Chapter 51: Lea Gilligan
It’s funny how quickly Baler’s facade of indifference dropped.
It started with watching his sister rubbing against Caius and being so blatantly obvious about wanting to sit with him.
It got worse when he called Eloise and Kaya over and they practically skipped over. (Baler didn’t notice their confusion at how Aylin was looking at them and just saw them walking over the Caius as a show of their joy. He wasn’t wrong, of course. He was just blind to additional context).
A smile played at the corner of Caius’ lips at the look Baler was giving him and Baler must have interpreted it as a taunt because his grip on his cutlery tightened until he was freezing it. When the metal spoon shattered in his head from extreme cold, it called many to look over. Including Eloise who had just fed off Caius’ fingers.
She looked as surprised as anyone else and realized soon that Caius and Baler were locked in a stare. Baler was irate. Caius was amused.
"What’s happening?" Eloise asked.
"Nothing," Caius said with a little chuckle and broke the stare exchange as he smiled at Eloise,
"A temper tantrum."
"Oh, okay," Eloise said brightly and began to fill her plate with food.
That was the first thing in this whole exchange that took him by surprise. Eloise didn’t seem embarrassed at all. In fact, she brushed off the events as very uninteresting and was quickly absorbed in grabbing as much food as she could.
Caius was not the only one surprised by Eloise’s reaction.