Page 2 of Invidia

“Should you be out here?” he repeated, sounding oddly amused by the awkward situation we’d found ourselves in.

“Should you?” I countered. I mean, yes, I was hiding in a bush. But that was because my nerves would probably make me throw up if I didn’t. What was his excuse?

“Doubtful,” he replied easily. “But I don’t like crowds, and crowds don’t like me. I’ll leave if I’m making you uncomfortable—I’m a member of the Guard, if it helps. If I cause you so much as an ounce of distress, the captain will publicly execute me in front of the entire court.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said hastily, wondering if I should be a little more wary about Captain Soren. “I’m not distressed. My name is Tallulah, by the way.”

“I’m Evrin.” He paused for a long moment. “So, why are you sitting in the bushes?”

“You first.”

He made an endearing sound that might have been amusement. “I usually don’t… attend these things. I’m not used to them. They aren’t used to me being here. Your turn.”

I opened my mouth, intending to give him a generic answer about the warm room and fresh air, but that wasn’t what came out. Perhaps because there had been a thread of vulnerability in his voice, and it had reached out to pull on the many vulnerabilities that were swirling around in my head.

“Sometimes, when I’m talking to people I don’t know very well, my skin feels too tight for my body and my head gets fuzzy, and I kind of want to throw up, but I don’t want anyone to see that because that would be humiliating. And my face is sore from smiling and I feel like everyone can tell that I’m faking it? But they all think I’m so happy and confident, so maybe they can’t tell. I don’t know anymore. So I came out here to just take a minute to pull myself together so I can go back in and be more convincing next time.”

I sucked in some oxygen, my face growing increasingly hot as the realization of just how much I’d said out loud slowly hit. Oh my god, I’d just totally trauma dumped on a total stranger in a dark garden in the middle of the night. Maybe this was an arrested development thing. I’d never gone to parties in college, gotten drunk on seltzer, and unloaded all of my emotional damage on strangers. No time like the present, apparently.

My face was hot, but the rest of me was cold, and my teeth chattered in the extended silence, my breath coming out in awkwardly loud shudders.

“Your coldness is extremely distracting.”

There was some rustling, and I squeaked in surprise as an enormous Shade suddenly crawled around the bush toward me, swearing under his breath as a branch snagged on his slightly overlong, floppy hair. I did a double take, not having seen that kind of hairstyle on any other Shades in the realm.

“What are you doing?!”

“Your teeth are so… rattly,” Evrin replied distractedly, squeezing into the tiny gap to my right, carefully not touching me. “I’m shielding you from the wind.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Objectively, it was a very high-handed thing to do. And an invasion of my personal space. And, especially considering the empty courtyard and the discreet spot I’d tucked myself into, it should have made me feel deeply uncomfortable to have a strange male—Shade or human—squeezing in right next to me.

Especially after my impromptu confessional.

I waited for those objections to form on my tongue, but they never came. Presumably, my scent wasn’t doing anything off-putting either. Evrin’s nose didn’t even twitch.

“Um, thank you.”

A branch had gotten tangled in his hair, and I reached up in the free space between us to tug it loose. Evrin leaned away, glancing at me in shock, and my face heated all over again as I shot him a sheepish smile.

“Sorry. There’s, um, a branch…” It came free with a gentle pull, and I wrapped my arms around my waist, tucking my hands beneath my elbows before they went wandering and freaked him out again.

“It’s fine,” he said gruffly. “I thought you were looking at something else.”

I nodded as though I understood, though I absolutely didn’t. He was blocking the breeze more than I’d expected though, which was lovely. Honestly, I kind of wanted to wriggle closer, to see if I could steal a little body heat, too. The fact that he was more interested in plucking vines and leaves out of his hair than looking at me probably helping. Honestly, he seemed pretty ambivalent about my presence, if anything.

“Am I able to move a little closer?” I asked tentatively. “For warmth?”

Huh. Weirdly, in all of my actual attempts at flirting since I’d arrived in the shadow realm, this was the only time I’d felt that sort of self-conscious, giggly, shy flirty energy. Historically, that was more authentically me than the bold, eyelash-batting, coy-smiling flirting I’d been doing here, but I also didn’t like being authentically me, so it wasn’t exactly a win.

I liked people thinking I had my shit together.

“Sure.”

I scooched over slightly, until my bare arm pressed against his solid one, the shadows he was cloaked in tickling my skin. His arm felt massive, and solid as a rock, and while I didn’t think that was something I’d been particularly attracted to, there was the faintest hint of a belly flutter at the contact.

“You’ve stopped trembling,” Evrin noted, relaxing slightly next to me.

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