Page 68 of Insolence (Eisha’s Hidden Codices #1)

I’ve grown used to clients’ stares. Their invasive questions and underhanded remarks while I go about my business in men’s shirts and slacks.

This, in addition to the usual comments my family and I endure.

( “Where are you from? … No, I meant originally.” Even though I’ve grown up in Aronya Dar my whole life.)

Pop stands up for me at first, but I tell him I need to figure out how to handle myself. The plan was always to return from Nehel like this and not look back. The prospect of encountering the young Lady Jedrek—of wanting to be recognized—reinforces my decision.

Finally, one otherwise unremarkable Morday in Tideturn, the bell over the door chimes around sixteen o’clock. I look up from arranging metal type in a composing stick.

My blood stands still in my veins.

She lingers by the door, black felt skirt hugging her hips.

Her starched shirt is pleated at the breast and buttoned to the emblem brooch at her high collar.

Lavish diamonds, gold, and lapis sparkle in the slanting sunlight.

A cocktail hat sits on her head, embellished with glossy feathers.

Its netting falls to the tip of her nose.

“Good afternoon, El Asher. I’ve missed you,” she murmurs through carmine lips.

I finally remember how to breathe. “Lady Jedrek. I was beginning to wonder if that day in Nehel was a fever dream.”

Her grin is arch, one shoulder lifting. At her request, I retrieve the finished landscape. Lay it on the counter between us.

Eyes piercing the canvas, she touches the blue streak on the lower corner. Has the audacity to toss her head and say, “You didn’t fix it.”

“No,” I snort. “I wasn’t reworking that area because you threw a fit from not getting your way. Besides, you already paid me. Now you have no recourse, do you?”

A quick laugh escapes her. “I suppose not.” Desire laces her next words: “I want to commission you for another piece.”

“Oh? And what would you like to have done, my lady?”

“A portrait.” She places her hand on the counter. Near mine. “And please, call me Tiss.”

“Well, Tiss, I’m afraid I specialize in landscape and still life.”

Lashes fluttering, she studies me through her veil’s black netting. A curious bird peeping through the bars of its cage. “I’ll sit as long as it takes to get it right.”

Her pretty pout stalls my mind for a beat. Finally I say, “You aren’t told no very often, are you?”

Laying her hand over mine, lips simpering sweetly, she says, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

This is the precise moment that breaks my brain.

Her focus trained on me, the air thickens between us. My throat constricts. Heart squeezing, all of the blood drains from my head and rushes downward as dangerous obsession kindles within me.

Nooo. Nope. Get hold of yourself, El. But it’s too late. I’m already wrapped around her manicured finger. I just don’t know it yet.

S he begins coming to the backroom atelier after hours. I have her sit for me in various poses, holding various props, while I make sketch after sketch.

Late summer stretches into autumn. We shut the windows to keep the chill air at bay. Most nights she brings something to eat, which we share before starting the session.

Get to know one another. Catch up on the week together.

I grow fond of how she eats with gusto, eschewing the rigid manners she grew up with. Defenseless to her casual charms, I watch her reach across the table, cram food in her mouth, lick her fingers, talk with her mouth full.

It means she feels safe to let her guard down. To be herself.

To my amazement, I feel the same.

My mutable soul has always been a nerve-racking topic to bring up with potential lovers. Oftentimes the women attracted to my masculinity don’t enjoy my feminine side. And vice versa.

But with Tiss, my shifts never shock or repel her. Whether man or woman, she never passes judgment. Never pressures me to wear different clothes or change my mannerisms. She simply accepts me as I am without skepticism or rude questions.

Hell, I don’t even need to initiate “the talk” with her. She observes. Draws it out of me instead. Powerless before her scrutiny, I soon discover the way she sees both sides of me is reassuring, if slightly unnerving. Particularly on the occasions she clocks my shifts before I do.

Not that we’re lovers , by any stretch.

Gods, we could never be. Which is for the best. And knowing the boundary is there—drawn by our circumstances and plain common sense—is also reassuring. Even if I hate it.

Then, one night in mid-Frondfall, she arrives with news that makes her wring her hands and chew her lip.

“What’s the matter?” I ask. “You’re on edge tonight.”

A sad smile raises the corners of her mouth. Doesn’t travel to her eyes. “My father’s informed me the time has come to marry my betrothed.”

“Oh?” It suddenly takes effort to control my tone and volume. “Who is he?”

“Illiam of Clan Madoc.”

“Quite the match,” I say, heart battering my ribs. “I wouldn’t expect any less for the only child of Jedrek’s patriarch.”

“Ha! Apparently, ‘I daresay the contract was canted more heavily in my favor’”—she deepens her voice to mimic Bard Fiach—“according to my loving father.” She sneers and shakes her head. Mumbles something under her breath.

“Please stop fidgeting.” My hand moves over the paper automatically, charcoal pinched so hard between my fingers my joints cramp. Why does it feel as though I’ve been skewered through the chest with a red-hot poker?

And why does possessiveness seize my soul at the roots?

It doesn’t make sense. We haven’t even kissed beyond that chaste peck in Nehel. At the same time, it’d be a lie to say art is the only thing between us.

Something bothers me for days after this session. Something nagging and nasty that burrows deep beneath my skin. It weighs me down with an empty sort of shame that says I don’t measure up.

It takes time to put into words.

It’s not exactly jealousy, although it is jealousy-adjacent. It’s not that I’m afraid of Illiam taking something that’s mine because she doesn’t belong to me. Regardless of what society ordains and my knee-jerk reaction when she first told me, Tiss belongs to nobody but herself.

No, that’s not quite it.

When it finally hits, it’s like a crash of thunder: I am envious of him. Of what he has that I lack. The realization leaves me cold and numb for days.

For as long as I’ve been aware of my mutable soul, this particular dysphoria has never manifested so strongly or persistently. In all the time I’ve been taking women to bed, I’ve never felt so… inadequate .

A utumn rolls into a cool, wet winter. She keeps coming. I try to keep emotional distance, but ignoring her draw proves as practical as fighting gravity.

Her allure is incapacitating. Her power intoxicating—like perfume, like liquor. She is a dangerously seductive creature when she wants something.

Frustratingly, she wants to pay me as much as she wants to feed me. She knows I hate taking her money, but my resistance only seems to encourage her.

True to form, she makes a game of hiding cash around the atelier.

One night I find bills in the bookcase. “What’s this?” I snap. “I thought you said you wouldn’t pay me till you saw the final product. Whatever happened to that idea, huh?”

“That was before I was aware of how much time you’d be investing.” She wears a lazy grin, a bunch of pink-streaked thousand-petal roses cradled in one arm. Their beauty is extravagant, but they pale in comparison to Tiss.

“Your money’s no good until I’m finished with the portrait. Do I really have to say it every session?” I leave the bundled tollars wedged between two books.

“The way you keep insisting on these studies leads me to believe you’ll never be finished.”

“Yeah, well, I told you.” Skin heating beneath her gaze, I finish posing her in front of the damask curtains.

Half-eaten toast and pickled blueberries, a jar of pepper jam, and a round of cheese clutter the small table. She’s recently taken it upon herself to introduce foods she loves that I’ve never heard of.

Most I enjoy, some not so much. The blueberries are vile.

“Portraiture isn’t my strong suit,” I mutter and sit down, satisfied with the composition.

But the truth is, I haven’t dreamed of starting the actual painting. I cherish these stolen nights too much. They’re our small escape from reality, our private enclave from an unjust world.

“You want to know what I think?”

“I’d say no, but you’re going to tell me anyway. So. Go ahead.”

Her eyes wander over my face. My arms. My hands smoothing paper over the hardboard in my lap. “I think I’m your special little project, El Asher.”

The tension between us is suddenly so thick I can taste it. The way her cheeks flush so prettily, I wish she wasn’t as exquisite as she is. So charming and beautifully bratty.

Gods, who am I fooling? I adore her.

In my more honest moments, in my heart of hearts, I know I’m ultimately going to do whatever she wants. Be whoever she wants me to be. Even now, part of me realizes I am lost .

Too many seconds blur by before I notice I’ve gone motionless. Gaping at her like a man possessed.

A s much as I resent Tiss leaving money all over the atelier, her patronage makes it possible for Ma to travel back and forth to Nehel. The extra income allows her to curate important connections, eventually landing the prestigious post as Head of Manuscript Restoration in the Great Library.

As for Pop, he notices too much for my liking.

“Be careful with that one,” he says one morning. He’s caught me straggling in at dawn, my fingers black with charcoal, a stupid grin plastered on my face. “She’s not for you, El. Pursuing her is prancing through a minefield, and you know it.”

Reminds me of the delicate conversations he and Ma had with me growing up. About how our shop, our half-decent place in society, could be easily taken away with how we look. Where my parents are from.

“I’m always behind you, El. But do me a favor and dial it back with her.”