Page 137 of Liminal
“Hey! You should’ve grabbed me when everyone arrived,” Eddy complains, bouncing into the room in a bright red festive dress covered in tiny candy canes. “Is the game starting yet? How late am I?”
She takes the spot on the other side of Kyrith with a grin and looks expectantly at Dakari who sighs before heading over to fulfil his assigned role as projectionist.
Until Leo slips into the room, causing the bigger man to freeze and cross his arms over his chest.
“Out.”
The growl in Dakari’s voice is so deep and deadly that even I want to run.
“No, it’s okay,” Kyrith interrupts. “Let’s just watch the game.”
“He treated you like?—”
“I’m aware that what I said was out of line.” Leo drops into his seat smoothly. “You don’t need to rehash it for the masses.”
“You’re not even apologising,” Dakari points out.
“He doesn’t need to,” Kyrith insists. “Just…set up the projector, please. Emotions were high. It’s not like he has to worry about hurting my feelings.”
Eddy straightens, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Just because you don’t feel the same way we do, doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t valid. If that dumbass hurt you, he can eat his words and apologise or leave your home.”
Kyrith blinks, then does it again, apparently unable to compute. She’s not the only one.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t feel like we do?” Is Eddy falling for her too?
Not that I’m falling for—Oh, fuck it. I’m not in the habit of lying to myself. If Kyrith was alive, I’d have stumbled and blushed my way through asking her out by now.
North’s twin snorts at the expression on my face. “Not like that, idiot. Kyrith told me that since emotions have physical sensations associated with them, hers are duller than they used to be, but that still doesn’t give him a right to say whatever he said.”
Her explanation makes a painful kind of sense, and I look at Leo expectantly.
He says nothing.
“Ó Rinn accused her of betraying him because I bribed her with sexual favours.” Dakari puts it so bluntly that Kyrith flinches. “And that wasafterhe snapped at her because she warned him his flawed nullification spell wouldn’t work, but he made her do it, anyway, and it activated his curse.”
I’m not one for violence, but I’m about to make an exception. Eddy is already on her feet, looking like she’s ready to conjure a bat to beat in Galileo’s face, but Kyrith holds out a hand to stop us.
“I made a mistake,” Leo admits. “I am sorry, truly. I didn’t mean any of what I said.”
Kyrith won’t even look at him, and that says more than the defeated slump of her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, too. If I could’ve fixed it for you, I would’ve,” she murmurs. “Now, can we please watch the game? Lambert was very excited to play tonight.”
Dakari and Eddy are both stiff with reluctance to let the matter drop, but the former returns to working the projector, spreading open his grimoire and laying one hand on top of it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Eddy whispers to Kyrith. “I will boot his ass out.”
“I don’t want to argue tonight,” Kyrith replies. “But I appreciate your willingness to defend me.”
Eddy deflates back onto the sofa with a last glare at Leo just as the screen lights up and Dakari takes a seat directly opposite the Ó Rinn heir. The cracking of his knuckles is completely unnecessary, but even I can appreciate the intimidating gesture.
Unfortunately, it also adds to the sensation of being locked in the middle of a staring match between a shark and a hawk. The barely leashed violence is there, all talons and teeth, waiting to spill over.
Only Kyrith’s indifference is keeping it at bay.
“Oh, they’ve already started,” she murmurs.
I can’t tell if her interest in the game is real or faked, but either way, it succeeds in lowering the tension a notch.
