Page 40 of Avaritia

“What have you been working on this morning?” I asked eventually, not really expecting him to answer but valiantly attempting to make small talk anyway. We were a pair now. A unit. A team. We’d both be better off once we learned how to talk to one another.

Theon chewed in silence for a moment before wiping his fingers on a napkin. I’d spent a lot of meals with Shades—fancy Shades, supposedly—and Theon ate far more elegantly than they did. Like he’d gone to Shade finishing school or something.

“The project I have been working on is giving me some difficulty.” He said it like he was appalled that was even a possibility. “This morning, I visited the in-between to harvest some of the substance of it. Sometimes, I find it more productive to work on something else—even if it’s something without much tangible use—until a new idea for a solution presents itself to me.”

I gaped at him, slightly amazed that he’d volunteered so much information. Usually, he had a one-sentence-at-a-time limit when speaking.

“You harvested… the substance? Of the in-between?” I almost shuddered. The in-between looked like pure, empty darkness to me, but what if it had been filled with, like, fungus or something this whole time, and I’d never noticed?

Theon glanced up from his meal, pinning me with those pretty pink eyes. “Come and see it for yourself after our meal, if you wish.”

“In your workshop?” I perked up instantly. “I sort of assumed I wouldn’t be allowed in there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s your space, I guess.”

“I have no objection to you entering my workshop, though I would suggest you not touch anything if I’m not there. Some items are more volatile than others.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely not going to start poking around in your experiments, you don’t have to worry about that,” I assured him. There was a warm feeling in my chest that he seemed so completely at ease with me going into his private space. “You can come into my room whenever you like,” I added, feeling like I needed to extend an invitation of my own.

Theon hummed noncommittally, and we finished the rest of our meal in comfortable silence, Fester nibbling on the piece of meat I gave him at my feet.

It was nice. Relaxing. Maybe I didn’t feel like I’d magically found some deep and meaningful purpose in life, but it kind of felt like I was on the right track. Like a peaceful, happy existence was actually within reach, if we were both brave enough to just reach for it.

Chapter 13

Verity chattered about the library as we made our way downstairs to the workshop below the manor. It had originally been the servants’ quarters, but I’d moved Aderith and Wilder up to the first floor as the only full-time residents here, and knocked some of the walls down to create a large open space here for me.

“Wow,” Verity breathed, pausing at the bottom of the staircase to admire the space. “This is seriously impressive.”

It wasn’t, particularly. It was a large space, with several fireplaces dotted around—I’d kept those when I’d taken out the walls—and long benches covered in half-finished projects, haphazardly arranged by their level of completion.

There was an odd sensation gnawing at me that I hadn’t recalled experiencing since childhood. Self-consciousness, perhaps? What an odd notion. I’d never particularly cared what anyone thought of my experiments before, though I had encountered very few who would offer an opinion on it either way since my fall from grace. No one visited me here. I didn’t go out of my way to socialize with anyone.

My mother, sister, and staff already knew where my interests lay.

Perhaps it was Damen’s condescending comments from the dinner party pressing heavily on my mind. I wasn’t even sure how he knew about my hobby. Then again, the manor had once had more staff. I’d slowly let them go over the years.

“Did you make all this stuff?” Verity asked, breaking away from my side to examine something on the bench, keeping her word by carefully not touching anything.

Frankly, I couldn’t remember what my plans had been for the thing she was examining from every angle. This end of the bench was a wasteland.

Instead, I headed for the far end of the room where I’d been working earlier, while Verity followed behind me, pausing occasionally to look at things that caught her attention.

It was strangely pleasant to have her in my space. I’d mostly told her she was free to enter this room because everyone else in the household did—it had never been a secret space, just one that required some degree of caution.

I picked up the tiny orb of pure darkness from within the small pile of fabric I’d left it in, holding it up to the silvery light to check that it was still as pure and solid as it had been before I’d taken a break for my midday meal. Not a sliver of silver penetrated the thick blackness. What I would do with it, I had no idea. But knowing that I could harvest and store it was useful knowledge in and of itself.

Verity sidled up next to me, and I lowered the small orb to her eye level, as though showing others my work was something I ever did.

“So these are the shadows of the in-between?” she asked, moving closer to peer into the orb. The darkness of the orb was reflected in her brown eyes, and I was so entranced by it that for a long moment, I forgot to respond.

“Yes,” I said, my voice oddly raspy. “Though they’re not quite shadows. Our word for it is caspite, it is more like… living darkness, I suppose. It expands, takes over everything it can.”

“Like a weed?”

“I suppose that’s as good of an analogy as any. It can’t survive in either the human realm or the shadow realm for long.”

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