Luke stood still, surprised. Eve was looking at him anxiously, and for the first time, he didn't know how to respond.
She was saying that she... liked Michael.
She liked him? What did that even mean?
Evelyn did not like people. She wasn't one of those girls who you could just get a drink and they'd fall for you, or with you as the case may be, and she wasn't even someone who would accept someone else's friendship.
At this school, people had tried to befriend her, but she had never liked any of them. She just played nice, and that only because Luke told her to. She had thought that she liked people a few times, and had tried dating them, but it never worked out, because they were just too different.
This couldn't be the same thing happening with Michael, though. Eve tended to cling to people when they accepted her into their groups and made overt attempts to gain her favor or treat her well. Luke wasn't blind. He knew that she was too easy to sway by simply showing genuine appreciation for her. But Michael hadn't done that. So how had this happened?
"Explain," Luke said in an even tone. Eve still wilted a little.
"I didn't mean it like that," Luke said. "Just... explain."
He often used the word "explain" to mean "tell me what you're thinking so that I can tell you how you're wrong", but not this time. This time, he genuinely wanted to know what was going on.
"I... bit him," she admitted, looking down and flinching slightly.
Luke had never hurt her, unlike every other one of her masters. But clearly she wasn't thinking about that. After all, she associated disobeying with physical punishment, so of course she would flinch.
Luke didn't say anything. That obviously couldn't be the whole story. He had a hard time believing that after all of his warnings and all of her growth, she would just walk up to him and bite him.
She was also waiting, but for a different reason. So Luke had to prompt her.
"You bit him. Why? What happened?" This time, the flinch likely was Luke's fault, though probably not entirely. He never raised his voice, so being around him, if you wanted to know if he was upset, you only had his words to go off of. And when people worded questions the way that he just had, they were generally upset. Then, of course, it circled back to the punishment thing. A mistreated animal hates people.
They hadn't been together for that long, all things considered, so she wasn't close enough to him to know his tells. Luke still wasn't entirely sure that he had them. His mother had used to tell him that he did, and that she knew them, but he wasn't sure whether or not to believe her. She had always been too kind a soul. She hadn't deserved to live in this world. She hadn't deserved to live with a son like him. A son that didn't need her, that could provide for himself.
They had had their own small jokes, and she had understood his affection.
But throughout his childhood, Luke had always known that prosperity wasn't happiness. He had been able to earn enough money for his mother to live comfortably, although he had taken nearly a month to convince her to quit her jobs. She loved helping people, so she had continued being a server at the same inn she had always worked at,but she had eventually left the other three. Not even Luke was insane enough to try to get her to quit that one. The owner was the worst out of all of them, but her passion was direct service.
Now, Luke's life felt... empty.
Like all of the noise had left it.
He had his goal, his checkmate in sight, and he could see the path clearer than ever.
So why did each step along it seem like another away from everyone else? What was the checkmate anyway? He had been able to see it since he was a child, but he never felt it anymore.
It used to be a beat, akin to his heart, that burned in his chest alongside it. A fire that slowly pulsed like an undulating serpent.
Now what was it?
Now it was the cold embrace of logic.
Luke didn't love logic, because there was no love in logic. That was a simple truth.
So then what did he love? Was he even capable of it anymore?