They took the floor with the ease of two people who'd danced around each other in conversation more than in steps. Where the earlier turn with Dorian had been a sharp thing—tense, charged, all edges—this was warm and loose. Cael's hand at the base of her spine was steady in a way that said comfort, not possession.
"You're dangerously good at drawing a crowd," he said with a grin as they settled into the rhythm. "One day I'll be jealous of your popularity."
She arched a brow, lips twitching. "Jealous? You? Don't make me laugh. You're the one they'd follow straight into traffic if you smiled at them."
His laugh came low, warm. "Only because they've never heard me talk too long. Give it a few minutes and they'd be running the other way."
She smirked. "So the trick is to keep you silent. Noted."
"Cruel," he said, but his grin lingered. She missed the lightness that followed his teasing, and the familiarity made something like relief unfurl in her chest. She could laugh here; she could breathe.
They traded barbs the way friends did—the spare, affectionate kind that assumed safety Cael nudged her lightly with a grin, teasing about how she always seemed to outshine everyone on the floor; Isla answered with an exaggerated scoff. He told an absurd little story about a palace chef that made them both laugh until the notes blurred. It never hit the note of intimacy she'd felt with Dorian; it wasn't meant to. It felt like clean water after a scald—cooling, clear, correct.
When the song began to fade, Cael's smile eased, as though he wished the moment had stretched longer. "Promise me you'll visit someday. My people deserve to meet the woman who's managed to keep me entertained through every headline since I arrived."
She gave him a look, half a scoff, half a smile. "Glad to know my public humiliation has been such quality theater." Her tone softened with a wry twist. "I'll add it to the list of things I never expected to do."
"Good." He grinned, straightening. "I'll see you around then, toast girl."
He let her go with the same easy charm he'd moved with all evening—no drama, nothing to make the world hold its breath. He bowed, flashed a final dimpled smile, and moved away. Isla watched him melt back into the crowd and for a second, the night felt ordinary again.
The swirl of music and laughter seemed to settle for a moment, and then Tyler took the place he always took when he stepped into her orbit—steady, contained. There was something taut along the line of his jaw, something that suggested he'd been waiting for this moment with a patient sort of readiness rather than impatience. Isla felt it as soon as his hand found the small hollow at the small of her back: his touch was firmer than Cael's, closer in. It pulled at an anxiety she tried not to name.
"You said you needed air," Tyler said quietly as the first bars of the next piece carried them forward.
"I did." Her answer carried the weary certainty of someone who already knew where this was going.
His expression shifted in a way she'd learned to read over small, private arguments—the crease between his brows that always came when he was trying not to make something bigger than it was. "Right. And then I see you back on the floor with another royal."
That phrasing landed like a pebble in her shoe: small, irritating, something she'd have to keep aware of. She straightened beneath it. "Tyler—" she began, but he cut across her gently.
"I heard people saying you were with him when you went out." He didn't shout, he didn't glare; he kept his voice flat, quiet, and that made the words heavier. "You went out for air and came back in dancing with someone else. It's—" He let the sentence hang.
Isla tilted her chin up. She wanted to be patient; she wanted to make this small and factual. "He came out there," she said. "Cael found me. You know how they'll spin a thing—take a breath and call it a headline."
Her voice was steady, but her chest tightened at the way he looked at her—as if he was holding her words in his hands, weighing them against what he had seen with his own eyes. The music swelled around them, too polished and too bright for the hollow little pocket they stood in. Isla forced herself to meet his gaze, even though the hurt behind it made her want to look away.
Tyler sighed, his gaze flicking across the ballroom as if he could already see the whispers forming. "So Cael just happened to be there." His jaw tightened, then eased again, like he was weighing whether to press. When he spoke next, his tone was quieter, almost cautious. "Do you know him then? Prince Dorian?"
The question fell softer than his earlier words, but it struck deeper. It wasn't an accusation, not really—it was a fear dressed in plain clothes, as if he'd peeled back his composure just enough for her to glimpse what lay underneath. Isla's stomach dipped at the way he said it, not like gossip, but like something that mattered to him in a way he wished it didn't.
Her mouth parted, then closed again. She could feel the instinct to laugh it off—too sharp, too defensive—rise and die just as quickly. No, not here, not with him looking at her like that. "No," she said finally, the word plain, unadorned. She steadied herself, then added, "Not like that. Not in the way people want to believe."
She let out a slow breath, trying to keep her tone practical, something he could hold on to instead of the noise circling them. "You've seen how it is. A glance turns into a rumor, a moment into a headline. If I'd sneezed out there, they'd have said it was a secret signal." Her lips quirked, but there was no humor in it. "It was a stupid scene for me to be in, that's all. And they'll make it more than it ever was."
Her words lingered between them, quiet but firm, and for a heartbeat, the noise of the ballroom felt far away.