Some Kind of Hell by Evelyn Hyde

Author:Evelyn Hyde [Hyde, Evelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Vendrick didn’t know how long he stood in his kitchen miserably staring at both of their half-eaten cheesecake buns. He didn’t know what possessed him to tell her those things about Octavia, or why he’d been so compelled to touch her, or why she’d let him at all.

He did know he was ruined, though.

How many Kaldiri were dead because of Vendrick Caecillion? And how many Volsinii were dead because of Frelia Helm’s Grace Valerius? The numbers had to be staggering.

And yet, in this quiet moment, in his tiny kitchen, all he had wanted to do was hold her until she stopped crying.

It was a dangerous impulse. A stupid one. But there it was, a little kernel of truth hidden beneath hospitality and gentlemanly concern for a woman who could be called, charitably and at most, a friend.

Octavia had always told him it was odd, how well he got on with Frelia. By all rights, they ought to have been at each other’s throats. And though Vendrick understood the logic, he’d never been able to articulate exactly why they weren’t. Maybe it was the fact Frelia was the only person he’d ever met who consistently told him the truth, or at least what was actually on her mind. Maybe it was that talking to her felt as natural as breathing, most days, or that he didn’t have to explain his most paranoid thoughts. She just understood them. Maybe it was just that—okay, fine—it wasn’t often that pretty girls had bothered to talk to him back then, and this one had been his lab partner, so she had to.

Maybe it was all of those things, or none of them. He’d never managed to figure it out. It would have been the great puzzle of a Vendrick who had never known war.

He wished he could have told her what he was actually thinking. I missed you had danced at the tip of his tongue, daring him to say it, to see how she’d react. The logical part of his brain had reminded him she’d likely punch him, retreat, or both. But that last, hopeful part he’d never quite managed to squash wondered what else she might do…

Because he had.

He’d realized it while playing cards earlier, between the jocularly competitive rounds, glasses of wine, and Clarissa’s unending chatter. Vendrick hadn’t had many friends, even before the war, and so it had taken him some time to name the feeling.

But there it was. Loss.

He had missed having Frelia around, missed their unending back-and-forth, missed having someone he knew would tell him the truth and didn’t typically irritate him. And though she was different now, she was still Frelia, buried beneath a decade’s worth of armor and disappointments.

And yet, he had no idea how to behave around her anymore. Sometimes it seemed as though nothing had changed, and their friendship had picked right back up where they’d left it. Other times, there seemed to be a yawning chasm between them, and the weight of everything they’d done to one another’s homelands threatened to pull them both into its hungry jaws.

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