Page 41 of Invidia

I wished I could take the words back the moment I’d said them. There was an extra glint of teeth as Evrin’s smile widened, his shadows seeming to curl toward me of their own volition.

Evrin knew a little something about how I sounded at least some of the time, but he politely didn’t call me out on that. Not with words, at least. His expression was impressively loud, though.

“Well, great chat. I’m hungry,” I announced, flipping my hair over my shoulder as I stepped around him, half stomping to my usual table. Evrin didn’t quite dog my footsteps, but he did follow me.

And annoyingly, I kind of liked it. In the human realm, at 5’5, I was solidly average height for a woman. Here, I was dwarfed by even the smallest Shades, and moving around the packed dining hall was always a stressful experience.

Maybe Evrin was a fiercer fighter than his gentle giant disposition let on, because the crowd parted like the Red Sea when he appeared. It was bewildering and intimidating and nice all at once. The fear that I was going to be knocked into a table had all but vanished, but the fact that everyone responded to him this way was kind of weird. Like there was a bright, glittery red flag that was apparently obvious to everyone else but that I’d missed entirely.

I was being paranoid, right? Right. That was the intrusive thoughts talking. I liked to think that I knew Evrin… Okay, not that well. He actually had said very little about his personal life. But I was a good judge of character, wasn’t I? And Damen liked him, which was a vote of confidence. Except for the fact that they used to be party buddies back in the day, and that was how they knew each other.

Shoot, I didn’t really know this guy at all.

“Your table is a little more crowded tonight,” Evrin observed.

“Very astute of you to notice.”

Evrin laughed quietly, though it sounded loud to me. It echoed in my head and wrapped around my bones, encasing me in a feeling of false safety. How frustrating that I’d so easily given him the power to make me feel this way, and yet it was such a fight to get it back.

It wasn’t until I was standing behind the group of new Hunters that I realized there really wasn’t any room for me. Maybe there would be if I spoke up and asked them to squeeze up for me, but just the thought of doing that made my throat feel fluttery with panic. What if they said no? What if they were annoyed by my request? I could just find somewhere else to sit. It wasn’t worth putting someone else out—

“Is there room for one more?” Evrin asked smoothly, leaning around me to speak to Sebastian. Judging by the way Sebastian startled, I was almost positive he exploded with some kind of unpleasant fear response scent, but Evrin didn’t let on. He simply stood back and waited for them to move before lightly touching the base of my spine, encouraging me forward.

Goose bumps broke out along my arms as he leaned in to speak in my ear. “How is it that you’re so good at speaking up for everyone else, hm? Enjoy your dinner, Tallulah.”

And then he was gone as if he’d never been there. I sat down on shaky legs, ignoring Meera’s probing look from the other side of the table, as I mentally reset my “getting over Evrin” scale back to zero.

Chapter 15

The captain had clearly made an effort to assign more members of the Guard to the in-between today, filling my peaceful sanctuary with loud, obnoxious assholes who didn’t want to be here. It was likely only a temporary measure—the portal that had come back to life yesterday continued to hum away quietly, and it did require some additional monitoring.

It wouldn’t last though. The others would get too antsy being in the dark for so long, and would eventually find an excuse to be somewhere else.

“This seems excessive,” Galen muttered, pacing in front of the portal. I’d walked for miles today, checking all of the other ones, and finding them all still quiet as I expected—I’d have felt it if more had flared back to life.

That this one was still on didn’t have to mean anything nefarious. It made sense that the negotiating party would have an exit strategy in place, one that wasn’t dependent on Shades to help them return to the human realm. They were meant to be relaying messages between the various governing bodies, if nothing else.

Nothing about any of it felt particularly in good faith to me, though.

“How do you do this all day?” Galen muttered, watching me warily as I lingered perhaps a little too close to him for his comfort, mulling it all over. My presence clearly made him uncomfortable, but he wouldn’t say as much while he was in what was widely considered to be my domain.

“Practice.”

“Do you think any more Hunters will come through?”

I gave Galen an assessing look, trying to figure out why he was talking to me. Usually, no one bothered. Perhaps he was just out of his mind with boredom being in here for so long.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Me neither,” he agreed hurriedly, like he was worried I was going to end the conversation. He really must be bored. “I don’t think these are actually peace negotiations, anyway. I think they’ve just come here to try to convince the ex-Hunters here to leave so we’ll starve.”

I stilled, not having considered that angle. Perhaps because the idea of the ex-Hunters who’d made their homes here leaving seemed too remote to be a real possibility.

Tallulah wouldn’t leave. Right?

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, one of them was in love with Verity, right? So maybe they thought he could convince her. And I heard the young woman talking at dinner about Austin and how she used to watch him sing or something, so maybe she’s here for him? Presumably, they wouldn’t even bother trying to get the queen or Astrid back—they might have conceded defeat on that front. So then perhaps the other man knows Tallulah or Meera, or both? Or they think one will follow the other.” He lowered his voice. “And we don’t know if they know about Iris. None of us have mentioned her, but they haven’t either. Maybe they know, you know?”

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