Page 34

I responded with a laugh of my own. “What else do you have planned?”

“Safe houses. Untimely deaths make power go haywire and I refuse to have any more issues.” He didn’t mention the issues plaguing my own realm. We both knew it was a problem. “We’ll probably do a drill soon.”

“Looking forward to it. Sounds like a sleepover.”

Adrian raised a sardonic brow at me. “You know what, it’s not far off.”

“Daphne and I are in the same room,” I said, more of a command than anything. The image of being separated for a night, even for a drill, made me nauseous.

Adrian clapped me twice on the back of the shoulder. “Will do. Can I offer a word of advice?”

I turned to him, not having an ounce of the cocky expression on his face. “I’m supposed to be taking advice from you? You, who makes it your life mission not to form an attachment.”

Adrian shrugged. “Attachments are messy. I don’t do messy.”

That he did not. “Then bugger out of my mess.”

Speaking of my mess, I found Daphne again, her smile dimming with the end of a conversation.

Adrian barked a laugh. “I thought you lost your sense of humor, but I can see it’s still there.”

I didn’t really see the value in having one anymore. Somewhere along the line, I came to crave what happened after. Started to crave Daphne’s laugh.

“Go,” Adrian said, when I realized I was content with grumbling silence. “You’re horrible company when you’re in a bad mood.”

He wasn’t wrong, so I just stuck him with a glare and stomped over to Daphne. When she saw me approaching, her eyes widened and her back straightened, shoulders falling an inch. For a delicious, fleeting second, she looked relieved to see me. Before she slammed the pretty smile back up.

Seeing something on my face, her companions nodded in greeting then left us alone.

Good, I had questions to ask.

“What did Adrian say to you?” I asked, more forcefully than I intended.

Daphne’s smile dropped at the corners for just a second, before she recovered. Guilt flashed through my chest. Even though I had a right to be asking her questions after what she’d done.

“Just catching up,” she said, echoing the exact words he’d used. I knew they had zero interest in each other, but jealousy wasn’t a logical monster. It was an angry, smashing one that was currently whispering in my ear to break something at the thought of Daphne with anyone who wasn’t me. I was momentarily distracted from my tirade by Daphne’s eyelashes, fluttering as she asked, “Why?”

“You looked scared.”

Daphne scoffed. “I’m not scared of Adrian.”

“Yeah? What are you scared of then?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to see if it had changed.

Daphne’s mouth opened, like an answer was trying to jump out before she recovered and said, “Snakes and eels.”

“Well, at least that hasn’t changed.” Eels had been politely directed to stay the hell away from my palaces for years. I couldn’t do anything about the snakes on land.

Daphne’s eyebrows pinched together. “You think I’ve changed?”

Maybe not truly, not to her core. “I don’t know.”

It was the truth, and yet Daphne’s head snapped back, her eyes widening with shock. It wasn’t meant as an insult, but it was clear that the one thing that had been damaged, possibly even beyond repair, was our ability to talk to each other.

That used to feel like the easiest thing in the world. Now, there was no way to win.

“And what’s changed with you?” Daphne asked, her body leaning toward mine. It didn’t look like she’d consciously done it.

“My hair, for one.”