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dracoqueen22Title: Conversation Starter
Universe: Tethers
Characters: Tempest Teapot, Dakota Sorrel, Rathi of the Cinders, Easton
Rating: Tempest is surrounded by pretty people, but Easton is the newest face, and so it must be up to her to make the first overture.
Easton loitered in the periphery of their camp like a stray animal who couldn't decide if he wanted to be kept or not. He sat on a stump, legs curled lotus beneath him, long white braid tucked over a shoulder, studiously ignoring their entire party.
Tempest couldn't stop staring. He was so pretty. Pretty like women were pretty. She didn't know men could be so pretty. She imagined him painted up like a princess, his hair dripping in jewels, his body draped in fine materials, perhaps a dress to swish around his ankles.
Oh, they’d suit him well. He was pretty enough for it.
She gnawed on a strip of dried venison and contemplated their guide. He was tall, too. A little on the thin side. Gods, he had the longest legs, too. They went on for days. He wielded a longbow, which meant he had strong arms and hands. Good for lifting things.
"You're drooling," Dakota said.
"I'm not!" Tempest said.
Except maybe she was. So she wiped at the corner of her mouth.
"He's so pretty," she mumbled around the meat. She shifted her weight, calves aching a bit from the casual crouch she'd dropped into.
"Aye, and likely to bite your head off if you try, so don't bother," Dakota grumbled as he bent over the new pair of socks he was knitting for her.
It was a strange thing. Her socks kept getting holes in them, right at the tip where her big toe was. She went through socks like most people went through... well, something they tend to go through quickly anyway.
"Maybe he's nicer on a one-by-one basis," Tempest contemplated aloud. She sucked her fingers clean. "He just needs to get to know us."
"I don't think that's going to help," Dakota warned, but there wasn't much strength behind it. Just a kind of tired resignation.
Good. He was learning.
Tempest stood up, hissed when her calves protested, and bent over to rub at them. "I'm going to go talk to him," she declared after the initial spasms ended.
Dakota sighed.
Tempest adjusted her clothing, dragged a hand through her hair, and then realized she'd kind of dragged a bunch of jerky-spit through her curls, too. Oops.
"Wish me luck," she said and picked her way through the camp, skirting around the low fire and tossing a wink at Rathi as she passed.
"You beat me to it," Rathi said with a slanted look at Easton, a bit of hunger in her eyes. Tempest couldn't blame her.
He was so damn pretty.
Then again, their whole party was gorgeous. Tempest wondered how she got so lucky to be able to travel with a whole group of pretty, pretty people. She could ogle all day and never get bored, except Dakota. He was pretty in his own way, but Tempest didn’t ogle him. That would be weird, and a little gross.
He was like her little brother. She had to keep an eye on him for his safety, not for ogling him.
"You can have the leftovers," Tempest promised.
Rathi chuckled, and Tempest let her be, approaching Easton without bothering to hide the fact she was doing so. She didn't want to sneak up on him. He seemed like the type to shoot first and ask questions later.
Closer now, she could see he was reading. He balanced easily on the log, and a book was open in his lap. He leaned to the side, one elbow on his knee, chin balanced on his knuckles, and though he looked completely absorbed in the book, Tempest figured he had to be paying attention to his surroundings.
He had to know she was coming.
Still, she tromped extra loud on a few crunchy leaves just to make sure. Easton’s short-sword was within reach, and though she couldn’t see the longbow, she figured it was close at hand and ready to draw in a flash.
“Isn’t it too dim for you to see that?” Tempest asked as she moved to crouch in front of Easton, so that he couldn’t hide from her by looking down.
He turned a page without meeting her gaze. “I have dark-vision,” he said. He had a deep voice, deeper than she would have expected for someone so lithe.
Tempest propped her elbow on a knee and her chin on her palm. “Oh. Well, that’s handy. I wish I had dark-vision.”
He said nothing. He focused on his book as if he thought she’d give up and go away, probably in an annoyed huff. Well, Dakota would. Probably Tyrael, too. Not Tempest though. Her curiosity outweighed all of it.
He had such pretty eyes, too. They were honey-brown, but toward the pupil, they were an amber-red in little uneven spikes. She thought he was maybe a half-elf or something, because he had those slightly pointed ears, and most elves were of the lithe sort.
“Whatcha reading?” Tempest asked. She didn’t understand the fascination with reading herself. Books were boring. Sitting in one place to read a book was even more boring.
There were much better ways to spend her time.
Easton tilted the book so she could see the spine and the cover and the title. Not that it helped. Tempest could read, but not whatever this language was. The writing was broad and looping and the letters made no sense to her.
“Okay, so I can mostly read Common, and I can kinda speak Elvish when someone is talking to me nice and slow, but there’s no way I know what this is,” Tempest said. She could also speak Halfling, but doubted that was relevant.
He lowered the book so it was easier for him to see. “Then you don’t need to know what it is.”
“Wow.” Tempest’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. “You’re nice to look at, but you’re kind of a jerk, aren’t you?”
Easton blinked and finally looked at her. He lifted one sculpted eyebrow -- did he sculpt those himself? “Should I be something else?”
“Huh?”
“We’re strangers,” Easton pointed out. He sounded impatient and put out, like her very presence grated on him. He hadn’t told her to leave yet though so she figured she was winning as long as he didn’t say it outright.
Tempest pushed air through her lips. “So?” She stared at him, like Blizzara used to stare at people who were being rude and ought to know better. “Doesn’t mean you have to be rude about it.”
Easton, without taking his eyes away from her, marked his place in the book and closed it, resting one hand on the cover. “What do you want?”
Ohhh. Progress!
Tempest grinned and rocked a bit where she crouched. “You said it. We’re strangers. How about let’s fix that?”
“And if I’m not interested?” He had a weird way of talking, too, lingering on certain words like someone told him he was supposed to emphasize them, but he kept forgetting which ones it was.
Maybe Common wasn’t his native tongue.
Tempest tilted her head, aiming her left ear toward him so she could hear better. “That would be a shame. I’m a pretty interesting person.”
His lips twitched, like he was fighting off the urge to smile. “An odd one at least.”
“You probably think you’re insultin’ me, but you’re not,” Tempest squinted at him. She swallowed a laugh because she thought that might make him clam back up, and she was already making progress. Besides, looking at him was hardly a trial.
He was just so goddamn pretty.
“I rest my case,” he said, but there was a shadow of a smile in his lips, on the edges. She wondered what he’d look like with a real smile, with his eyes bright from humor or happiness.
Tempest grinned and pointed at his mouth. “I saw that.”
He, however, pretended she hadn’t said anything. He gave her a keen look, like he was measuring her, probably in the same way she’d measured him. “... Tempest, right?”
“You remembered!” Tempest stood up, wincing as her calves protested, and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m proud of you. See, we’re not as much strangers as you thought.”
He rolled his eyes, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased away. He looked at her directly which was nice because Tempest did not want to have to crouch again. Her calves did not like it.
“Now you’re being a smart-ass.”
“What gave me away?”
Easton snorted and sat back a little on the log, looking more engaged this time. “Fine,” he said, with a vague gesture. “What do you want to know?”
Oh, boy. So, so much. But she had to be careful or she’d scare Easton away.
“Hmm.” Tempest tapped her chin before planting her hands on her hips. “What were you reading?”
“It’s a bestiary.”
Tempest blinked. “A what?”
One of Easton’s lips curled with amusement. “Bestiary,” he said, repeating the word slowly. “They’re encyclopedias of various creatures.”
“Does it have pictures?”
“A few.”
Tempest frowned and rocked back and forth on her heels. “I prefer pictures,” she said, and decided to tiptoe into more personal questions, maybe get him to open up. You had to be careful with these stubborn, asshole types. They clammed up faster than a… well, clam. “Where are you from?”
Easton’s lips thinned. His face immediately closed down, and Tempest cursed herself for asking the wrong question. “Nowhere in particular,” he said, and his voice grew thicker, as did his accent, like words were the hardest thing to manage. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Sad past, huh?” Tempest asked, careful to keep her tone light and airy, like she wasn’t really invested in the answer, even though she most definitely was.
Easton squinted. “What makes you say that?”
Tempest tilted her head from side to side, staring up into the canopy of the trees. “Dakota gives me the same answer when I ask him about his hometown. I put two and two together.”
“Perceptive of you,” Easton said.
“I’m a perceptive person!”
“Except for the part where I wanted to be left alone.” Easton picked up his book and brought it into his lap once more, opening it to the marked place.
Damn. She was losing him.
“No one really wants to be alone,” Tempest said, because she knew this to be true. People might say they wanted solitude, but the truth was, they just didn’t want to be hurt anymore, and couldn’t trust the world wouldn’t hurt them.
“I do,” Easton said.
Tempest scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Then you’re lying.”
“Am I.” It wasn’t a question, not the way Easton said it. His head tipped down, back to his book, and Tempest was left looking at the crown of his head, the intricate knot of his long, white braid. She wondered how soft his hair was, or if he liked it being pulled. “We’re done here.”
Tempest opened her mouth to speak, but then snapped it back shut. Easton and Dakota were a lot alike, but she got the feeling, she couldn’t push Easton quite like she pushed Dakota. With Dakota, there was a little kernel of affection she could prod at. Tempest knew the name of that kernel only because Dakota had muttered it in his sleep once.
Mathias.
His little brother. Who Dakota loved above all else.
Tempest knew her existence tapped into the part of Dakota desperate to care for another person, and Tempest was willing to slide into that slot, if it brought Dakota out of his shell.
Easton, however.
Easton would need a different approach.
So Tempest smiled brightly, though Easton wasn’t looking at her. “Alright, well, enjoy your book.”
She left with a parting wave, but Easton didn’t acknowledge her departure. He kept his attention focused on his book as though it held all the mysteries of the universe.
Well, it was a start at least.
Tempest hummed to herself as she traced her route back to Dakota’s side, passing Rathi along on the way and offering her a wink. Rathi gave her a thumbs up, but went back to whatever quiet conversation she was having with Celeste. Tyrael was already asleep, wrapped up in his blanket and curled in the roots of a tree.
Dakota didn’t look up when she approached, but he spoke when she flopped onto the forest floor beside him. “How’d it go?”
Tempest grinned and folded her arms behind her head, looking up at the stars through the canopy of trees. “I’m going to adopt him.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Dakota said, and there was a hint of chastisement in his tone, probably a tone he’d used with his younger brother too many times for him to count.
“Why not?” She slanted him a look, idly noticing that he needed a haircut sooner rather than later. “I adopted you.”
Dakota’s brow furrowed, but then he peered at the yarn wrapped around his fingers, and Tempest assumed he was frowning at a knot. “I am reasonably certain it was the other way around.”
“That’s what you think,” Tempest said.
She watched Dakota for a moment. It never ceased to fascinate her, how deftly his fingers moved, almost too quick to track. How he could take a bundle of colorful yarn and within an hour, a sock had taken shape. She’d always heard orcs were clumsy, brutish creatures, but there’s nothing clumsy about Dakota.
Tempest figured a lot of stories she’d heard about a lot of things were just that – stories. They didn’t often match the reality of a thing.
“He’s lonely,” Tempest added after a minute.
Dakota snorted. “I doubt that very much.”
“He is. He just doesn’t want to admit it, so he’s a jerk to people.”
“What makes you say that?” Dakota asked as he squinted at his work, in much the same way Easton had squinted at the pages of his book.
Tempest crossed one leg over the opposite knee and set her foot to bouncing. “You two are a lot alike.”
Unsurprisingly, Dakota said nothing. His face darkened into a glower, and he sighed, doing something with the yarn in his hands.
He shook out the sock, in all its garish colors because he knew Tempest liked having ridiculous socks. “Let me see your foot,” he finally said.
Tempest stuck her foot in his lap, her worn socks covered with dirt and leaves, her big toe sticking out of the hole. She wiggled her toes.
Dakota rolled his eyes, but he held up the sock to the bottom of her foot to check the fit as if this wasn’t the fourth pair he’d knitted for her. He checked the fit every time, and Tempest wondered, had he done this for Mathias, too? Had he knit socks for his younger brother, and had to check the fit as Mathias had grown?
“It’ll work,” he said. “Take your dirty foot back.”
Tempest grinned and obeyed. “We’re gonna keep him,” she said, slanting a look at Easton, who she could barely see around the crackle of the fire, still bent over his book and studiously ignoring everyone else in the party.
“I guess we’ll have to see which of us is right,” Dakota said, and went back to work on her socks.
Pah.
Tempest already knew what the end result was going to be.
Easton was one of them. He just didn’t know it yet.
***
Universe: Tethers
Characters: Tempest Teapot, Dakota Sorrel, Rathi of the Cinders, Easton
Rating: Tempest is surrounded by pretty people, but Easton is the newest face, and so it must be up to her to make the first overture.
Easton loitered in the periphery of their camp like a stray animal who couldn't decide if he wanted to be kept or not. He sat on a stump, legs curled lotus beneath him, long white braid tucked over a shoulder, studiously ignoring their entire party.
Tempest couldn't stop staring. He was so pretty. Pretty like women were pretty. She didn't know men could be so pretty. She imagined him painted up like a princess, his hair dripping in jewels, his body draped in fine materials, perhaps a dress to swish around his ankles.
Oh, they’d suit him well. He was pretty enough for it.
She gnawed on a strip of dried venison and contemplated their guide. He was tall, too. A little on the thin side. Gods, he had the longest legs, too. They went on for days. He wielded a longbow, which meant he had strong arms and hands. Good for lifting things.
"You're drooling," Dakota said.
"I'm not!" Tempest said.
Except maybe she was. So she wiped at the corner of her mouth.
"He's so pretty," she mumbled around the meat. She shifted her weight, calves aching a bit from the casual crouch she'd dropped into.
"Aye, and likely to bite your head off if you try, so don't bother," Dakota grumbled as he bent over the new pair of socks he was knitting for her.
It was a strange thing. Her socks kept getting holes in them, right at the tip where her big toe was. She went through socks like most people went through... well, something they tend to go through quickly anyway.
"Maybe he's nicer on a one-by-one basis," Tempest contemplated aloud. She sucked her fingers clean. "He just needs to get to know us."
"I don't think that's going to help," Dakota warned, but there wasn't much strength behind it. Just a kind of tired resignation.
Good. He was learning.
Tempest stood up, hissed when her calves protested, and bent over to rub at them. "I'm going to go talk to him," she declared after the initial spasms ended.
Dakota sighed.
Tempest adjusted her clothing, dragged a hand through her hair, and then realized she'd kind of dragged a bunch of jerky-spit through her curls, too. Oops.
"Wish me luck," she said and picked her way through the camp, skirting around the low fire and tossing a wink at Rathi as she passed.
"You beat me to it," Rathi said with a slanted look at Easton, a bit of hunger in her eyes. Tempest couldn't blame her.
He was so damn pretty.
Then again, their whole party was gorgeous. Tempest wondered how she got so lucky to be able to travel with a whole group of pretty, pretty people. She could ogle all day and never get bored, except Dakota. He was pretty in his own way, but Tempest didn’t ogle him. That would be weird, and a little gross.
He was like her little brother. She had to keep an eye on him for his safety, not for ogling him.
"You can have the leftovers," Tempest promised.
Rathi chuckled, and Tempest let her be, approaching Easton without bothering to hide the fact she was doing so. She didn't want to sneak up on him. He seemed like the type to shoot first and ask questions later.
Closer now, she could see he was reading. He balanced easily on the log, and a book was open in his lap. He leaned to the side, one elbow on his knee, chin balanced on his knuckles, and though he looked completely absorbed in the book, Tempest figured he had to be paying attention to his surroundings.
He had to know she was coming.
Still, she tromped extra loud on a few crunchy leaves just to make sure. Easton’s short-sword was within reach, and though she couldn’t see the longbow, she figured it was close at hand and ready to draw in a flash.
“Isn’t it too dim for you to see that?” Tempest asked as she moved to crouch in front of Easton, so that he couldn’t hide from her by looking down.
He turned a page without meeting her gaze. “I have dark-vision,” he said. He had a deep voice, deeper than she would have expected for someone so lithe.
Tempest propped her elbow on a knee and her chin on her palm. “Oh. Well, that’s handy. I wish I had dark-vision.”
He said nothing. He focused on his book as if he thought she’d give up and go away, probably in an annoyed huff. Well, Dakota would. Probably Tyrael, too. Not Tempest though. Her curiosity outweighed all of it.
He had such pretty eyes, too. They were honey-brown, but toward the pupil, they were an amber-red in little uneven spikes. She thought he was maybe a half-elf or something, because he had those slightly pointed ears, and most elves were of the lithe sort.
“Whatcha reading?” Tempest asked. She didn’t understand the fascination with reading herself. Books were boring. Sitting in one place to read a book was even more boring.
There were much better ways to spend her time.
Easton tilted the book so she could see the spine and the cover and the title. Not that it helped. Tempest could read, but not whatever this language was. The writing was broad and looping and the letters made no sense to her.
“Okay, so I can mostly read Common, and I can kinda speak Elvish when someone is talking to me nice and slow, but there’s no way I know what this is,” Tempest said. She could also speak Halfling, but doubted that was relevant.
He lowered the book so it was easier for him to see. “Then you don’t need to know what it is.”
“Wow.” Tempest’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. “You’re nice to look at, but you’re kind of a jerk, aren’t you?”
Easton blinked and finally looked at her. He lifted one sculpted eyebrow -- did he sculpt those himself? “Should I be something else?”
“Huh?”
“We’re strangers,” Easton pointed out. He sounded impatient and put out, like her very presence grated on him. He hadn’t told her to leave yet though so she figured she was winning as long as he didn’t say it outright.
Tempest pushed air through her lips. “So?” She stared at him, like Blizzara used to stare at people who were being rude and ought to know better. “Doesn’t mean you have to be rude about it.”
Easton, without taking his eyes away from her, marked his place in the book and closed it, resting one hand on the cover. “What do you want?”
Ohhh. Progress!
Tempest grinned and rocked a bit where she crouched. “You said it. We’re strangers. How about let’s fix that?”
“And if I’m not interested?” He had a weird way of talking, too, lingering on certain words like someone told him he was supposed to emphasize them, but he kept forgetting which ones it was.
Maybe Common wasn’t his native tongue.
Tempest tilted her head, aiming her left ear toward him so she could hear better. “That would be a shame. I’m a pretty interesting person.”
His lips twitched, like he was fighting off the urge to smile. “An odd one at least.”
“You probably think you’re insultin’ me, but you’re not,” Tempest squinted at him. She swallowed a laugh because she thought that might make him clam back up, and she was already making progress. Besides, looking at him was hardly a trial.
He was just so goddamn pretty.
“I rest my case,” he said, but there was a shadow of a smile in his lips, on the edges. She wondered what he’d look like with a real smile, with his eyes bright from humor or happiness.
Tempest grinned and pointed at his mouth. “I saw that.”
He, however, pretended she hadn’t said anything. He gave her a keen look, like he was measuring her, probably in the same way she’d measured him. “... Tempest, right?”
“You remembered!” Tempest stood up, wincing as her calves protested, and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m proud of you. See, we’re not as much strangers as you thought.”
He rolled his eyes, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased away. He looked at her directly which was nice because Tempest did not want to have to crouch again. Her calves did not like it.
“Now you’re being a smart-ass.”
“What gave me away?”
Easton snorted and sat back a little on the log, looking more engaged this time. “Fine,” he said, with a vague gesture. “What do you want to know?”
Oh, boy. So, so much. But she had to be careful or she’d scare Easton away.
“Hmm.” Tempest tapped her chin before planting her hands on her hips. “What were you reading?”
“It’s a bestiary.”
Tempest blinked. “A what?”
One of Easton’s lips curled with amusement. “Bestiary,” he said, repeating the word slowly. “They’re encyclopedias of various creatures.”
“Does it have pictures?”
“A few.”
Tempest frowned and rocked back and forth on her heels. “I prefer pictures,” she said, and decided to tiptoe into more personal questions, maybe get him to open up. You had to be careful with these stubborn, asshole types. They clammed up faster than a… well, clam. “Where are you from?”
Easton’s lips thinned. His face immediately closed down, and Tempest cursed herself for asking the wrong question. “Nowhere in particular,” he said, and his voice grew thicker, as did his accent, like words were the hardest thing to manage. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Sad past, huh?” Tempest asked, careful to keep her tone light and airy, like she wasn’t really invested in the answer, even though she most definitely was.
Easton squinted. “What makes you say that?”
Tempest tilted her head from side to side, staring up into the canopy of the trees. “Dakota gives me the same answer when I ask him about his hometown. I put two and two together.”
“Perceptive of you,” Easton said.
“I’m a perceptive person!”
“Except for the part where I wanted to be left alone.” Easton picked up his book and brought it into his lap once more, opening it to the marked place.
Damn. She was losing him.
“No one really wants to be alone,” Tempest said, because she knew this to be true. People might say they wanted solitude, but the truth was, they just didn’t want to be hurt anymore, and couldn’t trust the world wouldn’t hurt them.
“I do,” Easton said.
Tempest scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Then you’re lying.”
“Am I.” It wasn’t a question, not the way Easton said it. His head tipped down, back to his book, and Tempest was left looking at the crown of his head, the intricate knot of his long, white braid. She wondered how soft his hair was, or if he liked it being pulled. “We’re done here.”
Tempest opened her mouth to speak, but then snapped it back shut. Easton and Dakota were a lot alike, but she got the feeling, she couldn’t push Easton quite like she pushed Dakota. With Dakota, there was a little kernel of affection she could prod at. Tempest knew the name of that kernel only because Dakota had muttered it in his sleep once.
Mathias.
His little brother. Who Dakota loved above all else.
Tempest knew her existence tapped into the part of Dakota desperate to care for another person, and Tempest was willing to slide into that slot, if it brought Dakota out of his shell.
Easton, however.
Easton would need a different approach.
So Tempest smiled brightly, though Easton wasn’t looking at her. “Alright, well, enjoy your book.”
She left with a parting wave, but Easton didn’t acknowledge her departure. He kept his attention focused on his book as though it held all the mysteries of the universe.
Well, it was a start at least.
Tempest hummed to herself as she traced her route back to Dakota’s side, passing Rathi along on the way and offering her a wink. Rathi gave her a thumbs up, but went back to whatever quiet conversation she was having with Celeste. Tyrael was already asleep, wrapped up in his blanket and curled in the roots of a tree.
Dakota didn’t look up when she approached, but he spoke when she flopped onto the forest floor beside him. “How’d it go?”
Tempest grinned and folded her arms behind her head, looking up at the stars through the canopy of trees. “I’m going to adopt him.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Dakota said, and there was a hint of chastisement in his tone, probably a tone he’d used with his younger brother too many times for him to count.
“Why not?” She slanted him a look, idly noticing that he needed a haircut sooner rather than later. “I adopted you.”
Dakota’s brow furrowed, but then he peered at the yarn wrapped around his fingers, and Tempest assumed he was frowning at a knot. “I am reasonably certain it was the other way around.”
“That’s what you think,” Tempest said.
She watched Dakota for a moment. It never ceased to fascinate her, how deftly his fingers moved, almost too quick to track. How he could take a bundle of colorful yarn and within an hour, a sock had taken shape. She’d always heard orcs were clumsy, brutish creatures, but there’s nothing clumsy about Dakota.
Tempest figured a lot of stories she’d heard about a lot of things were just that – stories. They didn’t often match the reality of a thing.
“He’s lonely,” Tempest added after a minute.
Dakota snorted. “I doubt that very much.”
“He is. He just doesn’t want to admit it, so he’s a jerk to people.”
“What makes you say that?” Dakota asked as he squinted at his work, in much the same way Easton had squinted at the pages of his book.
Tempest crossed one leg over the opposite knee and set her foot to bouncing. “You two are a lot alike.”
Unsurprisingly, Dakota said nothing. His face darkened into a glower, and he sighed, doing something with the yarn in his hands.
He shook out the sock, in all its garish colors because he knew Tempest liked having ridiculous socks. “Let me see your foot,” he finally said.
Tempest stuck her foot in his lap, her worn socks covered with dirt and leaves, her big toe sticking out of the hole. She wiggled her toes.
Dakota rolled his eyes, but he held up the sock to the bottom of her foot to check the fit as if this wasn’t the fourth pair he’d knitted for her. He checked the fit every time, and Tempest wondered, had he done this for Mathias, too? Had he knit socks for his younger brother, and had to check the fit as Mathias had grown?
“It’ll work,” he said. “Take your dirty foot back.”
Tempest grinned and obeyed. “We’re gonna keep him,” she said, slanting a look at Easton, who she could barely see around the crackle of the fire, still bent over his book and studiously ignoring everyone else in the party.
“I guess we’ll have to see which of us is right,” Dakota said, and went back to work on her socks.
Pah.
Tempest already knew what the end result was going to be.
Easton was one of them. He just didn’t know it yet.
