12. Pretty Things That Starve
Chapter twelve
Pretty Things That Starve
Lorelei
Nobody tells me Ash has a girlfriend now. I find out the way I find out everything in this house, by walking into a room already in progress and doing the math myself.
Dinner’s in the formal room tonight, the one with the too-long table and the chandelier that makes everyone look slightly more expensive than they actually are.
I’m the last one in, which means I get the full tableau at once: Alistair at the head, my mother beside him with her company smile already on, Cassian across from an empty chair, Rafe two seats down looking like he’d rather be literally anywhere else, and Ash sitting next to a girl I’ve never seen before, his hand resting near hers on the table, near and not touching, practiced in a way I recognize immediately.
I know exactly what practiced looks like now. I’ve been doing it myself for two years.
“Lorelei,” Alistair says, like he’s been waiting for this moment. “This is Talia. Ash’s girlfriend.”
The word lands strange, and not because I care. I tell myself I don’t care, and mostly believe it. It’s Ash’s face that throws me: something tightens behind his eyes when Alistair says girlfriend, a reaction too fast to belong to a man hearing the correct name for something.
Talia turns toward me with a smile that seems genuinely warm.
She’s dark-skinned, her coils swept up in a way that looks effortless until I notice the gold threaded through them, and everything about her outfit says she understood exactly what kind of dinner this was and refused to let the room dress her instead.
“Hi,” she says. “Sorry. Walking into a full family dinner is a lot, and apparently meeting the family while everyone’s holding cutlery makes it worse.”
“You get used to it,” I say, sliding into the empty chair. “Or you don’t, and you just get better at hiding that you haven’t.”
Talia laughs. “I like her.”
“Everybody likes Lo,” Rafe says. “It’s becoming a serious problem.”
He doesn’t quite look at me when he says it, and Ash notices anyway, and so do I. For half a second Rafe’s attention drops to Ash’s hand beside Talia’s, something passing over his face before he reaches for his water and makes it disappear.
Nobody explains that. Nobody explains anything at this table without being cornered into it first.
Dinner starts the way it always does — Helena’s staff moving in rehearsed silence, my mother filling gaps in conversation with the skill of a woman who’s had years of practice keeping rooms from going quiet.
Alistair asks Talia polite, pointed questions about her family, her studies, where she sees herself after graduation. Normal questions if you ignore how efficiently he turns every answer into a measure of usefulness.
Talia handles him beautifully, answering without overexplaining and smiling without looking eager, and somehow telling him enough without handing over anything that feels important.
Ash watches her through one answer about her family’s business, his fork stalled halfway to his plate, and I notice. Of course I notice.
“So how’d you two meet?” I ask, mostly to see what happens.
“Through a mutual friend,” Talia says easily. “Small world, this circle.”
“Smaller than you’d think,” Ash says, and there’s an edge under it.
Talia hears it. I know she does because she turns her wineglass once between her fingers and smiles at him like she’s decided not to acknowledge the warning.
Across the table, Cassian hasn’t said much, and I’ve been trying not to look at him, which gets harder when he reaches for his glass and silver flashes on his right hand.
For one ugly second the dining room disappears: gold light, a mask abandoned on a workbench, that same ring against my skin, his face when I finally knew exactly who had been behind it.
My body remembers before I can tell it not to.
Heat climbs the back of my neck, and when I look up, Cassian is already watching me.
The car was weeks ago. The box was not. That’s the problem.
“You’re quiet tonight,” my mother says under the general table noise.
“Just tired.”
Her eyes stay on me a little longer than the answer deserves, then drop to my plate, where I’ve barely touched anything.
“Come un poco, mija.”
The words are soft enough that they belong only to us, but Alistair still hears them.
“English, Carmen.” He doesn’t raise his voice, and he doesn’t have to.
My mother’s hand pauses beside her glass, and for one second I think she might say something. Instead she looks back at me.
“Eat something, sweetheart.”
English this time. Alistair returns to Talia like nothing happened, and something sour settles under my tongue, and I pick up my fork even though I’m not hungry.
Ash barely eats either, cutting his food into smaller and smaller pieces and rearranging them like eventually geometry might make them edible, while Talia finishes nearly everything on her plate and talks easily to my mother about a designer I’ve never heard of.
My own appetite isn’t doing much better, and I’ve started noticing too much about him lately: where his hands are, when his jaw tightens, how quickly he looks away from me.
Tonight his gaze finds me, catches, and disappears, over and over.
Apparently word travels exactly as fast as Rafe promised it would.
“So,” Talia says during a lull, looking between Rafe and me, “I heard there was some excitement at Saturday’s race.”
Ash’s fork stops. “Talia.”
“What?” She looks genuinely innocent. “I’m new. I’m making conversation.”
“That’s not conversation.”
“It became conversation the second half the circuit started talking about it.”
Rafe leans back in his chair. “You’ve been here twenty minutes and already chose violence.”
“I was told dinner needed help.”
“Whoever told you that was trying to get us all killed.”
Talia smiles into her glass. “Maybe I like a challenge.”
There’s something under the exchange that I can’t quite place, not malice, more like she’s pressing lightly at the edge of something to see who reacts.
Ash does, and Rafe does too, though differently, his eyes moving from Talia to Ash and then to the space between their hands on the table.
I don’t know what that means yet. I’m beginning to suspect everybody else does.
“I heard it was quite public,” Talia adds.
“Extremely,” Rafe says.
“Subtlety isn’t really his thing,” I say.
“That hurts.”
“You kissed me in front of half the circuit.”
“I said it hurts. I didn’t say you were wrong.”
Talia laughs, and Ash does not. I catch his eye across the table, and this time he holds it, and my stomach knots.
Alistair is watching all of us with the quiet satisfaction of a man collecting confirmation.
“Family dinners,” my mother says too brightly, reaching for her wine. “Never a dull moment.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Talia’s plate is empty by the time Helena’s staff comes for it, and Ash’s might as well be untouched. Mine isn’t much better, but dessert arrives anyway.
Alistair talks about the season, the schedule, some upcoming event dressed in language vague enough that I’ve learned not to ask for specifics until I’m alone with somebody who might actually answer.
Cassian says almost nothing, which should make him easier to ignore and doesn’t, because every time his hand moves the ring catches the chandelier light and my memory supplies gold instead.
By the time dinner finally ends, I’ve barely touched dessert. My mother stands to walk Talia out with the graciousness of a woman who seems relieved to have a reason to leave the room, and Talia pauses beside me.
“It was nice meeting you.”
“You too.”
“We should do something sometime that involves fewer witnesses.”
I glance around the room. “Good luck finding that in this family.”
Her laugh is quick and real. “I’ll risk it.”
Then she follows my mother out.
Ash stays behind long enough for me to catch his eye again. There’s hurt there, which I recognize, but something quieter underneath it too, something I don’t know how to read yet. Neither of us looks away until Cassian says my name.
“Lorelei.” Low, only for me. “A word.”
I don’t want to give him one, but my body disagrees before the rest of me gets a vote.
“What?”
“You looked tired tonight.” He says it like an observation rather than concern, though with Cassian I’ve learned those things are sometimes standing closer together than he wants anyone to know.
“More like a bad month. I’ll live.”
“I’m glad to know you plan on surviving.” The corner of his mouth moves, not quite a smile, and then his right hand settles against the edge of the table, the ring catching the light again. I hate that he has to know what that does to me.
“I hear congratulations might be in order,” he says. “For you and Rafe.”
My stomach drops. Of course he heard. I know his box overlooks the circuit, and I never knew whether he was inside it.
“You were watching.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“I was there.”
Not an answer, which is answer enough.
“Everyone heard,” he continues. “There are very few secrets in this family, and even fewer once someone does something in front of half the circuit.”
“Rafe has never been accused of subtlety.”
“No.” Something in his expression shifts. “And apparently neither have I.”
My pulse jumps. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Cassian leans in just enough that his voice doesn’t have to carry.
“Rafe isn’t the only one who wants you.”
For a second I hear nothing except the chandelier humming overhead, and the box comes back whole: his hand at my jaw, the mask, his mouth, the moment he took it off and made sure I knew exactly who I was choosing.
I stare at him. “You don’t get to say that like nothing happened.”
His face stills. “I’m aware.”
“You haven’t said one word about it.”
“No.”
“And now you’re congratulating me on Rafe?”
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
“I didn’t say I was pleased.”
There it is, small and controlled and still enough to make my heartbeat kick harder.
Across the room, Ash pushes his chair in, the scrape against the floor breaking whatever has narrowed between Cassian and me.
Cassian straightens. “Good night, Lorelei.”
Then he turns and leaves.