Chapter 478 | Built From Their Memories

Chapter 478: 478 | Built From Their Memories

Aurora had not moved from where we landed. She stood with her arms at her sides and her orange hair catching the gold light like copper wire and her green eyes doing that thing where they stopped being playful and became the other thing, the deeper thing, the one that looked at people and saw straight through every wall they’d ever built. She was staring at the pavilion with an expression I could not read and did not try to.

"Aurora," I said.

"The curtains," she said.

"What about them."

"They’re the same ones from my mother’s restaurant. In Boston. Before she moved us to California." Aurora’s voice was very even and very careful. "White sheer panels, iron hooks. She bought them at a secondhand store in Quincy Market and hung them herself because the landlord wouldn’t fix the windows that let in drafts. I told you about them once. On the ferry. You were eating a sandwich and I didn’t think you were listening."

"I was eating a sandwich," I confirmed. "I was also listening."

Aurora blinked three times in rapid succession and then turned to Addison and said, "I need a minute before I ruin my mascara," and Addison, who understood Aurora better than anyone alive, put a hand on the small of her back without a word.

Belle had not spoken. She stood at the edge of the pavilion where the polished stone met the first step down into the sunken area, and she was running her fingers along one of the iron sconces with the focus of someone appraising a diamond. Her blue hair fell across her face, hiding her expression, which was how I knew her expression was the one she couldn’t afford to show.

"The sconces," she said.

"What about them."

"They’re wrought iron. Hand-forged. The scroll pattern at the base is a specific regional style from Burns, Oregon." She traced the curve with her thumbnail. "My mother had a set. In the kitchen of the house we lost when I was twelve. She sold them at a yard sale for forty dollars because we needed grocery money."

I said nothing.

"You asked me once what my house looked like. I told you about the kitchen because it was the only room I liked." Belle’s voice was the flat, analytical register she used when the alternative was crying. "I described the curtains, the counter, and the sconces. I described the scroll pattern because my mother used to trace it with her finger while she was on the phone. You asked me this during our second extraction, in the Sanctum, while I was wearing cow print and you had your mouth on my—" She stopped. Her shoulders rose and fell once. "You remembered."

"I remember everything you tell me, Belle."

"That’s manipulative."

"It’s true."

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive and you know it." She pulled her hand away from the sconce and finally looked at me, and her amber-brown eyes were wet and furious and something else that the System would probably label with a number I wasn’t going to check right now because some things don’t deserve to be quantified.

Addison walked the perimeter with her combat boots clicking against the stone, her violet contacts scanning the architecture with the intensity of someone casing a building for structural weaknesses. She stopped at the canopy bed and pressed one palm flat against the dark silk sheets, testing the thread count through contact alone.

"The sheets are wrong," she said.

"Excuse me."

"They’re navy. That’s a safe choice. Corporate. You chose navy because you were thinking about what four women would agree on, which is the most boring way to pick a color for anything." She sat on the edge of the mattress and bounced once, testing the give. "I sleep in a coffin-shaped bed with black satin sheets that I special-ordered from a goth home goods website that ships from Romania. My pillowcases have tiny skulls embroidered on the hem. You know this because Aurora told you."

"Aurora told me."

"So why didn’t you make them black with skulls."

"Because this isn’t your room. It’s ours."

Addison’s bouncing stopped. Her hand stilled against the silk.

"Ours," she repeated.

"Four people. Navy is the compromise."

"You compromised your sex dimension for emotional inclusivity."

"Is that a complaint."

"It’s a character assessment." She stood up and walked back toward me, combat boots loud on the stone, and she stopped close enough that I could smell the cherry candy on her breath and see the real brown color of her irises through the violet lenses she’d forgotten to remove. "You built my best friend’s mother’s curtains into your walls. You put Naomi’s ocean underneath us. You forged Belle’s dead mother’s ironwork onto your candle holders. And you picked neutral sheets because you wanted everyone to feel like this was their space." She reached up and flicked the collar of my shirt. "That’s the most manipulative and the most romantic thing anyone has ever done, and I’m going to need you to explain which one it is before I decide whether to hit you or kiss you."

"Can I pick."

"No."

The gold light held steady across the clifftop. The breeze carried jasmine and salt water. Four women stood in a space I had built from their memories in thirty seconds of panic and 4,500 points of survival, and each one wore a different expression that told me exactly the same thing in four different languages.

The System notification pulsed at the edge of my vision.

PRIVATE SANCTUM — GOLD RANK ACTIVE

External Duration: 60:00 minutes remaining.

Internal Duration: 240:00 minutes.

Occupants: 5/5 (Jace Monroe + 4 targets)

Ability Suppression: ACTIVE — configurable.

Time Dilation: 4:1.

Environmental Fidelity: Maximum.

Four hours. In a world I built from love and point expenditure and the specific details of four women’s lives that I had cataloged not because the System told me to but because I wanted to know, because somewhere around week three I stopped treating information as ammunition and started treating it as something worth keeping for its own sake.

I looked at Aurora, who had wiped her eyes and now stood with her chin raised and her shoulders back and her fox-ear party hat somehow still clutched in one hand. I looked at Naomi, backlit by a sunset that would last forever because I asked it to. I looked at Belle, standing guard beside ironwork she thought she’d lost at age twelve. I looked at Addison, who had already started unbuttoning her shirt.

"So," I said. "What theme are we thinking."