Evander's POV
"Make you feel alive?" I repeated slowly. My brow arched, voice low enough to silence the last whisper of movement in the hall. "Odette, the only thing outside that will make you feel alive is the cold, not the tea."
Her lips parted—a sharp inhale, scandalized. "So you admit your tea is dead?"
I stared at her. "That's not what I said."
"Yes, it is," she argued immediately, chin tilting up like a defiant child who thought she'd just cracked some great philosophical code. "You said the tea won't make me feel alive, meaning it's lifeless, meaning it's dead."
Gods help me.
From the corner of my eye, Rook had turned toward the wall, the coward, pretending to check some map that no longer existed. The other men were frozen in that tense, horrified stillness—the kind that meant they were actively trying not to breathe too loudly.
"I didn't say that," I repeated. "You're twisting my words."
