Kaelith stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand still on the half-open door, and stared at the scene in front of her like she had walked into an alternate universe built specifically to irritate her.
“What are you doing here?”
Ruby, who had somehow acquired a second pastry since Kaelith entered the room, looked delighted by the question.
“Eating,” she said, as if that should have been obvious.
Violet rolled her eyes from where she sat with one elbow propped on the table.
“What a mysterious concept.”
Kaelith ignored them both and looked at Irielle.
That was the point.
Ruby and Violet in the kitchen at three in the morning was normal.
More than normal, actually.
It was practically tradition.
The twins had been sneaking into the kitchens for midnight snacks since they were children, and half the time when Kaelith came back late from parties or disasters or women, she ended up here with them anyway, stealing hot bread and gossiping like a badly raised princess.
But Irielle?
Irielle, sitting at her family kitchen table with loose hair, a half-eaten pastry, and the faintest trace of warmth still lingering around her mouth from laughter Kaelith had not been there to hear?
That was suspicious.
Was she being influenced by the twins already?
That felt dangerous.
Irielle dabbed her fingertips lightly against a napkin and answered in that same cool, composed voice of hers.
“I just wanted to test what Ruby and Violet said about midnight snacks.”
Kaelith blinked.
Ruby looked unbearably proud.
“See?
She trusts us.”
“Which proves her judgment is questionable,” Kaelith said.
Violet, traitor that she was, only smiled.
Irielle rose from her chair then with smooth, contained grace, as if she had not been caught sitting around her wife’s kitchen at three in the morning looking prettier than anyone had the right to look under kitchen light.
Her pale hair slipped over one shoulder.
Her green eyes rested on Kaelith for one unreadable moment.
Then she said, “I’m going back to bed now.”
Like that.
No drama.
No pause.
No invitation for further conversation.
Kaelith found that annoyingly elegant.
Violet stood too.
“I’ll come with you.
I was going anyway.”
Ruby snorted.
“Liar.
You were going to steal the almond cakes.”
“I can do both.”
Irielle gave Ruby the smallest look, not quite soft but very close to it, and Ruby grinned as if she had just been handed proof of life on another planet.
That, for some reason, bothered Kaelith too.
Violet linked an arm lightly through Irielle’s and steered her toward the door with the confidence of a woman who had known someone for a few hours and already decided she could be affectionate with them.
As they passed, Kaelith caught the faint scent of flowers and clean linen from Irielle’s hair.
Not strong.
Just enough to be irritating.
Irielle did not look at her again before leaving.
The kitchen door swung shut behind them.
And then it was only Kaelith and Ruby, the quiet kitchen, and the deeply offensive fact that her little sister had clearly been bonding with her legally inconvenient wife while she herself had been unconscious on Aliyah’s tiny sofa.
Ruby turned back toward the table and took a leisurely bite of pastry.
Then she looked at Kaelith with the bright malice of a younger sister about to be insufferable.
“You drank that much, Kaelith?” she said.
“What a bad wife you are.”
Kaelith let the door fall shut and walked farther into the room with an offended scoff.
“Shut up.
I don’t even love her anyway.”
The words came out quickly.
Too quickly.
Ruby noticed.
Of course she did.
Ruby noticed weakness the way wolves noticed blood.
“But she is nice,” Ruby said.
Kaelith stopped near the table and narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t be fooled by her.”
Ruby licked a bit of sugar off her thumb with infuriating calm. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Well, for the moment she is nice.
Maybe a bit cold, but I kind of like her.”
Kaelith stared at her in open betrayal.
“You met her for, what, three hours?”
“Longer than that.”
“That is not helping.”
Ruby only grinned.
Kaelith moved around the table, grabbed a still-warm roll from the bread tray, and bit into it with more violence than necessary.
It was soft, buttery, and annoyingly comforting.
She hated this whole night.
She hated the carriage ride.
Hated the dinner she’d missed.
Hated the image that now insisted on living in her head of Irielle sitting here laughing with Ruby and Violet in her kitchen like she had the right.
Most of all, she hated how easily that image had stuck.
Ruby watched her chew and said, “You know, it’s kind of funny.”
Kaelith glared at her over the bread.
“You’re about to make it less funny for your own health.”
Ruby ignored the threat with the ease of a woman raised around demon royalty.
“You spent all day acting like this marriage is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, and meanwhile your wife is very beautiful and not boring.”
Kaelith swallowed hard and reached for a glass of water because apparently bread and indignation required hydration.
“So?” she said.
“So,” Ruby replied, leaning forward on the table, one grey eye and one purple glittering under the lamplight, “maybe the tragedy could be worse.”
Kaelith laughed once, sharp and disbelieving.
“You have no taste in women anyway.”
Ruby gasped.
“Excuse me?”
“I said what I said.”
“The woman who sleeps with half the population is judging my taste?” Ruby sat back and pointed dramatically at her.
“You are a womanizer.
I won’t take anything you say about women’s taste seriously.”
Kaelith put a hand to her chest.
“That is so rude.”
“That is so accurate.”
Kaelith reached for a second roll simply because she needed something to do with her hands that wasn’t wrapping them around her sister’s neck.
Ruby, apparently sensing weakness, continued mercilessly, “But Irielle looks hot anyway.”
Kaelith nearly choked on the bread.
She coughed, swallowed, and glared harder.
“That is my wife you’re talking about.”
Ruby went silent.
Then very slowly, very sweetly, she said, “Interesting.”
Kaelith froze.
The silence that followed was catastrophic.
Ruby’s grin spread slow and bright across her face.
“Say that again.”
Kaelith straightened.
“No.”
“You said, ‘that is my wife.'”
“I said it in a legal sense.”
Ruby burst out laughing so suddenly she had to hold the edge of the table.
“A legal sense.”
Kaelith wanted to teleport into the sea.
“She is your wife,” Ruby sing-songed.
Kaelith pointed the half-eaten roll at her like a weapon.
“Keep talking and I will make you disappear.”
Ruby, absolutely fearless, went on.
“And you sound a little possessive.”
“I sound exhausted.”
“You sound jealous.”
That word hit too directly.
Kaelith scoffed on instinct.
“Jealous of what?
You?”
Ruby spread her hands.
I mean, Irielle is hot, we’re around the same age, and she told us she’s twenty-three.”
Kaelith stared.
Ruby smiled wider, pure evil in red hair and twin-colored eyes.
“She’s also elegant, funny in a secret mean way, and apparently willing to eat pastries at three in the morning.
That’s promising.”
“You are not flirting with my wife.”
Ruby blinked.
“There it is again.”
Kaelith felt, very suddenly, like strangling everyone she loved.
“Ruby.”
“You keep saying my wife like you want to bite somebody.”
Kaelith opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing useful came out.
Because the truly offensive part was that Ruby wasn’t entirely wrong.
Not about the biting, at least.
Kaelith had spent the whole day telling herself that the plan was simple.
Make Irielle miserable.
Make her hate living here.
Push her toward the divorce.
Easy.
Efficient.
A good use of rage.
And yet now she had walked into the kitchen and found her sitting with Ruby and Violet, loose-haired and warm from laughter, and instead of feeling victorious that she had probably seemed like an absent jerk, Kaelith had mostly felt…
wrong-footed.
As if someone had moved furniture inside her skull without permission.
Ruby watched her for a long beat, then her expression softened just a little.
Not much.
Just enough to be annoying in a new way.
“You don’t have to like her,” Ruby said more quietly.
“But I think she’s lonelier than she looks.”
Kaelith looked down at the bread in her hand.
That was a dangerous sentence.
She didn’t want it.
Didn’t need it.
Didn’t want to think about the cool flatness in Irielle’s voice when she’d said my happiness was never part of this.
Didn’t want to remember the way the elf king had spoken about her like a polished object being relocated.
D
Kaelith took a breath and forced herself back into irritation before anything softer could get traction.
“Lonely or not, she still tricked me,” she said.
Ruby nodded.
“I know.”
“And I’m still getting that divorce.”
“Maybe.”
Kaelith looked up sharply.
“There is no maybe.”
Ruby lifted her shoulders, unbothered.
“I’m just saying.
Sometimes things get weird.”
Kaelith snorted.
“Weird already happened.
It signed papers.”
Ruby laughed again, but not as cruelly this time.
She slid the plate of pastries toward Kaelith and nudged it with two fingers.
“Eat,” she said.
“You’re being dramatic on an empty stomach.”
Kaelith took one and glared at her through the first bite.
“You’re an awful sister.”
Ruby leaned her cheek in her hand and smiled.
“And you’re already thinking too much about your wife.”
Kaelith, who should have denied it immediately, found herself annoyingly silent.
That silence, more than anything, made Ruby’s smile turn triumphant.
Kaelith hated that too.