A Little Day Drinking

[Nesrin Aziz]

Ah. So Cade hadn’t resisted the arrest. The actual story was predictably underwhelming and Nesrin only smirked. She hadn’t thought the monster line was true, but she listened with slightly more interest when it seemed he was declaring it wasn’t his lie. He seemed too earnest for straight dishonesty, but she found it curious. She’d seen strange things at Almaz, and stranger things in dreams, but what he described sounded almost fairytale. Given what Zigzag said about hosts, it made her wonder exactly what she might be dealing with with The Emissary. Nesrin suppressed a shiver with the last of her cocktail, compartmentalising the concern for later.

She ought to have felt some empathy for his story; she was younger when her own mother died, and the chasm of her absence shaped much of her early life. Given how she’d felt when Brandon accidentally revealed Nesrin hadn’t even properly known her own mother’s name, the loss was still as sharp, however buried. Inside was a burn for answers she sometimes denied and sometimes embraced. But beyond what she’d already shared, matters of parentage were really not what she wanted to think about right now either. Instead she welcomed Anna’s return with more drinks with a grin, and curled back comfortably in her chair.

As she pressed the fresh glass to her lips she glanced at Elyse over the rim, sharing a small smile for how Anna used the opportunity to move a little closer to Cade.

“The dancers use it on stage at Kallisti? How do they do that? Can you show us anything?” she asked curiously of Anna.