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“Why does that make you smile?” she asks, suspicion thickly lining her voice.
“Because a bridge is typically over water,” I describe. “And ours was on fire. Get it?”
Rin squints at me. “I feel like we keep asking you this, but have you hit your head or something?”
“My answer is the same as it’s been for weeks,” I say, leading them through the palace. “No, I didn’t hit my head.”
“She just has this weird sense of humor,” Madi explains. “Sometimes she’s funny, and sometimes you want to walk away, shaking your head.”
I open the door to the catacombs, walking backward as I speak to her. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was pointing out the irony in our newly budding friendship-two-point-oh.”
“No,” Madi simply says, following me in.
“What?” I drawl. “You don’t think it’s ironic?”
“You’re not going to turn this into an elemental joke about fire and water,” she states, cutting her blue eyes in my direction. “I will turn around and march straight back to my room. I’d rather sit in absolute silence for the rest of the day. Or even get my ass kicked in the arena... But I refuse to listen to your irony.”
“Grouch,” I mumble, grinning at her annoyance.
Rin chuckles at us. “Were you always like this?”
“No. We used to be giggling brats,” Madi retorts.
“Used to be?” Rinya quips, closing the door behind us.
“I’m ignoring that too,” Madi snarks, then looks around. “Where are we?”
I hold my arms out away from my sides as I spin in a circle, mocking the beach destination commercials that we used to dream about as young teens. “The catacombs.”
“Creepy,” she murmurs.
Rin snorts. “It’s not meant to be pretty. It’s where the guards convene and all the war strategy happens.”
“And why are we down here?” Madi asks.
“Maps,” I reply, giving her a pointed look.
Madi nods, falling silent as we traverse the maze of corridors. I’ve only been down here a few times, but living skylights never cease to amaze me.
Two trips in particular play on a loop in my mind.
Day one on Spiran, when Ecaeris dragged me through these halls and accused me of being a Shade. And that time with Talodus in the meeting room… Which is where we’re heading now.
Rin tips her head to the guards outside the heavy wooden door and ushers Madi and me inside. One look at the gigantic, ornate table, and all I can think about is the way Talodus had me stretched out and bare over the surface.
“Please tell me you didn’t?” Rinya sighs. “It was here, wasn’t it?”
“What?” I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “What was here?”
“You’ve been here with one of the guys,” Rin accuses with no judgment.
She does wear an expression that I acknowledge as disgust. The same kind of disgust you feel when you hear about your sibling’s romps in the sheets.
My native bestie is in a really tough predicament. She enjoys our girl talk, but she has to pretend I’m talking about literally anyone else now that she’s over the introductory period of all her friends being in a relationship with me.
“Well, yeah…” I say. “We’ve already had this conversation. And—”
“Just tell me which chair it was so I can not sit in it. I don’t care how childish it sounds. The last thing I want to think about is a bare ass—” She stops talking when I raise a brow. “Don’t joke.”
