Page 49 of Shadows of Stardust

Our failed attempt at a cuddle on the beach was yesterday afternoon, and nothing has changed since then. No sign of trucein our stalemate. Nothing remotely resembling hope for how this is all going to end.

Sella’s at the end of her rope, and I even spied her speaking with Marva earlier, both their faces creased with disappointment as they studied footage over comms.

Everyone knows it’s over.

It’s only a matter of when they decide to declare time of death.

“Come on,” Roslyn says, turning to head back to the bungalow. “I don’t want to get soaked.”

She stalks off through the jungle, not bothering to see if I follow, and I can’t swallow back my irritation. Not this time. Not when I’ve been trying and she hasn’t given any of this half a chance.

“So this is it, then?” I murmur as I catch up with her, though I hardly care if I’m overhead.

Let them hear. Put the final nail in the coffin and be done with it.

“This is what?” she spits back.

“The end of our charade. Because from where I stand, we might as well go ahead and—”

“Give up if you want. I’d be just fine on my own.”

I’m sure she would be. Just fine, and free to go cause whatever mayhem she intends outside the production zone.

“I doubt that,” I goad. “When I’ve been carrying this team? Putting in all the heavy lifting to endear us to the audience?”

“Are you kidding me? With the pouting and brooding you’ve been doing? Sure, that’s exactly what they’d like to see.”

“As if you’re doing any better.”

She huffs a breath, but doesn’t argue, and I take the imaginary point.

“You might try making a few friends,” Roslyn says under her breath a few minutes later. “Sella told me it’s good for endearing yourself to the audience.”

I lean in close so I can murmur into her ear. “Why would I bother? Sella’s made it more than clear it’s notfriendshipthe audience wants to see. And besides, what use do I have for friends when I’m so clearly, completely, utterly devoted to you?”

Her posture stiffens, and I can nearly feel the irritation rising in her. It’s like a palpable force, her ire, and it makes me a very special kind of fucked up to get a small, dark thrill in provoking it out of her.

Little criminal. She needs to be provoked every once in a while.

Roslyn scowls and opens her mouth, but I cut in before she can speak.

“Forty-five degrees to your right and about a meter and a half up.”

Her eyes dart to the cam I just spotted and, to her grudging credit, her face goes carefully blank for a couple of seconds before it melts into some soft and dreamy human expression I assume is supposed to communicate affection.

It’s rather attractive on her.

To be sure, her soft, blunted features are still strange to behold, but there’s something almost alluring about them like this. Lips curled at the edges and slightly higher on one side than the other, long lashes half-lowered, a certain light shining in her eyes that might be quite disarming if it was ever deployed on a male in earnest.

A hypothetical male, of course.

One who would look at her like a potential partner rather than the confirmed criminal she is.

And it’s a look that’s undercut completely by the absolute venom in her tone when she stops walking and turns her fullattention on me. She leans up on her toes, brushes her cheek to mine, and ghosts her lips close my ear to hiss her reply.

“Is that what this is, Zandrel? Devotion? Because you could have fooled me.”

Roslyn winds her arms around my neck and switches sides, brushing those soft, plump lips over the line of my jaw to speak the rest of her poison into my other ear.

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