Claimed By Silver

Chapter Twenty-Five: An Ordinary Evening

Freya’s POV

I pick the restaurant carefully — somewhere warm, unpretentious, the kind of place that won't feel like a performance for either of them. Naomi arrives first, visibly nervous in a way she tries to hide behind extra enthusiasm, smoothing her dress twice before we've even ordered drinks.

"I've built him up so much in my head," she admits, "I'm worried he can't possibly live up to it."

"He'll surprise you," I say, and mean it more than she probably realizes.

"You've been so cagey about him for months, Freya. I've imagined everything from a married man to some kind of cult leader at this point. My expectations are genuinely all over the place."

"He's neither of those things," I say, laughing despite the small, private irony of just how far from ordinary the truth actually sits.

Sterling arrives a few minutes later, and I watch Naomi's whole demeanour shift the moment she sees him — not just his obvious handsomeness, though I catch her eyes widen slightly at that too, but something in the careful, deliberate way he crosses the room toward us, like a man who's decided this dinner matters enough to take seriously.

"Naomi." He extends a hand, warm despite his usual reserve. "Freya's told me a great deal about you. I understand I have you to thank for six years of loyalty most people don't manage to offer anyone."

Naomi blinks, visibly charmed, shaking his hand. "She talks about me?"

"Constantly. You're the person she trusts most in this world. I take that seriously." He settles into the seat beside me, and something in his easy warmth toward her — no performance, no calculation, just genuine appreciation for someone who's mattered to me — makes my chest ache pleasantly.

Dinner unfolds more easily than I expected, Sterling navigating Naomi's rapid-fire questions with a patience and dry humour that clearly wins her over course by course.

"Okay, but where are you actually from?" Naomi asks, refilling her wine. "Freya's been suspiciously vague about that."

"Old family," Sterling says smoothly, the answer we'd rehearsed together beforehand. "We've been in this city longer than most records account for. I travel a great deal for work, which accounts for some of the mystery, I imagine."

"What kind of work?"

"Family business. Property, mostly. Old money doing what old money does — managing itself carefully across generations." He delivers it without a flicker of hesitation, and I marvel, not for the first time, at how easily he navigates ordinary human deception when the stakes actually matter to him.

"That explains the watch," Naomi says, gesturing at his wrist. "I noticed it the second you sat down. That's not a normal-person watch, Freya."

"He has expensive taste," I say, laughing.

"I have taste, generally," Sterling corrects, mock-serious. "It simply happens to align with expense more often than either of us would probably prefer."

Naomi laughs properly at that, some of her earlier nervousness fully dissolving. "Okay, tell me something real, then. Not the polished version. What's it actually like, dating someone as intense as I imagine you probably are?"

Sterling considers the question seriously, glancing at me briefly before answering. "Humbling, mostly," he says. "I've spent a great deal of my life believing I understood exactly what I wanted and how best to control the circumstances around getting it. Freya has a habit of making that particular confidence look foolish. I've had to relearn several things about myself since meeting her."

"That's a diplomatic way of saying she's stubborn," Naomi says, grinning at me.

"I would never use the word stubborn," Sterling says, entirely straight-faced. "I'd say resolute. Occasionally to the point of putting herself in situations that terrify me. But resolute, certainly."

"That's definitely stubborn," Naomi says, laughing, and I find myself laughing too, delighted by the ease of it, the way Sterling's dry humour slots so naturally into the rhythm Naomi and I have built over years of easy friendship.

I watch the two of them fall into an easy rhythm over the next hour — Naomi peppering him with questions about his family, his opinions on everything from restaurants to books, testing him the way any good friend tests a partner they're deciding whether to trust. Sterling meets every question with the same careful, genuine attention, clearly determined to earn her approval rather than simply charm his way past her scrutiny.

"What do you actually think of her art?" Naomi asks at one point, gesturing vaguely in my direction. "Honestly. Not the boyfriend answer."

"I think she has an eye most people spend a lifetime trying to develop and never manage," Sterling says, without hesitation. "I watched her place a single sculpture at that spring show in a spot that transformed the entire room around it. I've been alive considerably longer than either of you, and I don't believe I've seen many people with that particular instinct."

I feel warmth spread through my chest at that, unexpected and lovely, and Naomi catches my expression, something soft crossing her own face in response.

"Okay," Naomi says finally, near the end of the meal, studying him with the frank appraisal she reserves for verdicts she's actually decided on. "I like him."

"High praise," Sterling says, glancing at me with quiet amusement.

"Don't get used to it. I reserve the right to revoke it if you ever hurt her." Naomi says it lightly, but there's real steel underneath it, the particular protectiveness of six years of friendship speaking plainly.

Something flickers behind Sterling's eyes — old guilt, maybe, some memory of the knife, of the night he pinned me against a wall in anger before catching himself. "I intend to spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that trust," he says, quiet and serious enough that Naomi's teasing expression softens into something more genuine.

"Good answer," she says, and raises her glass toward both of us. "To whatever this actually is. I don't need all the details, apparently, but I'm glad you have it, Freya. You deserve exactly this."

We toast, and I feel something in my chest settle more fully than it has in months — not just Sterling and Naomi getting along, but the simple, ordinary miracle of being allowed to sit at a dinner table with the two people I love most, pretending, for one evening, that my life is simple enough to hold both of them at once.

Later, walking Naomi to her car, she pulls me into a tight hug, uncharacteristically emotional.

"I haven't seen you like this in years," she says quietly. "Not since before all the — everything. The men. The grief. I don't know everything that's going on with him, Freya, and I get the sense there's a lot you're not telling me. But whatever it is, it's clearly worth it. You look like yourself again. More than yourself, actually. Happier than I've seen you since we were kids."

"Thank you," I say, throat tight with unexpected emotion. "For being patient. For giving him a chance tonight, even without knowing everything."

"I trust you," she says simply. "I've watched you survive things nobody should have had to survive, alone, for six years. If you're finally letting someone all the way in, I'm not going to be the person standing in the doorway asking too many questions. I'm just going to be glad for you."

"I love you, you know," I say. "For all of it. Every year you didn't push, every time you let me lie about being fine and just showed up anyway."

"I love you too, idiot." She squeezes my hand once, hard, before letting go. "Now go home to your suspiciously wealthy, suspiciously intense boyfriend, and text me tomorrow so I can properly interrogate you about everything I was too polite to ask tonight."

I hug her again, harder, grateful in a way I don't fully have words for, and watch her drive away before returning to where Sterling waits, leaning against his car with an expression of quiet, contented warmth I've rarely seen on him before tonight.

"She's wonderful," he says, as I approach. "I understand now why you've held onto her so carefully, all these years."

"She's the reason I survived at all, some days." I lean into him, exhausted in the good way, the particular tiredness that comes from an evening spent simply being happy rather than surviving something. "Thank you for tonight. For taking it seriously. For actually trying, instead of just performing what you thought I needed."

"I wasn't performing," he says, echoing what he told me weeks ago at the gallery opening. "I like her, Freya. Genuinely. I understand why she matters to you, and I intend to make sure she continues having reasons to trust me, for however long this life gives us."

"That's not a small thing you promised her tonight," I say quietly, as we settle into the car. "Being worthy of her trust. That's a long commitment for someone who's still figuring out what he owes me some days."

"I meant every word of it," Sterling says, starting the engine, glancing at me with a seriousness that steadies something in my chest. "I've spent months learning what I owe you, Freya. I don't intend to stop learning simply because tonight went well."

We drive back to my apartment in comfortable silence, and I let myself sit in the simple, ordinary contentment of the evening — no Council hearings, no assassins, no old rivals with calculated beauty and decades of unrequited longing. Just dinner with the two people I love most, and the quiet, fragile hope that maybe, finally, we've earned a stretch of peace substantial enough to actually last.