Chapter 474 | Prove It

Chapter 474: 474 | Prove It

Aurora sat up, cross-legged, and clapped her hands together with the energy of a general who’d just found a new weapon. "Okay. New game. Better game. This settles a very important question."

"There’s no important question," I said.

"There’s a very important question." Aurora’s grin sharpened into something that made the graft in my chest sit up and pay attention. "We’ve all been with him. All four of us. In different ways. Different times. Different levels of trench coat." She counted us off on her fingers, and I braced for wherever this was going, which was nowhere good. "And I want to know who his little man likes best."

The room detonated.

"His WHAT," Belle said.

"You did not just say little man," Naomi said, mortified and delighted in equal measure.

Addison sat up so fast her boot fell off the couch cushion. "Oh, I am absolutely in for this."

I put my head in my hands. "I’m going to need everyone to know that I’m right here."

"We know." Aurora patted my knee. "That’s the point."

Belle had recovered from her scandalized state and shifted directly into strategy, which was somehow worse. "How would we even measure that? There’s no objective metric."

"We ask him," Aurora said, like it was obvious.

"He’ll lie," Addison said. "Look at his face. He’s already lying and he hasn’t said anything."

"That’s just his face," Naomi said, defending me on reflex, which was the sweetest and least helpful thing anyone had done all night.

"That’s a diplomat’s face," Belle corrected. "He’s calculating how to answer without dying."

She wasn’t wrong. I was, in fact, running through every possible answer and finding that all of them ended with me on fire, either literally in Blair’s case, except Blair wasn’t here, thank god, or metaphorically in the case of the four women currently deciding my evening.

Six weeks ago I would have played this. Snake Eyes on each of them, read the attraction percentages, said whatever moved the numbers, treated the whole thing like a game to win.

Now I looked at them and the numbers didn’t matter. Naomi at ninety-seven with her mother’s necklace and her fake garden and her Sunday boba. Aurora at eighty-four, who’d threatened to burn down a guild for me. Belle at eighty-nine, who wrote coroner’s reports at three in the morning because she couldn’t sleep. Addison at seventy-eight, who’d walked through a lobby in a coat because a nurse told her I was dying.

Four rings on a crystal plate in a workshop in Santa Barbara, each one a different color, each one keeping me alive.

"You’re doing the thing," Aurora said.

"What thing?"

"The thing where your face goes soft and you think we don’t notice." She leaned in, and her hair fell across one shoulder, and her green eyes went from playful to something that pinned me to the chair. "Answer the question, Jace. Who does he like best?"

"I refuse to dignify—"

"Drink," all four said at once.

"That’s not how the amendment works."

"It’s exactly how it works," Belle said. "You’re dodging. Dodging is lying by omission. Drink."

I drank. The cider had gone warm. I set the glass down and looked at the four of them, and the graft pulsed in my chest, warm and full and disgustingly pleased with itself.

"Here’s my answer," I said.

They leaned in. Even Addison, who was pretending not to care and doing a terrible job.

"He doesn’t have favorites," I said. "He’s very egalitarian. Deeply progressive. A champion of equality."

Silence.

Then Addison laughed, ugly and real, the kind of laugh she saved for when someone actually surprised her. "That’s the worst answer I’ve ever heard."

"It’s a diplomatic answer," Belle said, but her mouth was fighting a smile.

Naomi had gone red to her ears, but she was grinning behind her hands. Aurora looked at me like she wanted to take me apart in front of everyone and might, later, given the trench coat precedent.

"We’re not accepting that answer," Aurora announced. "New rules. Empirical testing."

"Absolutely not," I said.

"You don’t get a vote. Guest of honor. Zero rights." Belle flipped to a new notebook page and started drawing what looked like a bracket. "We do this scientifically."

"You’re not building a tournament bracket."

"I’m building a tournament bracket."

Addison retrieved her lollipop from wherever it had landed, inspected it, and put it back in her mouth. "I nominate myself for the first round."

"You nominate yourself for everything," Aurora said.

"Because I win everything."

"You lost at Clash Legends. To him."

Addison pointed the lollipop stick at me with murder in her contacts. "That’s classified information."

"We beat you at your own game," I said. "In your own apartment. Both of us."

"CLASSIFIED."

Naomi was laughing openly now, the whole-body kind, leaning against Aurora’s shoulder. Aurora had one arm around her without seeming to notice she’d done it. Belle was drawing a bracket with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb, tongue between her teeth, and every few seconds she’d glance up at me to make sure I was appropriately uncomfortable.

I was. I was very appropriately uncomfortable, and the graft in my chest was practically vibrating with joy, because apparently the divine parasite that fed on human connection considered a birthday party full of women arguing about my anatomy to be a five-course meal.

The old man had built a system that ran on love. Yumi said the weapon got stronger the more people cared. And here I was, six days on the clock, sitting in a chair at a farm-themed party while four women I’d started as targets and ended as something else entirely built a competitive bracket to determine my preferences.

Six weeks ago I was dying alone in an amphitheater with seventy-two hours and a spreadsheet.

"Fine," I said, and leaned back in the chair, and let the smirk come because I’d earned it. "Empirical testing. But I want it on the record that this is the most unhinged birthday party in the history of San Nicolas Academy."

"It’s not your birthday," Naomi said.

"It’s my ’didn’t die’ party. Same energy."

"Better energy," Aurora said. "Birthdays are annual. Not dying is a daily miracle in your case."

Belle finished her bracket and held it up. Four names in four boxes, feeding into a single line at the bottom that just said WINNER with a small crown drawn next to it.

"I object to being an outcome," I said.

"Objection noted and dismissed." Belle set the notebook on the coffee table between the cake and the coffee jelly pyramid. "First round. Aurora versus Addison. Because they’re the loudest and I want them out of the way."

Aurora and Addison looked at each other across the carpet.

Something ancient and competitive passed between them, two years and four months of friendship compressed into a single glance, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I’d just become the trophy in a fight between the two most dangerous women in the room.

"Oh, this is going to be a disaster," Naomi whispered.