Page 220 of Axis of Fire

“So tell me...”

“How often have I been wrong about people?”

She looked at him expectantly.

Silence followed.

Along with an entire emotional crisis playing out across Tarven’s face.

God.

He and Airis were complete opposites.

Airis would rather eat a live worm than openly admit what he was feeling.

Tarven, meanwhile, practically wore every emotion on his face without even trying.

“And you stole my sigil case,” he muttered at last, noticeably calmer now.

“You barely use it anyway,” Stasia replied.

“Another few months and people would've assumed a corpse was still paying taxes.”

“Finish your food.”

Tarven remained standing beside our round table.

“Then we’re going back to Isthmond.”

“You don’t want anything?” Stasia asked sweetly.

“I’m buying.”

She held up Tarven’s stolen sigil case.

Swearing under his breath, he immediately snatched it out of her hand.

“You know,” she added casually, nodding toward the button embedded in the center of the table, “before you started talking, you forgot to press it.”

“What if someone had overheard us?”

“Good thing you turned it on before I got here,” Tarven muttered.

“I couldn’t hear a damn thing you two were talking about.”

I made a mental note to learn more about devices like that.

It was an incredible invention.

“And did you really have to pick this place?” Tarven grimaced, looking around the bar.

“I always knew people who went to daytime discos were insane.”

“I just never expected you to become one of them.”

“One of us,” Stasia corrected immediately.

Tarven only sighed.