Page 10 of Invidia

By the time I emerged from the bathing chamber, Verity was already back from dinner and on her way down to wash.

“There you are! How are you feeling?” she asked, pulling me into a hug on the landing.

“Much better, thank you. Maybe I was just feeling overstimulated or something.”

She nodded sagely. “Was the guy from last night at dinner? I thought at first it was Phileas, but you didn’t seem that jazzed to be talking to him.”

“Didn’t I?” Shoot, I’d probably offended him as well, and Phileas was perfectly nice.

“No, I mean, you were your usual bubbly self,” Verity said hurriedly. “You just didn’t seem into him.”

If only. If only I could like someone as straightforward and readily available as Phileas.

“Unfortunately not. The guy from last night wasn’t there.” I laughed brightly, batting my eyelashes playfully at her. “Guess I was just too much for him to handle.”

Meera wouldn’t have been convinced by my bravado, but it worked a treat on Verity. Probably because she was a bright, bubbly force of nature, and undoubtedly had been considered too much to handle by lesser mortals plenty of times in her life.

She wore that like armor, though. I wore it like a hair shirt.

Verity grinned. “Then, no great loss, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, impressed that my voice didn’t waver. “No great loss.”

Chapter 3

“How was the ball?” Caius asked, blowing a smoke ring before finally handing the pipe over, the show-off.

It was absurdly cold out here in his overgrown garden at the base of a mountain, but he never invited me inside the small cottage, no matter how frigid the air became.

I suspected he was ashamed of it. A one-room dwelling in a cold, damp, miserable area of the realm hadn’t been what Caius had envisioned for his future.

It was probably what he had envisioned for mine.

“It was good.” Excellent. Best sex of my life. I wasn’t telling my brother that, though. I wasn’t telling anyone about that. That knowledge was just for me.

There weren’t that many ex-Hunters in the shadow realm. It wouldn’t be difficult to figure out who I’d spent those blissful few hours with, and I’d feel like a real prick if Tallulah’s reputation was hurt by association. Especially when she’d so generously used me to sate her curiosity, not to mention feeding me so well that I’d had to go siphon at the energy stores last night before the jittering got out of control.

Caius stared at me while I took a long drag of the pipe, letting the flux moss blunt the edges of the desperate desire I had to see her again.

“Good? How could it have been good? Wasn’t it a ball at the palace? Surely, you didn’t show yourself inside. You’d send half the guests running in fright,” he added with a scoff.

“I was mostly outside, keeping watch from the courtyard.”

“Staring longingly through the window, you mean?” Caius asked snidely. He hadn’t always been like this. The Caius of my childhood had been distant and aloof, but fair. “Was he there?”

“I didn’t look.”

I’d diligently not looked. Our middle brother would be expected to attend these events, having won the family seat, but I went out of my way to avoid him. It wasn’t as though we’d been close before, but I was still saddened to see what Roan had become. To see what the once good relationship between Caius and Roan had become.

Undoubtedly, Roan felt pity when it came to me and the position I’d chosen in the Guard, but I’d never had the luxury of choices that they’d had. The Guard gave me somewhere to live, provided for all of my needs.

I had plenty to be grateful for.

“Fuck him,” Caius muttered under his breath, glaring into the middle distance. We both knew he was waiting for the herbs to kick in and transport his mind away from those unhappy memories. Away from the life he’d been denied.

I hummed in agreement because it was easier, as though Caius had any interest in spending time with me before he’d fallen out with Roan.

“Are you going to start going to court stuff now?” Caius asked, his voice laced with suspicion. “You never bothered with the events before. Is this because of those Hunters that came over? You know none of them will want you, right?”