Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2) Read online

  Praise for Jasmine Silvera

  “DEATH’S DANCER weaves suspense and romance into a story as smart as it is sensual…Silvera deftly choreographs the action using lush depictions of Prague's storied scenery and deliciously dark humor. A thrilling debut.” -Camille Griep, Letters to Zell, New Charity Blues

  “A spirited, sexy paranormal romance.” -Kirkus Reviews (Death’s Dancer)

  Dancer's Flame

  Grace Bloods Book Two

  Jasmine Silvera

  For the OG

  Weißt du eigentlich, wie lieb ich dich hab?

  About Dancer’s Flame

  Grace Bloods #2

  With the help of a god, Azrael and Isela exposed a conspiracy and altered the world’s balance of power. But for Azrael, victory comes with dangerous new powers he can't control. Will embracing his future mean losing everything he’s gained — his allies, his territory, and his consort?

  Isela’s found a home when she stepped into Azrael’s protection, and his arms. But if accepting her new role as consort means giving up the life she’s worked for will the price be too high?

  When an impossible creature shows up in Prague bearing a dire warning, the search for answers divides them. Now Isela must forge a bond with the power within her while Azrael fights to keep from tearing himself apart. And time is running out. Gods don’t forget or forgive, especially not betrayal from one of their own.

  Dancer's Flame is a romantic fantasy for adult readers and the second book in the Grace Bloods series.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part III

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Thanks For Reading

  Also by Jasmine Silvera

  Prologue

  The timing couldn’t have been worse, but so it went with death.

  As a principal ballerina of the Praha Dance Academy, Yana’s schedule was overbooked with rehearsals, performances, workshops, a photo shoot, and interviews. And now this—her grandfather was dying, and she was due at his bedside. She postponed everything that could wait, gave her performances to her understudy, and booked a flight to Moscow and a car to the airport.

  A car that was nowhere to be seen.

  She peered out of the expansive three-bedroom apartment overlooking the Vltava on the Malá Strana side of the river. It was a ridiculous expense, this place. But her father insisted on the best. He had a reputation to uphold.

  She also knew that she was under surveillance most days from a team of discreet but professional bodyguards. Begging her father not to hire security had been useless.

  Much like the man on his deathbed waiting for her arrival, her father was not to be denied much.

  A black cat with a white star on its chest bounded onto the windowsill beside her.

  “It’s only a few days, Mischa,” she reminded them both absently as he batted her hand with one dainty paw.

  She obliged, rubbing his petite ears. A purr too big for the small body vibrated into her arm. Her phone buzzed.

  The name on the screen made her smile. Of all her former dancing partners, only one had become a friend. She read the text. Course I’ll look after the little hellcat while ur gone. Even tho he will probably eat me 4 dinner.

  She smiled. He’s a pussycat, Blondie. Toughen up. Door code is same. IOU.

  The phone screen flashed with his reply. At the airport yet?

  She glared out the window again, willing the car into appearance. I should have been on my way 5 minutes ago.

  Where 2 again?

  Moscow, grandfather ill. Back in a few days.

  The intercom for her door buzzed. She glanced to the curb to see a black Mercedes double-parked where it should have been twenty minutes ago.

  Car’s here. TY again for Mischa.

  She flung open the door for the valet, gesturing to the stack of luggage, then checked her purse for her essentials. The doorman stood inside the held elevator.

  “Paní Petrova.” He waved her in before trundling the bags in behind.

  Her phone buzzed.

  Anytime, babe. Be safe. Text me when u get there.

  Always do. XOXO.

  XxOO.

  She smiled as she slipped the phone back into her bag.

  In her memory, Kyle and the Academy were indelibly intertwined. She might not have otherwise paid attention to Isela Vogel no matter how gifted everyone claimed the refugee handpicked by Director Sauvageau was. But Isela and Kyle were a package. Now she could not imagine her life without them, and godsdancers did make life interesting.

  Of course, things had gone too far when Issy had been hired by the Necromancer of Europe. Not that anyone listened to Yana. Necromancers did the devil’s work, summoning the dead and creating their zombies out of anyone who defied them. Yana had known no good would come of it. She’d been right. Issy had come back changed, even if Yana couldn’t figure out how.

  According to the press and PR machine, Isela Vogel retired from dance after accepting a position as a special consultant to the Necromancer Azrael. Voluntarily, they were careful to add. She’d even done an interview tour, demonstrating that she had not been made a zombie. Smiling in that pasted-on American way, she’d claimed to find the work with the necromancer challenging and rewarding. She was looking forward to this new phase in her career.

  Yana, Kyle, and a few others knew the truth. Isela had taken Azrael as a lover. It was as unimaginable as it was preposterous. Yana loved Isela like a sister, but sometimes the girl lacked sense where it ought to be.

  It was the godsdancing; Yana knew it. Godsdancers were always a bit off.

  The driver waited, offering a litany of apologies for his tardiness.

  “Only fools give excuses,” Yana muttered in Russian under her breath. She slid into the back seat.

  With growing alarm, she glanced outside as they left the city behind. Did this imbecile need directions? She spoke in Czech. “Where are we going?”

  “Private plane, miss.”

  “My father?”

  “He insisted, miss.”

  Yana fought the urge to stamp her foot against the lushly carpeted floorboard. Her father must have found out she had booked a seat on a commercial plane and changed her itinerary. Even first class would not be enough. The family business had kept him absent during her childhood, and he’d replaced his physical presence with financial support. She’d wanted for nothing. Though she’d gotten money from her father, Yana had inherited her superstitions about necromancers from her mother. Her father had no such qualms about doing business with Azrael’s many companies just as his own father had in Russia.

  He had done well in Prague as his father’s scion. Yana, an only child, had earned her grandfather’s notice first through her father’s accomplishments.

  Their first meeting was impressed on her m
emory, though she could have been only seven. The short flight had been her first, followed by a long car ride afterward to a sprawling estate outside the city. In spite of her mother’s attempts to make her wear suitable clothing before the patriarch, Yana had insisted on her dancing leotard and tights, flat ballet slippers, and a much-loved gauzy pink tutu. Because her father could forbid her nothing, he overrode her mother’s demands and allowed her to go as she was.

  “My father appreciates passion,” he chided. “Plus she is adorable. Like a little prima already.”

  There were armed guards in fatigues at the gates. They circled the car with large tan-and-black dogs on tight leads. She pitied their dense, shaggy coats in the sweltering heat.

  At the end of the horseshoe drive, suited men with serious mouths and eyes hidden by reflective lenses stood sentinel. Inside, the enormous, cool marble halls swarmed with more suited men, these moving through the house on unknown missions. They were shown into a waiting room more elegant than anything she had ever seen. She could picture the walls hung with tapestries of folktales.

  While they waited, her mother walked her around the room, telling her of the heroic figures and beautiful heroines. A servant delivered cold beverages on a tray. For her, a pink confection so sweet and cold it stung her nose and made her flinch even as she sucked at the neon bendy straw. At last the summons. She walked between her parents, one hand in her father’s while the other clutched the almost-empty glass sticky with sugary condensation.

  Her grandfather was vibrant and boisterous. He praised her father, kissed her mother’s pale cheeks wetly. Then he locked eyes with the small creature looking back at him. She remembered the touch of shock at the sensation of looking into a distorted mirror—his eyes were the same color as her own, but in every other way he and she were opposites. Yet she stood still as he lowered himself to one knee before her. She smelled the faintest whiff of eucalyptus, like her father after venik.

  He grinned. “Not afraid of much, are you, little one?” He looked up at her parents. “She speaks only Czech then?”

  Yana spoke Russian in clear, confident voice. “What is there to fear from an old bear?”

  He threw back his head and howled with laughter until he was red in the face. Enchanted, Yana stared. She tugged her hand out of her father’s and handed her glass to her stunned mother.

  “I would like to show you my dance now, Grandfather.”

  Her father paled. “Not now, Yana—”

  The blue eyes that had been so bright with amusement at once went icy as they cut to his son’s face. She shivered, but when they returned to her, the ice was gone.

  “It would please me,” he said, bowing to her.

  No one had ever bowed to her. But Yana curtsied as Madame LeFey had instructed, forgetting she should not grab the edges of her tutu until she was midway through. He stepped back, leaning on the massive desk with his hands clasped before him. She did the firefly dance for the part she had played in the spring recital. In hindsight, she was both puzzled and embarrassed that the simple performance had inexplicably charmed the big man. It was barely ballet.

  The rest of the visit passed by in a blur. She spent most of the trip with her mother, aunts, and a horde of cousins while her father and grandfather did business. And on the final day as he walked them to the limo, he knelt again before her and bade her kiss his cheek. She breathed in strong aftershave and cigar smoke. His whiskers tickled her mouth.

  “You’ll begin next term at the Praha Dance Academy,” he said, ignoring her parents’ objections that the waiting list was years long and that she was too young. “You’d like that, yes?”

  The whole ride home, Yana ignored her parents arguing. Her mother pleading, her father shrugging. All she could think about was becoming a dancer. She would be the envy of Madame LeFey’s other students.

  Twenty years later, as the car pulled up at the airplane hangar, the first stirrings of grief rose in her throat. She’d had little more than the occasional phone conversation with her grandfather over the subsequent years, but after every performance a bouquet waited in her dressing room with the card signed An Old Bear.

  The steward waited at the bottom of the stairs to the plane. “Welcome, Miss Petrova. It’s an honor to have you on board today.”

  Yana couldn’t speak through the lump forming in her throat. She nodded as she climbed the stairs. Inside the small cabin, two of the more senior members of her bodyguard team lounged in the rear with glasses of champagne and relaxed faces. She fought annoyance; they were just doing their jobs. She took her seat as the steward delivered a glass sparkling with bubbles.

  “Just tea, please.” Yana shook her head.

  The steward looked dismayed for a moment. When she returned, she bore an elegant single-service pot-and-cup combo. Yana recognized the brand as one that her grandfather owned. So this was his plane.

  She rifled through her purse for her eye mask as the cabin doors were secured and the plane came to life with a subtle tremble.

  “How is your tea?” The steward seemed more urgent than the simple question implied.

  Yana looked at the teapot and then the steward. The woman’s eyes flickered to the rear seats, and Yana sat up a little straighter.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Her hand in the purse abandoned her eye mask in favor of her phone.

  The steward clasped her hands and moved to the crew area. As the plane taxied down the runway, Yana buckled in and opened a text.

  Something wrong. Call my father.

  She was being paranoid. She recognized the guards. This was her family’s plane. And yet.

  As the steward passed, Yana slipped her phone down her side and made a show of pouring her tea. She took a sip. It was delicious but left a bitter film on the back of her tongue. Perhaps it had brewed too long. She set the cup down.

  The captain’s voice announced over the intercom, “Estimated flight time to Saint Petersburg one hour and forty-five minutes.”

  Yana reached for her phone but managed to miss it. A growing fog dulled her senses. “Saint Petersburg?”

  The steward smiled. “Yes, miss. There’s been a change of plans. Someone important wants a word with you.”

  She’s a zombie, Yana realized. She’d never seen one so normal-looking. But she had… at Azrael’s castle. The one assigned to Isela looked like an ordinary man except for one thing. Like him, this woman wasn’t breathing.

  It took an enormous effort to look at her guards.

  One set aside his glass, she assumed to come to her aid, but his eyes went to the steward. “Is there a problem?”

  The steward peered into Yana’s face. Yana tried to recoil, but her body was too heavy.

  “I think we’re fine,” the steward said. “That’s right, Miss Petrova. Just relax. We’ll take superb care of you.”

  Yana’s fingers connected with her phone, and her eyes went to the screen. The notification showed her last message had not been sent. The steward plucked the phone from her hand and deleted the message.

  “I’ll hold this for you,” she said, slipping it into her pocket.

  Yana opened her mouth to protest but nothing came out.

  And then, darkness.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  A goddess tilted her face up to the sky, drinking in the sight of the stars and the distant moon and her own thin breath and wondering what greater magic there was than this. Her skin prickled in the cold. She relished the sensation of gooseflesh and the tickling of hair on her shoulder blades and breasts.

  The other stirred fitfully in the back of her mind. Sleep, little one, she bade, stroking it tenderly. Tonight is for me.

  Then she lifted her arms, bathed in the moonlight, and began to dance.

  Azrael woke alone in the dark. His fingers stretched out, reaching for Isela without thought. The sheets where she should be were rumpled but cool. He sat up in the bed.

  Father
?

  Lysippe, he responded after a quick scan of the room determined Isela was gone.

  The garden. Her telepathic voice was terse, worried.

  Azrael leaped from the bed, tugging on the pair of pants he’d discarded hours ago when Isela showed him her own version of the dance of seven veils. He had lost his head, in a manner of speaking, in the best way. Returning arousal at the memory was immediately dampened by concern. He might not be able to read Isela’s mind any longer, but even when she turned restlessly in her dreams he had awareness of her. That she had slipped out, unnoticed, was wrong somehow.

  Barefoot, he jogged down the stairs into the main room of his quarters. The door to the garden was wide open. He hadn’t heard that either. Rory stood on the other side, scowling.

  Azrael frowned. “Where is she?”

  “Thought it best for Lysippe to keep an eye on her until you got here,” Rory grunted, thrusting a bit of fabric at him.

  He took a moment to recognize the heavy silk in his hand. Isela’s robe. He looked at Rory again. The bigger man shrugged, articulating his opinion without words. Your choice, your problem, mate.

  Azrael followed tracks through the snow-dusted garden. He recognized Lysippe’s but not Isela’s. Something with the placement was wrong. He stepped over a crumpled length of familiar cotton jersey. Isela’s nightshirt. How many times had he teased it off her, amused that she clung to the old thin fabric instead the more obviously seductive items he’d filled her wardrobe with.