I’m delighted.
I’m thrilled.
I’m absolutely appalled, and as soon as dinner’s over, and we’re all free to go, I turn to Icelle in panic. “What did you say to them?”
“You were right next to me the whole time.” Icelle goes on walking down the hallway while speaking, forcing me to keep up with her. “You heard everything I said—”
“But you gave them alook!Remember? Lucius said it was remarkable that Arkane introduced himself, and you looked at them, andnodded. I saw you do it, don’t deny it—”
“Oh. That.”
She pauses on the stairs, and she’s just so ridiculously beautiful and elegant that even though I know she doesn’t mean to do so, she really looks like she’s posing for a photograph that’s meant to grace the front cover of a society magazine.
“What did that ‘nod’ mean?”
“Don’t worry—” Icelle resumes moving, and so here we go again, and I’m running up the stairs to catch up to her. “I kept my promise.”
Argh. Who’s not answering the question now?
“They don’t know about your feelings for Arkane.”
I open my mouth to give her some flak when I hear what she’s just said, and for the love ofugh—
“I don’t have feelings for him!”
Icelle blinks. “So it’s lust then?”
Aaaargh!
I’d have strangled her right there in the hallway if she weren’t my only real friend in the world. But since sheisthat—
“This is not over,” I warn her darkly, as we reach the door of my room.
Icelle nods. “It won’t be until you two are mar—”
I clap a hand over her mouth and shoot her a glare. “Don’t you say that again.”
Icelle opens her mouth.
“Or anything that has to do with Arkane.”
She closes her mouth.
I look at her in exasperation. “Seriously?” She really has nothing to say if it’s not about her stepbrother?
Icelle shrugs, which I later translate to ‘good night’ since she’s already walking past me and heading back to her own room.
I close the door behind me and press my forehead against it.
Why is she like this?
Why iseveryonelike this?
Why am I the only normal person in a house full of people who communicate in eyebrow-raises and nods and family-wide psychic agreements?
And why, darn it?
Why is it already midnight, and here I am, still unable to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about all the things I’m not supposed to waste time thinking?
