Chapter 77: Sex under Pressure
The cathedral’s dining hall was loud in the same way a battlefield was loud — not from sheer volume alone, but from the way it came at you from every angle, relentless, unpredictable, and deeply personal.
The chandelier above swayed in the faint draft sneaking through the cracked windows, its flickering light sending gold and shadow dancing across the table.
The table itself was a tragedy of etiquette, a crime scene where the victims were dignity, manners, and whatever poor kitchen soul had spent hours arranging the platters only for this mob to descend upon them like starving pirates.
Jules, naturally, was at the epicenter of chaos, wielding his fork like a stage prop, grinning at Aria’s expense while performing some elaborate sleight of hand which I was fairly certain I’d taught him in a drunken daze a while back.
Elian, sitting two seats down, had abandoned all pretense of interacting with actual people. He was gazing intently at the wall — not in a distracted, daydreaming way, but in the manner of a man who was determined to seduce the stone thoroughly.
His hand rested against the wall as if testing its warmth, his mouth tilted in a lazy half-smile, his lashes low and deliberate. I tried not to watch him too closely, because frankly, I didn’t want to know what the wall might say back if it decided to reciprocate.
Leo, on the other hand, was engaged in a different sort of courtship — with his dinner. Or rather, Syrene’s lap. He was perched there like a spoiled cat, shoveling food into his mouth at a rate that suggested he was on a timer no one else could hear.
Syrene herself looked entirely unbothered, her arm around his waist in absentminded possession while she picked delicately at her own plate. I half expected Leo to choke, but the boy had a stomach like an industrial forge and a complete disregard for the concept of chewing.
I didn’t eat. My plate sat untouched in front of me, the steam from the roast curling upward and fading into the air between me and Salem. He was seated across the table, his expression grim in a way that felt... uncharacteristic.
Not the theatrical grim he’d wear when preparing to teach me some life-threatening lesson, but the kind of quiet weight that drew the light out of a person’s eyes. His gaze was elsewhere for much of the meal, but when it settled on me, I felt it — a stillness, an unspoken signal in the chaos.
Our eyes met. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to. My nod was small, the kind you could hide in the motion of taking a sip from a glass, and he returned it with the faintest dip of his chin. That was all.
I excused myself without ceremony, slipping away from the table under cover of the noise.