It’s cute that she adds the wordpleasewhen her eyes are lit up like the LED mushroom centerpiece.
Once they both walk away, Calanthe sinks into Jeneva’s chair and squeezes her eyes so tight it rucks the surrounding skin. “Don’t disappear like that again. At least not without tellingmewhere you’re going. I can’t take that level of stress. Not since Tarian.” She stops talking. Opens her eyes. Purses her lips. “You know that abduction is my greatest fear.”
I turn my body to face hers and slide my forearms on the table. “Sorry I worried you, but how exactly was I supposed to run to you when you were part of thelet’s-hide-things-from-Electraclub, Callie?”
“I wasn’t hiding it. I was just—just?—”
“Not revealing it?” I supply. “That is the very definition of hiding.”
“I’m sorry, Elle, but Tarian told me that you needed to hear it from your family first.”
“Youaremy family.”
Her eyes dampen, and she blinks. “I’m sorry.”
I take a chip and move it around the green dip. “Ines left me with my human mother. She knew I existed and just fucking turned her back on me. Did you know that?”
“No. I swear I didn’t.” Her eyebrows tilt low. “Are you sure?”
“Well, my parents didn’t deny it.”
“That is—” She grits her jaw, then slides it from side to side as though she had a kink in it. “That is—” Another jaw shift. “I’ll ask Tarian to remove her runes.”
Her words trickle warmth behind my ribs, smoothing all the jagged edges that have gored my heart since I fled my apartment. “Thank you for taking my side.”
She leans forward and seizes my hands. “Elle, I willalwaystake your side. I can’t believe Ines would do such a thing.”
“Can’t you? You do recall she broke my neck once, right?”
Calanthe’s pupils are so small that her hazel irises resemble laurel wreaths. “So, now that I’m not going out of my mind with worry”—she gives my hands another squeeze, then leans back—“care to explain what the hell’s going on between you and Cillian? Are you into him now?”
I glance toward the bar to find him leaning against it with his arms crossed and his stare laser-focused on Calanthe and me.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I heave out a sigh that is so deep it feels like the breath has been trapped inside my lungs since this morning. “He’s nice and…safe. And he seems to care about me, which I feel in short supply lately.”
“Isnice-and-safeenough?”
“Enough for now.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll let you date him.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You’ll let me date him? What are you, the relationship police?”
“Iam the guardian of your squishy heart, Electra Serran.”
“My heart is not squishy. Nothing about me is squishy.”
She chuckles. Actually chuckles. I shake my head, even though, deep, deep, very deep down, I feel so darn lucky.
“Also, why is Jen here?”
“Cillian was on a date with her.”
“What the actual fuck?” The speed at which she turns her head creates an actual gust of air. “I rescind my permission to date him.”
