Read Novel Full Chapter 366: Too Quiet Without Him
Chapter 366: Chapter 366: Too Quiet Without Him
Astrid let her eyes slide over to Jax, who was suddenly very busy studying the ceiling, the floor, the wine in the glass of lysandra, anything in the entire hall that was not her face.
That alone told her everything she needed to know. She turned back to Roxana, and the smile she wore was the pretty, polite kind that usually came right before somebody lost a limb.
“How generous of you. But you can lay that little burden down. The professor is my problem to manage tonight, not yours. As the host, it would simply break my heart to watch a guest waste her precious evening shackled to a man on my account.”
The premium old wine, which had spent the whole evening quietly climbing the stairs to Roxana’s head, finally kicked the door in and made itself at home.
“Manage him? Hic…” Roxana flapped a loose hand through the air. “You can’t do that, girl. I’m the only one in this whole world who can. He told me so himself, with his very own two lips, that without me hanging around, this sad little creature’s entire life falls to pieces.”
She poured herself against Jax’s side and looped both arms around one of his, her face splitting into a wide, sloppy grin. “And the best part, ohh, the part that made it so delicious, was the pure desperation written all over his face. That’s the thing that drove him to beg me, beg me to come back to his mansion.”
She dropped her voice into a wobbly little impression of him. “‘Roxana, please, I’m nothing but a loser without you.'”
She practically glowed, throwing herself a private little celebration right there on the floor. “Oh, gods. You couldn’t even begin to understand the feeling.”
“Is that so?” Astrid said. There was nothing simple, and nothing safe, in the way she said it.
Jax pried himself loose from Roxana’s grip. “Stop spouting nonsense.”
Roxana pulled a wounded, pouty little face. “There’s no reason to be shy now, Professor. Go on, just admit it. You’ve got a soft side.”
“I really think that’s about enough,” Jax said. “You should head back to—”
Astrid sliced clean across him. “I believe I already told you that I would come back to you. Was that somehow not clear enough?”
All Jax could do was curl his fist at his side and watch, helpless, as the misunderstanding climbed to heights he hadn’t known were physically possible.
Inside his skull, Echidna had been narrating the whole disaster like a woman perched in the front row of her favorite play, and now she leaned in close. ‘Ooh, you’ve got this, Roxana. Now bring out that juicy little story you let slip at breakfast a few weeks back. You know the one. Him, a very naked dragon woman, a very closed door, and enough lewd screaming to wake the whole street. Mm. That ought to light the fuse beautifully.’
‘Why don’t you shut your mouth if all you’re going to be is completely useless,’ Jax snapped back at her. ‘I am one wrong word away from being planted face-first in the host’s backyard, and your grand contribution is to hand the drunk woman a shovel?’
Echidna gasped, deeply wounded. ‘Who said I’m doing nothing? I’ll have you know I am praying for you.’ She cleared her throat and went solemn as a temple bell. ‘Oh, almighty mother, hear the call of thy humble little child, and shower thy blessings upon this doomed fool in his darkest hour…’
Then she brightened all at once, practically buzzing with curiosity. ‘Oh. Oh my. She’s just shown me a vision, Jax. It concerns your future.’
‘What is it?’ Jax asked.
‘A great and terrible loss,’ Echidna said, grave as a funeral. ‘Two dear old friends of yours, parting ways forever. Right around the very spot Astrid keeps glancing at.’
‘I swear, if you had a body of your own, I would—’ Then an idea struck him, and his mouth curved. ‘Actually. Fine. The second that danger comes knocking, I’ll swap myself out and leave you sitting in this body. You can take the pain for me. And you can do every bit of the running that comes after, too. All for my sake.’
Echidna spluttered. ‘Absolutely not. No. No way. You wicked, wicked little man—’
But then Astrid spoke again, and this time there were no filters, no clever traps, no twisting it. “Tell me, Professor Roxana. What is it you feel about Jax? What exactly is your relationship with him? Do you like him?”
Jax knew precisely what she was doing. She was wringing the truth out of Roxana while the woman was too drunk to guard a single word of it.
Roxana mulled it over for several long seconds. “Well… it’s complicated. Hard to squeeze into words, at the very least. But fine. I’ll try.”
She tottered in closer to Astrid, swaying with every step the way only a thoroughly drunk woman can. “I hated him from the very first day. And I still do, just like you, only in my own special way. He’s smug. He’s a schemer. He’s a shameless pervert who throws his attention at every other girl except m—”
Even with her brain doing the backstroke in wine, she snatched the word back before it could escape. “He gets under my skin like nobody else alive. So if what you’re asking is whether I love him, then you’re dead wrong, dear. Why on this green planet would I ever fall for a scum like that?”
Jax beamed on the inside. ‘First time in my whole life I’ve felt this good being insulted straight to my face. I could honestly stand here and applaud.’
Then she stopped. She slid her hand back to her own side and let her gaze drop to the floor. “And yet… I do love it when he’s around. When he’s there, I’ve got something to fight. Something to shove against. A reason to keep my edge sharp. The whole world feels like it’s finally moving again.”
Her face fell at some memory only she could see. “But when he’s gone, it all just… settles. Everything goes still and grey, and I tell myself I’m relieved, that the nuisance is finally out of my hair.” She pulled in a slow breath. “But relief isn’t supposed to sit this hollow in your chest, is it?”
Jax’s smirk drained away. He’d been a fool, leaning on a drunk woman’s loose tongue like it was his escape hatch out of this cursed night. Now he could see just how thin that little thread of hope had always been.
A small, lonely laugh slipped out of her. “Funny, isn’t it? Hating someone, and missing the noise they make, all in the very same breath.”
A silence settled over the three of them. And once more it was Roxana who broke it, her voice snagging on some old ache of her own. “My heart figured it out, you know. Every single time this fool left me sitting there, waiting for him to come back. I can’t say it right, but it was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet you only feel once it hits you that he’s been gone a long, long while. Like when he went and vanished off with you in that demon realm. Or when we tore into each other and split after that stupid argument. Or every time he walks out on his own home just to go sleep in that catfolk hou—”
Jax lunged. His palm clamped down over her mouth before another syllable could slip free, because he knew exactly where that sentence was crawling, and exactly how many graves one drunk little confession could dig.
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[A/N: Gabe_Tilford , Nick207 and Littleboy18794 thank you for the golden tickets, appreciate it 🙏🔥]
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