Page 57 of Somnium

Cadi shrugged, playing with the steaming noodles in her bowl. Normally she was ravenous after work, but with her mind filled with worries about sigils and Elias and Sera … she wasn’t even hungry anymore.

“It was alright,” she said, watching him take another bite. She wanted to ask him about this ritual, but she couldn’t think of a way to do that without admitting that she had been listening to their meeting, which was a completely different can of worms that she wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with at the moment. Still, he and Sera had both become so unexpectedly important to her, and she wanted them to know she was someone who would show up for them, too.

She would just have to come at it from a different angle.

“Do you know much about sigils?”

Elias’s fork stilled for a moment before he continued to dig through his meal. “A bit,” he said, his eyes fixed in front of him. “Why?”

Cadi shrugged in her best attempt at nonchalance. “Just curious.”

She set her bowl down and leaned her elbow against the back of the couch. He didn’t seem too rattled yet, so she kept pushing. “I ran into Sera today, and she had this weird notebook⁠—”

Elias coughed, pitching forward as he choked on a noodle.

“Shit, are you okay?” Cadi asked.

Elias nodded and waved her off. “I’m good,” he gasped, pulling in a breath. Cadi chewed on her lip. That hadn’t exactly been the reaction she was expecting. She wanted answers, not to kill the man.

“Why this sudden curiosity?” he asked, turning to face her once he’d regained his composure.

Cadi thought for a moment, then decided that telling him she was worried he and Sera were somehow involved in a nefarious plot to bastardize the sigils of the god he once served was not the route to take.

“She just seemed really freaked out. I was worried. She kind of bit my head off about it actually, and now she isn’t returning my messages.”

Elias’s face softened, his hand coming up to take a curl between his fingers. “I’m sure it’s nothing. She’s been high-strung all week; I wouldn’t take it personally.”

Cadi leaned into his touch when his hand shifted to cup her cheek. She could almost forget that he hadn’t actually given her any solid answers.

Almost.

The idea of pressing him harder made her skin crawl. She was so used to just letting things go, backing down at the first sign of resistance. But that was before she had met people who made her feel safe enough to push. And maybe nothing had ever quite mattered enough for her to really test that, but something told her that this did.

“That doesn’t really explain why she would have a notebook filled with sigils from the temple, though,” she said.

Elias let his hand drop, settling it against her knee, and he studied her for a moment with a strained expression. When he opened his mouth, it felt like he wanted to tell her something, to give her any information to calm the spiral threatening to take hold of her thoughts. But after a moment he closed it again, and a tight smile returned to his face as his thumb brushed against her leg.

“Sera is into that kind of stuff. I’m sure she was just curious, but—” He held up his hand to cut off the argument she had been about to make. “But I can talk to her about it if you want. Make sure everything is okay.”

Cadi considered his offer. There was no chance that she believed Sera’s hoard of sigils was mere curiosity, not with the way she had nearly jumped out of her skin when Cadi approached her. But she could tell she wasn’t going to get anything out of Elias, either. And she didn’t want to ruin their time together by being demanding.

She nodded, reaching forward for her bowl. “Okay.”

Elias smiled and leaned in to press a kiss to her temple. “Try not to worry about it, okay?”

She gave him a small smile and took a bite of her food, the savory flavors instantly reviving her appetite.

As it turns out, she had been hungry, and she managed to clean her bowl before Elias even finished his. Unfolding her legs, she stood from her seat and began to stretch out the stiffness that had settled in her knees from staying in that position for so long.

“What are you doing?” Elias asked, looking up at her.

She held up her bowl and had extended a hand for his. “Dishes.”

Elias shook his head. “I’ve got this one, you sit.”

Cadi rested her hand against her hip. “You got the food, so I do the dishes. We established this.”

“No, we said whoever doesn’t cook does the dishes. Takeout was not included in the negotiations.”