girl who’d asked it. Once all the established couples had taken to the floor, there were a lot of bachelors left over, and Lemarick now understood that the dancing girls of the opera house were present to make up the numbers. The girl who had asked him to dance still kept her eyes to the ground, her pale brow creased in worry as she awaited his response. They must have known each other, for Lemarick knew he was not the type that girls were inclined to dance with.
    “I have never danced before,” he replied in earnest. “Is it easy?”
    The familiar girl gave a nervous chuckle, shuffling so that her beaded costume gave a jingle.
    “You shan’t know if you’ll take to it, unless you try it,” she said.
    If he was going to keep the girl present until he could fathom where he knew her from, then Lemarick had no choice but to try something new. He offered a gloved hand to the dark-haired ingénue and let her lead him towards the sound of violins.

Something New
     
    The girl told Lemarick that she was not allowed to give him her name and, save for explaining the steps of the waltz to him, she said very little else for the duration of the dance. When the music came to a halt, the dancing girls raced away and out of the foyer entirely, making it impossible for Lemarick to pursue more information as to where he might have met the girl before. All he knew was that she was pale, young and French, which didn’t narrow the pool of his acquaintances down an awful lot.
    What Lemarick had learned, however, was that he had a natural grace for dance. The itch to replay the music and practise the steps to perfection plagued the young shade, even after the rest of Ed’s doting fans had left the foyer. When they were gone, Ugarte sealed the entrance doors to give the shade trio some privacy, unleashing a sigh of relief that could have blown the doors off a cathedral.
    “No more spectacles for a while, Ed,” she said, half-pleading, half-chiding. “You’re getting a fat head from all the applause.”
    Lemarick had never been prone to jealousy, but even he found himself in awe of the recognition that Ed had received for his invention. Training his own skills with Mother only ever brought Lemarick praise from his house and his own kind. Out in the wider world, he was little more than a conspicuously pale gentleman who hardly ever smiled. He was starting to wonder if there wasn’t something more to life than science and the shadeborn, and he had thought about it more and more when the music and rhythm of the dance beat in time to his elevated heart.
    “Come and see how it works, Lemarick,” Ed offered with an eager wave.
    Ugarte looked fit to burst with exhausted frustration, but when Ed swept her along in his arms, the young woman’s resolve began to soften again. The inventor pulled back the casing of a nearby viola to reveal its secrets. Ed had called the orchestra ‘Mecanique’ for the adoring crowd, but now Lemarick looked into the hollow of the instrument with a puzzled frown.
    “Are those… crystals?” he asked.
    “Rose quartz,” Ed replied proudly. “I imbued them with my gravity powers and the instruments did the rest, once I set them to begin. They pull their own strings using my stored energy, and a little musical knowhow, of course.”
    Lemarick crouched in front of the display and opened the casings of a few violins, running his fingertips over the prism-shaped crystals attached to their insides. He could feel the hum of Ed’s power within them, a new excitement rising in his heart and mind as his curiosity grew. The concept was immense: science and magic and music as one.
    “This is amazing,” he breathed.
    “I know,” Edvard beamed.
    “Don’t you start, Lemarick,” Ugarte beamed. “He’s had