Behind me, Eris laughs lightly at something Jace says.
It’s not performative or flirtatious. But it’s significant, the type of laugh that slips under my ribs and stays there like a new organ I can’t remove. The kind that rewrites rooms and worlds and complete anatomies.
Kieran answers her quietly. His voice always changes with her, dropping into something careful, almost worshipping. He’s always known how fragile obsession can become when it’s given oxygen, but he’s the biggest daredevil of us all, playing with gasoline and matches in a closed space.
My grip tightens on the glass as I count the grooves on the exterior of the building across the street. Anything to drown out the room for just a minute so I can think.
Was she scared last night?
I’d seen her standing in the middle of her bathroom, gun steady in her hands, Daniel breathing on the other side of the door as he crawled away.
But this?
This calm.
This composure.
The willingness to hold danger in her bare hands and taste it, like the blood coating our visit was a familiar flavor…
It contradicts everything.
She likes it.
Wants it.
Fuck.
Eris wants us.
And I don’t know how long I can keep pretending this wasn’t our trajectory the moment her name lit up on the system and we became addicted to her responses.
Am I pretending?
Do I want to?
I don’t need to face her to know she’s watching me now. She shifts in her seat at the table, glancing from me to the window and back.
Studying me.
I feel those piercing gray eyes leaving a chill across my skin.
“Silas.”
I turn, giving her my undivided attention.
Her gaze doesn’t soften when it finds mine. It solidifies, like she’s pleased I’m finally looking at her the way she requested.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks. “That I made it real?”
“Yes.”
The word costs me nothing that hasn’t already been spent.
“And what if I change my mind?”
I cross the distance before Jace or Kieran can intervene.
Eris doesn’t lean back when I enter her space or tense when I take the mug from her. I set it on the table beside her, out of reach. This is a conversation that requires empty hands and clean surfaces.
