Page 23 of The Gathering

But Dorian didn’t respond to their banter and instead pushed his hands over his face, heels of his palm digging into his eyes as though he needed to wake himself from a dream.

“Alright?” Bala asked, voice a little more on edge.

“Dorian?” Nyssa called to him.

He took his hands from his face, eyes darting between them, and then he pointed back over his shoulder. “Corbin was just nice to me,” Dorian said.

Bala grabbed a danish from the excellent food tray in the middle of the table. “Is he not usually?” she asked.

But Nyssa was on her feet, her sleepy haze gone and replaced with genuine concern. “Are you dying?” she asked him. “Have you not told me something? Are you sick?”

“I asked the same thing,” Dorian said, stretching to the table. He plopped onto the bench beside Bala and pushed his hands over his face. “I—Fuck—“ His head lifted, and he met his sister’s gaze. “He said ‘good morning.’”

Nyssa reached over and placed the back of her hand on his forehead, only sitting back down when she was satisfied he did not have a fever. “Ishedying, perhaps?”

“Explain,” Bala interjected, clearly confused. “Why is he not nice to you?”

“Never has been,” Dorian replied as he reached for a piece of smoked fish.

“Jokes with the rest of us on occasion,” Nyssa shrugged. “Dry humor mostly. A bit sarcastic.”

And Bala’s quiet chuckle echoed around them then. Mid-chew, Dorian met Nyssa’s eyes across the table before turning to the Venari.

“What?” he asked.

“You know what it is,” Bala replied slyly.

“Obviously, I don’t.”

Bala’s smile widened. “You look properlydisheveledthis morning, Prince,” she drawled with a coy brow. “Your hair especially. Perhaps he thought you more handsome than usual.”

“You know,” Nyssa started as she tore her danish into smaller bites, “he did say ‘good morning’ to me yesterday and then said it was because I was prettier than you,” she teased.

“That’s not it,” Dorian argued as he started stacking food on his plate a little more forcefully than he should have.

“Is that a blush?” Bala mocked.

Dorian groaned loudly and buried his heated face in his hands. “Shut up—“

“While we’re on the subject of embarrassing stories,” Bala started, grinning at Nyssa. “The very first thing your sister said to me this morning wasn’t ‘hi’ or ‘morning’ or anything of that nature. The first thing she says is ‘cheese danish.’”

Dorian lifted his head, smirking across the table as he knew that was Nyssa’s usual way of greeting him in the mornings when they would go down to the kitchens—spewing whatever food craving she had that day.

Nyssa’s mouth dropped in response. “I did not—“

But Bala ignored her. “She then proceeded to name off all the things she wanted for breakfast very sleepily—“

“Bala!” And Nyssa was cackling by then.

“—Before finally looking at me and saying that the entire time we’d been walking, she thought I was you.” Bala stared pointedly at the Princess upon finishing her sentence.

“What—shut up,” Nyssa continued to laugh. “I did not say that.”

“You definitely did,” Bala teased.

As Nyssa threw more bread at the Venari Second, Dorian heard the creak of the door, and from the other side, he watched as Aydra and Draven emerged into the room.

It was the genuine smile on his sister’s face that nearly sent him flying out of his seat to hug her.