“I’m the last person who would try to keep Lisia away from a good night of fun,” Corra sounded like she was winding up. “She’s long past overdue.”
Gee, thanks.She’d made me sound sex-starved and like something forgotten in the back of the pantry. I wasn’t desperate. Yet.
“But she was running away from you last night. No point having her cabin near yours, since she rejected you,” she argued.
I blinked, digesting this new tidbit.
“Lisia would like to decide where her own cabin is,” I muttered. Two determined gazes swung to me while I rubbed my eyes. “After I hear the rest of what happened last night.”
“Lisia, are you sure that’s a good–” Zevrial started before Corra cut him off.
“Oh no you don’t. She’s going to hear all of it. And me too, if she’s even considering staying near you.” We were out in an open hallway, where anyone could hear whatever came next. And Corra was too fired up, there was no stopping her momentum. “After you asked him to take you, Zevrial whisked you away to the owner’s back office.”
“To try to sober her up,” he said.
Corra continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Five minutes later, you ran outta there with your dress half off, giggling like a maniac. With him,” she jabbed her thumb at Zevrial. “Stalking after you screaming for you to get back there, with his pants unbuttoned.”
“Consensual,” Zevrial said with easy confidence.
And everyone aboard the Shadowtide had just heard all of this. Why hadn’t I literally died from embarrassment yet?
“Inside, now,” I demanded, pointing at the cabin behind Zevrial.
We went inside, Corra closing the door behind us.
This had to be Zevrial’s cabin, not a single one of Corra’s possessions were present. Most of his things were shades of gray and green, developing a nice contrast against the dark red of the Arcs wooden planks. The sheets and blanket on his bed were tucked in carelessly. In fact, most of the room was disordered, but still somehow neat. Stacks of books lay haphazard across his desk, bits of thread and loose fabric piled on the corner. Tallrounded windows lined the wall, affording us all a stunning view of the miasma’s shifting surface.
“Okay.” I seated myself at his desk, pushing aside a stack of books about navigating by starlight and identifying wreckage. “Continue, if you must.”
“You came back with me into the office willingly,” Zevrial leaned up against one of the windows, the reflected glare from the sun illuminating him from behind. He really was unreasonably handsome.
“You didn’t leave that way,” Corra argued.
He tapped his knuckles on the windowsill. “When we got to the back office, I had us both sit down to try to calm her down. But Lisia had other ideas. She sat on my lap and started groping me.”
I lowered my forehead to a clear spot on the desk, banging it against the hard surface.
He continued, amusement plain in his voice. “I pushed you away, and you started trying to flirt, telling me how ‘subductive’ I was.”
And the crazy keeps coming.
I’d give myself a concussion if I kept banging my head. I leaned back, staring at the ceiling and trying to disassociate from my physical body. “Subductive?”
“Pretty sure you meant seductive,” Zevrial clarified. “You were very drunk. You threw up in the bin.”
The tale of last night didn’t have a happy ending. There was no way it could. It just kept spiraling further out of control, getting worse and worse.
If comedies were tragedies given time to foment, then comedies that dragged on too long became tragedies. If this retelling kept humbling me, I wouldn’t have any self-confidence left by the end of it.
“Then you started asking about your Skinscript.”
I straightened up in the chair, glancing at Corra. She didn’t know about our illegal Skinscript. And Zevrial didn’t know she wasn’t Sarina. This whole situation was messy, and this conversation had just veered into dangerous waters. “Sarina, can you wait outside?”
“So he can convince you he was a perfect gentleman and persuade you to bunk next to him? I think not.”
“No, so that I can hear anything else humiliating I did in that back office without an audience.”
Zevrial’s smile was self-assured, as if to confirm that there were in fact more humiliating truths from last night I had yet to hear.
