Page 37 of The Amber Sunburst

How refreshing.

“I’m Ophelia. And you’re Eudoxos.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry about shooing that girl away, Eudoxos. It seems like she likes you. I just couldn’t waste an opportunity to make Kleitos mad.”

“It’s okay. She’s not… I’m not interested.”

“Too bad,” Ophelia muses. Then she asks, “Can I get a little closer to you? Maximize the jealousy and all.”

Eudoxos snorts and nods. Ophelia loves people who are down to have fun and mess around at others’ expense.

Does that make her a bad person? Maybe.

Does it make her interesting? Definitely.

She and Eudoxos are around the same height, five feet or so, so they fit together well when she swings an arm around his shoulder and he puts one on her waist.

“Look at us, so sexy,” Eudoxos jokes, and Ophelia lays her forehead on his shoulder to suppress her smile.

“Oh, Ophelia,” Eudoxos whispers. “This is gold. I think Kleitos is going to burst the vein in his temple.”

She laughs again, and they both lean into each other until they’re practically hugging. Maybe it’s strange how quickly she’s found herself comfortable in Eudoxos’ company, but what can she say? They just click.

The night continues, and the two of them remain draped all over each other with Kleitos hanging behind them looking ready to have an aneurysm. Eventually he gives up, and Eudoxos cackles as they watch him leave the cellar alone. Not even his lackeys follow him out tonight.

But Kleitos leaving doesn’t separate her and Eudoxos. They drink cup after cup until the music starts to slow down and partygoers sprawl out in their drunkenness, hoping to recover enough to make it to their beds.

She’s pretty sure neither she nor Eudoxos were keeping track of how much they drank, but as she lies down on a crate full of wine bottles, she realizes she’s more than tipsy. And, judging by the instability with which Eudoxos makes his way onto the crates, he is too.

“You know what I was thinking?” she asks with a hiccup. “If you were a Priestess we could just hang out all the time.”

Eudoxos gasps and then floops over to face her. “We would— that would be so much funner than here. Here is so sad. I don’t have any friends who are girls. I miss girl-talk.”

Ophelia finds that the idea of Eudoxos in girl-talk isn’t ludicrous to her at all. “Did you do girl-talk a lot before coming to the Academy?”

“Oh, all the time. All the girls in my fam— family did.”

“Were you—” her drunkenness has removed all sense of delicacy. “Were you a girl before?”

Eudoxos’ eyes go wide with visible fear. More than fear, really. Anxiety that Ophelia can tell is completely frantic, thoughts firing away in his head that he has no control over.

“It doesn’t matter to me if you were,” she explains quickly. “I know a lot of Producers are that way. Personally, I think everyone should have the right to express their identity however they choose. Even the Leadership Classes.”

It’s always seemed unfair to her that Priestesses and those at the Academy have no options when it comes to showing their femininity or masculinity. Everything here is black and white because the Leadership Classes aren’t meant to have ‘desires,’ as if feeling out of place in your own body is a choice.

“Oh, I see what you think,” he slurs, curling up. “No.” Then he amends, “Well, of course I think that everyone should be… themselves. But that’s not me.”

Ophelia lets a momentary silence fall as Eudoxos collects his thoughts.

“I am a girl,” Eudoxos eventually whispers. “Like, now. But I can’t be. Not here. Never here. Because there’s lots of—no.”

Oh, Forms, they are really drunk. If that was a real confession, will Eudoxos regret telling her in the morning?

Eudoxos sticks his—her?—hand out for a shake and says, “Eudoxia. Nice to meet you.”

Ophelia pulls her into a sloppy hug instead, worries about their inebriated state forgotten due to… her inebriated state.