tell me what you’re doing rn. did you find latin smut?
Eric
I’m trying to fix the diplomatic optics that you fucking nuked with porn, Kairos.
That’s what I’m doing.
Kai
(? ? _ ?)?
My jaw aches, probably from how hard I’m clenching it. I ignore them both and place my phone back into my pocket. The letter I’ve been summoned for is in a glass box, held upright on a pedestal. But Francesca doesn’t reach for it yet as she approaches with the key.
She’s currently trying to give context to her great-aunt’s affair with a poet before she shows me it, and that’s when I blurt, “I don’t watch porn.”
It slips out. Like a rupture.
Her voice stops, but the room doesn’t. It’s spinning. Francesca pauses beside me and looks up through long lashes. “…Pardon?”
“I don’t watch porn,” I repeat without looking at her. My attention locks on another portrait of some long-dead relative. “Kai thought he was being funny, but the whole thing was just ill-timed, considering you walked in soon after.”
“I assumed so…” she says gently. “I mean, you looked very uncomfortable.”
I force my eyes to remain on the portrait. “You’d be correct. I didn’t want there to be any inaccurate assumptions lingering between us.”
“You’ve been thinking about that this whole time?”
“I find implications… irritating.”
Finally, I glance at her. One side of her mouth curls up, folding what I just told her into a little secret. The worst part is, I still don’t know what she’s thinking. She could be internally laughing at me; she could be thinking I’m a complete and utter weirdo, and every expression would still look the same.
To move things along, I urge her, “You were talking about Lady Athena. Please, continue.”
She doesn’t. Instead, she faces the sealed glass and cuts through my composure with a single question, “Why did you punch that diplomat’s son in Milan?”
The back of my neck goes cold. I think I stop breathing for a second, but not because I’m embarrassed. I mean, that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done, not even close. Because I didn’t expect her to ask. Definitely not here: not now, in front of Athena’s famed sex letter that I’m semi-curious about.
I watch her carefully, drinking in her stance and her word choice, and try tofonther. But she’s shifting again, straddling the line between Baskerville and something else I can’t get to right now.
Which should fucking scare me.
I swallow.Hard. “Why?”
“I’ve known you for what, an hour? Maybe two.” Her voice comes quietly. “You don’t exactly strike me as someone who willingly goes to nightclubs, let alone starts fistfights. You’re too—what’s the word—tightly wound. I’m asking because the tabloids say you lost control. But you don’t lose control, do you?”
Instincts tell me to deflect, but I can’t. Because I know what she’s doing. And worse—I recognise it. She’s reading me. I try to breathe evenly, but she’s not wrong. Not even in the slightest.
“No,” the word leaves me with my next breath. “I don’t.”
It’s ridiculous.Iread people. That’s my game. Ever since I was a young boy, when my father sat me on his lap during meetings and I learned to read shoulders, the way lips moved and held back what they wanted to say. How smiles hid darker machinations and laughter could be grating. I’ve reduced all of those into fonts, into something legible, so I can stay steps ahead.
And now that scrutiny is turned on me.
“So what happened in Milan, Prince Eryxon?” She uses my formal name as a scalpel. I feel it down my spine, feel the blood dripping down my back.
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. “He insulted my brother.”
I regret them almost immediately, but Francesca’s looking at me with big eyes, and I can’t stop myself from confessing. Every sentence tastes like ash in my mouth.
