Page 17 of A Storm in Every Heart
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
There is nothing. Fucking. Happening. There’s no need to react.
Deep breath in…
Odessa throws me a wicked smirk and brushes past me on the way out of the room. I unintentionally breathe in a lungful of her intoxicating scent.
Fuck.
She smells like the ocean and something sweet and floral, like the tropical flowers that cover Hydratta in summer. It’s hypnotic and simultaneously infuriating. I shouldn’t be looking at her, shouldn’t be interested in her, and yet I can’t stop.
I clear my throat and begin again.Deep breath in…
Jett leans against the table, smirking at me. “You alright, mate?”
I yank my gaze up to his. We’re alone in the room, everyone else having already left to go back to whatever they were doing before a bombshell fell in the middle of our afternoon.
I clench my jaw and do my best not to launch myself across the room at him in a fit of inexplicable rage. “I’m fine,” I grunt, then turn on my heel and leave the room before Jett can say anything else. The last fucking thing I want—aside from picking an unjustifiable fight with my friend—is to be reminded that I’m acting irrationally. I’m all too aware.
I march down the long hall and outside into the courtyard, all the while trying to keep my breathing even and my heart rate down.
The breathing is a tactic I learned quickly in Dyaspora, where the only way to survive was to choose your fights wisely and otherwise keep your head down and your mouth shut. In the beginning, it was almost impossible. Every single flat expression and even response was a hard-won battle, but eventually it became second nature not to react. I’d almost forgotten what I was like before self-control became my own personal deity.
Untilher.
Odessa makes it impossible to remain calm even in the face of the tiniest, most insignificant interactions. She makes me do insane, out-of-character things like spend all afternoon searching the village for her or pick fights with my friends.
Jett flirts with everyone—female, male, old, young, married, single—it doesn’t matter. He even comes on to Alix now and then. If Daemon, with his notoriously short temper, can handle his friend being overly friendly to his bonded mate, then there’s no excuse for whatever the fuck I’m feeling right now.
Except that he made her laugh, and the best I can ever get out of her is indifference, and at worst, outright hatred.
Deep breath in…
“Kas!”
I turn instinctively at the sound of my name and see that Daemon is striding out of the barracks behind me. He’s alone for once. Lately, he’s never alone—either Alix is with him, or he has a pack of guards trailing him wherever he goes. We both find the guards annoying, but it’s an occupational hazard of being the king. I know that better than anyone, because I spent the first twenty-ish years of my life dodging my own guards.
“I thought you went back to the house,” I say as he strides toward me.
“Not yet.” Daemon stops in front of me, his expression searching. “You alright, mate?”
“Yeah, of course I’m fine. Why the fuck does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Who else asked?”
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
Daemon raises an eyebrow. “Maybe because that was a heavy conversation? Sorry about that. I wanted you to be the one to tell the story.”
I blink in confusion. “What?”
He looks equally confused. “About your family.”
Realization dawns, and I immediately feel ten times as stupid as before. We’re not talking about the same thing at all.
Daemon is asking if I’m upset about discussing my long-dead family while I assumed he was talking about Odessa and this insane proposal.
“I’m fine,” I grunt again.
