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“And then he ejaculated, becoming erect and shouting,” Anah read aloud.
The rest of the room turned to stare at her.
“That is not the correct order of operations,” Cadence said, smirking slightly, as Hawthorne started choking on his laughter
Morrigan felt her face heat up and coughed back a laugh. She very deliberately did not make eye contact with anyone.
Thaddea snorted, grabbing Anah’s book, “Gie us. What’s that anyway? Surprised the nuns—”
She trailed off and Morrigan looked up. Everyone was staring at her and she didn’t much like why. “What is it?”
Hawthorne did something very strange with his face while Cadence raised her eyebrows, the smirk now covering half her face. Morrigan had heard of smiles reaching people’s eyes, but not any other facial expression before. “What?”
“Nothing,” Lam said quickly. She grabbed one of the biscuits in the plate, the last chocolate one, Morrigan noted with dismay, and stuffed it in her mouth, as if in an effort to escape interrogation. The crumbs escaped her mouth as she chewed down furiously but no words revealed to Morrigan what in the Seven Silly Pockets she was so worried about.
“Knock it off,” Arch said, clearing his throat. “It’s not that funny.”
“Sure it is,” Thaddea insisted. “Keep going, Anah.”
“Not if you’re not going to take it seriously,” she said, clutching the book to her chest. Her arms covered over the title and name of the author but Morrigan made out the figure of a scantily clad man on the edge of a balcony, and what might have been the train of a dress between them. They were a long way from Teashop Triplets now, weren’t they? “It’s romantic.”
“Is it now?”
Mahir wiped the side of his mouth and straightened his glasses. “Well it’s not sexual, Thaddea. Language evolves. Two hundred years ago, people would have had a very different idea about what words meant what, and erect and ejaculate—” The rest of his words were lost under a cacophony of snickering teenagers. Morrigan had to cover her mouth a little, but the laughter was infectious and she soon lost herself to it, rolling over her body like a tsunami that wouldn’t let her go.
She heard a crash, but it was just Hawthorne, rolling around on the ground, his hands clutched to his chest as he chortled like his life depended on it while Cadence looked on in mild disgust, amusement dancing in her eyes however. She looked over at Morrigan and winked, sending some feeling of apprehension and excitement through her at the same time.
By the time they had all regained their sanity, two cups of tea (cold, thankfully) had spilled onto the floor (stone, to their relief) and six biscuits smashed. Francis’ face was the picture of consternation at the sight but he just sighed and put the kettle back onto the fire anyway.
His family’s basement kitchen reminded Morrigan of the kitchen in Crow Manor, but instead of fear or regret or guilt that she had felt every time someone or something had showed up wrecked or ruined or dead, she was surrounded by her friends, her family, and she wouldn’t be away from them for a very long time, she hoped.
She settled back down on the work surface, her legs swinging as she accepted her fresh cuppa, Cadence perching beside her. Asparagus hoovered up the biscuits below them, but Francis said that whatever was in them was alright for him to have so she didn’t bother coaxing it out of his mouth.
“What is it then?”
“What’s what?” her face was completely innocent. Morrigan didn’t buy it for a second.
“Why were you so giggly at me?”
“Was not. It was just funny. I mean, completely juvenile, but—”
“Cadence.”
She rolled her eyes. Morrigan wondered, if, like Arch, Cadence had a “second knack”. “Don’t ruin my fun.”
“I’m not, I just want to know. I wasn’t sitting so close to Anah, I couldn’t see.”
“What’re you guys being so cosy about?” Hawthorne said. He’d given up on tea altogether, and judging from the white liquid that was currently congregating on his upper lip, had moved onto milk.
“What was so funny about the book, to do with me?” Morrigan said, her voice a little more prim than she had meant it to be.
He snorted, “Cadence, don’t be such a spoilsport.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m just trying not to embarrass anyone.”
“I don’t care,” Hawthorne said. “She deserves to know. Oi, Anah! Give us the book.”
“Are you just going to make fun of it?” she asked, sounding tired and a little put out.
“No,” he said. “I just want to show Morrigan part of it.”
She handed it over without further complaint or comment. It was old, probably from a second hand bookshop — Morrigan knew that Cadence had started dragging Anah out on her days off from hospital volunteering — with yellowed pages and a spine that had been broken more times than Cadence and Hawthorne and had broken rules at Wunsoc. Combined.
She scanned her eyes over the cover, relieved to see it was not Madeline Malcontent — though her Unit wouldn’t have been laughing at her for that. Along with the ill-dressed man she had spotted earlier, sporting an undue amount of chest hair, the woman in the shadows of the balcony art was clutching at her breast, holding her dress up to herself, a sheen of sweat glistening, which didn’t even make sense with the lighting of the picture.
Sienna Suffering: A Tale from the Silverborn Saga by Hilare de Boer.
Of course. She couldn’t even get away from that series now. “Have you read this one, Cadence?”
“’Course,” she said. “It’s not a mainstream one, although it does predate the book about Gigi Grand, so your aunt probably wrote it, rather than Tobias. It’s got a certain reputation.”
“For?”
Hawthorne snorted, “Do you really need to ask. Didn’t you hear Anah?”
“But Mahir said—”
“Not that scene,” Cadence said. “But ah— yes.”
She couldn’t get the book out of her hands fast enough. “Thanks, Anah. Please don’t tell me anything that happens in this.”
She nodded, her curls bobbing.
“Anah?” Thaddea asked suddenly. “This book… what would the nuns say? If they saw you with it, I mean?”
She stiffened, a rod put all the way through her spine. “Well, Thaddea, if they ever find out, and if I find you had anything to do with them finding out?”
“What?”
“I will take my scalpel. I will sterlise the room correctly and make sure nobody is nearby that might find us. I will put you under local anesthetic. And I will remove all your non-vital organs while you watch, make a cup of tea, then move onto the vitals. If you act to separate me from this book or any like it, I will hold your beating heart in front of your face, and I will crush it irreparably.”
The room fell to a standstill. Cups of tea and jugs of milk clattered to the ground. Morrigan heard one great intake of breath across the kitchen and realised that she was partaking in that gasp.
But Thaddea was smiling, a sly grin climbing its way up her face, twisting a tendril of hair around her finger as she looked at her. “Naturally, Doctor Kahlo. I’ll consider it a date.”