Probably not.
“You just want to suck up,” Brayan jibes.
“I don’t! This is aboutfairness. We all work hard protecting the king. How come Ari gets to socialize with Jared and the rest of us don’t?”
The sound of a clearing throat gets my attention, and I glance up to see Eoin in the doorway, back from his meeting. My face automatically settles into a glare. This is all his fault—him and his big mouth that couldn’t resist asking me about dinner when other people were around. “What, exactly, are you talking about?”
Niamh falls all over herself to explain, and I go back to the reports I’m reading. Eoin had better deal with this.
“So to sum up,” he says slowly when she’s done, “you want to tell the consort that hehas tosocialize with you.”
The sound that comes from Niamh is almost worth the headache she’s been giving me for the past half hour.
“No! No, I would never. I just…” She seems to realize there’s nowhere for that sentence to go and huffs. “Fine. Of course we’d never force the consort to hang out with us. But Ari needs to show some discretion and politely refuse if he’s invited. It’s unprofessional.”
That gets her a sideways look from me. She wants to talk about professionalism and discretion?
But she’s already shaking her head. “Yeah, I know… I heard it. It’s still not fair, though.”
I held out through the cajoling, the scolding, and the order-giving, but her unhappy pout is what gets me. I genuinely like my teammates, and we get along well. I don’t want to be the reason the vibe gets messed up.
“It was incidental,” I tell her, and the way everyone else in the room perks up, their attention swiveling toward us, is a little disconcerting,. “Felix invited me because he had some news he wanted to update me on, but he already had plans with Dáithí and Consort Jared. I just tagged along.”
The split second of dead silence alerts me to my fuckup.
“Felix invited you?”
Belatedly, I remember that when Eoin asked me about dinner the other day, he only said, “I heard you had dinner with Dáithí and Jared—” before I cut him off. Felix’s name didn’t come up and definitely not in the context that he and I might be more than casual professional acquaintances.
Until now.
“Who’s Felix?” someone else asks.
“Wait, is this hockey player Felix?” Brayan demands. “The guy you accused of murder?”
The whole room turns to look at him. “The what?” Eoin shakes his head. “Nobody was accused of murder, and I’m signing you up for a training unit.”
“In what?”
“I don’t know yet, but if you remember the situation as Ari accusing someone of murder, you need more training.”
“What did he accuse him of, then?” Brayan’s sulky tone would make me laugh, except somehow my life is the center of their attention, and I fucking hate it.
“Do we really need to talk about this?”
“Yes,” a bunch of voices say, and I sigh.
“But not about history,” Niamh tacks on. “Brayan, I’ll update you later. I want to know how Ari went from barely knowing this guy and not liking him to being invited to dinner so they can catch up on life.”
“It wasn’t…” Fuck. How do I get out of this? “I apologized ages ago. He accepted. Now we see each other when I’m at the Warhammers’, and we’re f-friendly. That’s all.”
“Friendly,” Brayan repeats. “That’s not the F-word I was expecting you to use.”
“Okay,” Eoin interrupts as the hoots and lewd laughter break out. “This conversation has officially crossed the line into inappropriate for the office. Leave Ari alone. He’s allowed to have friends, and you all have work to do.”
With minor grumbles, everyone disperses, and I go back to staring at my screen. I’d be grateful to Eoin, except he could have stopped them sooner and didn’t. Plus, it’s still all his fault.
My phone ringing is a welcome interruption, and I grab it like a lifeline, not bothering to look at the screen. “Ari Oensjord.”
