Gods, really?I blink, but my memories of the ambush are fuzzy, which gives me plausible deniability. “I don’t remember that.” I shrug. “Which means it never happened.”
“Yeah, okay.” Alistair rolls his eyes. “Casanell and I are sensitive to the cold. Any action on our part will need to happen outside of the eclipse windows. Otherwise, we both become a liability.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” I mutter.
He raises one black eyebrow. “There’s no point in analyzing our strengths and weaknesses if we only focus on our strengths.”
“Cool.” I nod. “Add a foul temper to your weakness column.”
Alistair grinds his molars, and his fangs peek over his bottom lip. “Only if you add inappropriately timed sarcasm to yours.”
“Gladly.”
“Gods. Just fuck already,” Luca says drily.
Alistair’s jaw drops. It would be funny if I wasn’t also the butt of the joke. “That’s not what’s going on?—”
“What’s going on is that he can’t be trusted,” I snap, talking over him. “He’s a vindictive prick.”
Luca raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, he is, but as long as he aims that energy at our long and growing list of enemies, I don’t have a problem with it.” He smiles at me, his hazel eyes softening, thendarting to my lips. “And I love your inappropriately timed sarcasm.”
Sad Luca was horrible.
Flirty Luca is dangerous.
Suddenly, I don’t give a damn about making Alistair pay; I just want Luca to keep looking at me like a snack he wants to nibble on.
“Stop.” I plant my hand on his chest and hold him at arm’s length. “You’re too hot. It makes it hard to concentrate.”
“That’s unfortunate for you.” Malach joins us, sitting on the cot across from ours. “I’m never distracted by his sexual charisma.”
My eyebrows shoot to my hairline.
“Did you hear that?” Luca laughs. “Malach says I have sexual charisma, and he’s always right.”
Malach smiles for all of two seconds before the expression fades. He flexes his forehead, and I wonder if he’s fighting a headache. We’ve barely had any water since we stepped through the rigged gateway, and my mouth is drier than the desert. It’s a wonder we aren’t shutting down from dehydration.
“Do you think they plan to starve us?” I ask, glancing around the circular room.
As if I put in an order for delivery, the lower third of the door opens with a creak, and someone shoves a tray of food inside. The opening is too small for any of us to fit through, but the door might be weaker while it’s open. Alistair is going through a kicking phase. Maybe he can give it a go the next time it opens.
Alistair grabs the tray and brings it to us. “It could be poisoned.”
I bend over and give the food a cautious sniff. It smells exactly how it looks: like stale bread and mystery meat. It’s drowning in lumpy gravy that’s an unfortunate gray color.
Luca eyes the food suspiciously. “How hungry are you?”
My stomach growls. It’s confused by the food-adjacent smell. “I guess I’ll be the taste-tester,” I say, tearing a corner off the coarse loaf of bread with one hand and pinching my nose with the other. “What do you think? Classic sourdough?”
I stuff the chunk into my mouth and chew slowly before they can answer. It’s tough and flavorless. “Not sourdough,” I tell them. “More like flatbread. It’s kind of chalky—” I grip my throat with both hands and pitch my body into Luca’s, making a gurgling sound.
He grabs me, eyes wide with panic, and I wink at him.
“Fuckingfuck,Ciprian,” Luca sputters. “That’s not funny.”
His pupils have swallowed the hazel of his eyes entirely—I’ve gone too far. My grin fades. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Note to self: inappropriate joke did not break tension, only made it worse.” I give him my best apologetic smile.
“That took years off my life,” Luca groans.
