“I’m always talking.”
“I know.”
Kyron is watching me now with that sharp, assessing look he gets. I can feel it even without looking. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know.” My hands want to do something. I press them flat on the book. “She looked at me and her shoulders dropped. Just for a second. Like she could breathe.”
No one says anything.
“And then she panicked,” I add. “And left.”
More silence. I’m definitely red now. I don’t blush often but when I do it’s obvious and I hate it.
Locke pushes off from the wall and moves toward the kitchen without a word. Vaelor steps aside to let him pass.
“Food,” Vaelor says after a moment. “We should eat. It’s ready.”
It’s a deflection and everyone knows it, but I’ll take it anyway. Anything to move, to do something with my hands, So we can all stop standing around like idiots processing a five-minute interaction like it was a natural disaster.
Which it was. Sort of.
The kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and something roasted. Vaelor made enough for six—he always does now, has for weeks, like he’s been preparing for her without admitting it. Plates come out. Silverware. The familiar rhythm of a meal we’ve shared a hundred times.
I take a plate. Put food on it. Sit at the table.
I don’t taste any of it.
“She’s going to be a problem,” Rane says, and then corrects himself immediately. “Not like that. For our ability to function like normal humans.”
“We’ve never functioned like normal humans,” Kyron says.
“We’ve faked it better than this.”
“Have we?”
“I didn’t used to blurt out that women were beautiful the second they walked into a room.”
“You absolutely did. You just didn’t mean it before.”
Rane opens his mouth. Closes it. “Okay, fair.”
I push food around my plate. They keep talking—about her, about what happens next, about whether we’re all going to survive this—and I’m listening but I’m not. Part of me is still in the living room, watching her step toward me and then away.
She didn’t flinch when I looked at her. Everyone else made her flinch.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Vaelor is cleaning up, moving plates to the sink, and I make a decision before I think about it too hard. I get up. Take a clean plate from the cabinet. Fill it carefully—enough to be a meal, not enough to overwhelm. The roasted vegetables. Some of the bread. A piece of the chicken.
“What are you doing?” Rane asks.
I don’t answer. My face is warm again. I find the foil, cover the plate, find a marker in the drawer.
Nova.
I write it on a piece of tape and stick it to the foil. Open the fridge. Put the plate inside. Close the door.
When I turn around, they’re all watching me.
