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She’s looking at me. Just me. I forgot what I was saying. Forget how to stand, or breathe, or speak. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Silas laughs under his breath, clapping me on the shoulder as he passes by. “You were saying?”
I shove him, but it’s weak. She’s still looking. I don’t know if she heard everything or nothing, but the way her brow arches suggests it was enough.
And I, the ever-composed, ever-cruel Elias Dain, do the only thing I can think to do in the moment.
I wink.
It’s stupid.
It’s pathetic.
She blinks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I think I have.
And I hate how good that makes me feel.
She’s coming toward me.
Which means I’ve been caught. Hunted. Tracked by the most dangerous creature this side of the Rift, a woman who sees straight through the smugness and sardonic jokes I wear like armor. And of course, the bastard who was supposed to shield me, Silas, my ride-or-die, my chaos twin is now mysteriouslynowhere in sight. Poof. Vanished. Like some grinning, curly-haired traitor who knew this was coming and decided to yeet himself into the Void before I could drag him down with me.
I consider doing the same. But it’s too late. I can feel her presence already. It rolls through me like heat, too specific, too knowing. And then there’s her scent. That impossible combination of magic and danger and something sweet, I don’t have the vocabulary for.
And I am doomed.
She stops in front of me, arms crossed, eyebrows lifted like she already knows the crime and is just waiting for my pathetic defense. Her mouth is pursed, her gaze level. The long lashes I mocked an hour ago now seem... spiteful in their perfection.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she says.
I blink. “Me? Avoiding you? Pfft. Please. I’ve just been... patrolling the area for, you know, deadly squirrels. Real menace lately.”
She doesn’t even blink.
“Okay,” I admit. “Maybe one deadly squirrel.”
“Elias.”
Her voice is calm, but it coils around me like a noose. My brain is telling me to back up, to retreat, but my body’s an idiot, because I lean in instead. She smells like trouble. Like heat and old blood and whatever part of me still remembers how to ache.
I grin. It’s not convincing, not even to me. “If I say you look intimidating right now, will that buy me some mercy?”
“No,” she says simply.
I sigh. Dramatically. “Knew it.”
She doesn’t speak right away. Just watches me. Not with fury, or even irritation. No, what I see in her eyes is worse. It’s understanding. She knows I’m dodging. She knows I’m scared. And she’s not letting me go until I admit it.
“You’re not funny when you’re hiding,” she says, softer now.
“That’s wildly untrue,” I reply. “I’m hilarious under duress. It’s my brand.”
“You voted with them,” she says, and just like that, the air shifts. “You sent Silas. You knew what they were going to say.”
I could lie. I could spin something clever, shrug it off. But something in he, maybe the way her voice caught at the edge, makes my chest twist in a way I don’t want to name.
“I didn’t want to,” I say quietly. “But yeah. I knew.”