FastLED int + float problem
The code you have seems to fill the lights with a colour and change every nth of a second.  You could control that to change every 1ms to 2^16ms (which is 65 seconds) just by changing the FastLED.delay() value.

sin8() might return a float or I suspect an int, but colourIndex is an uint8_t so that is a whole number.  All it is doing is picking a colour, based on some scheme.  If the value passed to the function is a float i.e. 1.611 then it will be converted to an int by taking just the whole number part, in this case 1.  It does not round up.

Its not clear what you are trying to do.  

If you are trying to slow the rate that the LEDs change colour, you need to change the delay statement.

If you want to smooth the transition between colours you need to change in the area of the sin8 statement, but what you change it to will depend on what your palette is loaded with.

Hope that helps, if not please can you try and describe what it is you are tying to achieve.