Page 27 of Avaritia

“Verity!” Xanthia called. “Have you met Orabelle?”

“Um, no, I haven’t—”

“Come, come,” she insisted, beckoning me over to meet the king’s mother. I hadn’t met her before, but I’d certainly heard of her. Like Theon, she’d objected pretty strongly to feeding from the energy stores. Maybe she still was, since she looked incredibly frail next to Xanthia, and I assumed they were around the same age.

“Orabelle, this is Verity,” Xanthia said, presenting me with a flourish. “Isn’t she lovely? Look at these beautiful claw decorations. Such a delight!”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I told her, weighing up the odds of whether I was meant to curtsy or not, and ultimately deciding not to.

Orabelle looked mildly amused by all of Xanthia’s gushing. I had no idea what to make of it. I hadn’t actually done anything to make Xanthia like me. I suspected that she just didn’t want Theon to be sad and alone, cooped up in his castle doing… whatever it was he did when he disappeared to “work” all day. Xanthia was the cheerful sort who would have been pleased no matter who I was.

“Shall we sit?” Allerick asked stiffly, gesturing at us to take our seats.

Ophelia dragged me over to sit between her and Astrid, which left a disgruntled Theon sandwiched between Orabelle and Rainy on the opposite side of the table. It was a row of grouchiness, ending with a cheerfully babbling Xanthia on Orabelle’s other side, and I shamelessly took advantage of everyone’s being busy serving themselves from the platters in the center of the table, to eavesdrop on the conversation happening on the other side.

“So,” Orabelle said to Theon, eschewing her goblet of wine for a cup of tea. “I hear you were starving yourself to death.”

“I hear we have that in common,” Theon countered.

She cackled into her teacup, making everyone else at the table startle. “Who’d have thought we had so much in common, hm, Your Grace?”

Theon gave her a baleful look before taking a healthy swig of his water. Did they know each other? It seemed like they did. Theon was definitely a little older than Allerick.

“Your Hunter is very colorful,” Orabelle remarked quietly once everyone else had broken out into smaller conversations. I strained to hear, helping myself to some of the colorful vegetables in the center of the table and wondering idly if they were from Meera’s garden.

“She is,” Theon agreed.

“Are you fond of her?” Orabelle asked.

I fully anticipated him saying “fuck no with sprinkles on top,” or whatever the Theon equivalent of that was, so my expectations were solidly at rock bottom. I wasn’t worried that my scent would broadcast any sense of disappointment, because there was zero chance of me feeling any.

Theon eyed Orabelle warily. “Is that a threat?”

“A mere question. Humor me.”

I strained to hear over the loud conversation Xanthia was having with Allerick across the length of the table.

“Verity is an excellent… power source,” Theon said lamely, not even sounding totally convinced about that.

Be still my beating heart. If he kept up that kind of suave dirty talk, the slick would be flowing like water. How was one little power source meant to cope with such effusive praise?

Orabelle snorted. “How very romantic of you to say.”

He had the good sense to look a little sheepish, and I gave Orabelle a silent fist bump for that. My feelings weren’t hurt—his answer had been a more awkward version of what I’d expected—but Theon was the type of dude that needed to have his feet held to the fire every so often, just to remind him not to go full asshole.

“Verity, did you hear?” Ophelia said, resting a hand on my forearm to draw my attention back into the conversation. “We’re doing a royal tour. I’ve always wanted to see more of the shadow realm, but I really pushed for it after speaking to Austin. He’s traveled so much in the short time he’s been here. I’m really looking forward to it.”

“It’s a security nightmare,” Astrid muttered, adding more pickles to her plate from the jar she was hoarding. “Soren and I spent all day doing scouting trips for the first few locations. He hasn’t even visited most of these places before.”

“Which isn’t good,” Ophelia chided, looking across me to her sister. “The court has been far too insular for too long.”

I felt Theon’s gaze from across the table, finding him being the blatant eavesdropper now. He looked more contemplative than irritated about Ophelia’s words, which I was taking as a win. I was going to talk him off this treason ledge if it was the last thing I did.

The topic of conversation moved on to the communication network Astrid was setting up with Austin, and I did my best to focus because I logically knew that this would be an absolute game changer for both realms. Right now, the Hunters controlled the portals on their end, which couldn’t stop the Shades from coming and going as they pleased—they just needed darkness to travel—but it was very restrictive for any Hunter deserters who wanted to give life in the shadow realm a whirl. Unless a Shade happened to be in the vicinity to whisk them into the in-between, they had no way of traveling there alone right now. The Hunters had closed the portals after a group of us had defected here, so no one could follow in our footsteps.

Unfortunately, my brain wasn’t wired to focus on subjects that weren’t one-hundred-percent interesting to me, so I tuned out a lot of the finer details.

“We’re going to have to do another trip back to see Harlow soon,” Astrid was telling Ophelia. “But without Austin. He hates being away from Selene right now, which I get.”

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