Chapter 573 | The Seventh Ring Detonated

Chapter 573: 573 | The Seventh Ring Detonated

"Fox, are you crying over a PDF right now?"

"I’m not crying. The air in my room is extremely dry, and I have very sensitive tear ducts, which is a documented medical condition." She sniffed again and kept going right over me. "Also, she cc’d me on it. She typed my academy email in from memory, Monroe. I never gave Blair Davenport my email address, ever, and she knew it anyway."

I laughed, and it came out a lot softer than I planned.

"She’s been reading the group chat over Misato’s shoulder," I said.

"Obviously she has, and I’ll be billing her for the subscription." Belle’s voice firmed back up into its usual shape, sharp edges and all. "I’m making a new tab for this right now, and you will not ask me what I’m calling it. Go to sleep, and don’t you dare text her something stupid."

She hung up before I could promise anything, which was smart of her, because I was absolutely about to text Blair something stupid.

The phone buzzed in my palm before I got the chance.

PRINCESS: Do not read it yet.

PRINCESS: Fox already sent it to you. I can tell by how quiet your typing bubble is.

I typed back with one thumb while my other hand closed the laptop.

ME: Clause nine broke my clone’s heart. He wants a hearing.

The three dots appeared, vanished, appeared, and vanished again for nearly a full minute.

PRINCESS: Clause nine is the only one I wrote personally. Harrington refused to put "that green idiot" in a binding document.

PRINCESS: The signed copy goes to Ayame tomorrow at breakfast. You will not tell her before I do.

ME: I won’t say a word. Why fifteen, though?

Those dots appeared and stayed for a long time. I watched them blink at me in the yellow lamp glow, and I pictured her up on the hill in her penthouse, red hair falling over my grey crew neck, deleting a whole paragraph and starting it over.

PRINCESS: Because she bled for me for nine years and I paid her back in insults. It was overdue, and I don’t like owing anyone.

PRINCESS: Go to sleep, Monroe.

A gray line flickered at the bottom of my vision while I was still staring at her message.

Resonance load: 8.7 / 9.

The seventh ring flared at the back of my skull, a white burst so bright it made my eyes water, and for once I didn’t bother blaming it on the lamp.

I walked home across a campus so dark and empty it felt like I had the whole island on loan.

The air off the cliffs smelled like salt and wet eucalyptus, and the quad lamps threw long yellow puddles across the paths. Somewhere near the sculpture garden a sprinkler clicked on, and I gave it a respectful nod as I passed, one veteran of the war to another.

Building C was asleep, and I took the stairs because Misato would know somehow if I rode the elevator, and she would add laps.

The apartment was dark when I let myself in. Hikaru’s door was closed, and her tea mug sat upside down on the drying rack where she always left it, rinsed and lined up square to the counter edge. I eased my bag down by the couch as gently as I could, because waking the Ice Prince of Obsidian at two in the morning is how people end up in two pieces.

My bedroom door was open a few inches, and lamplight spilled out of it across the hallway floor.

Naomi was in my bed.

She lay curled on her side under my blanket, wearing one of my old training shirts, the grey one Aurora had threatened to burn twice. It swallowed her to mid-thigh, except it had ridden up in her sleep, and one long brown leg stuck out over the covers all the way to her hip. The skin there was smooth and unblemished, and I could trace the line of it from the curve of her knee up past where the fabric had bunched near her waist.

Her pink and black hair spread loose across my pillow in thick stripes, the colors bleeding together where they overlapped. The shell necklace had slipped around to the back of her neck, and her mouth hung open a little against the pillowcase. Her breathing was deep and even, the sleep of someone who finally felt safe enough to stop watching the door.

She had left the lamp on for me, and that hit me harder than anything in the PDF had.

I stood in the doorway longer than a normal person would, and I didn’t feel even a little bit bad about it. The light made her look softer than she ever did during the day, when she was busy apologizing for taking up space or worrying that someone was going to get hurt because she wasn’t good enough. Right now she just looked like someone who’d finally stopped trying to make herself smaller.

"I can feel you staring at my butt from over there," Naomi mumbled into the pillow without opening her eyes.

"I’m staring at your leg, for the record. Your butt is under the blanket."

"That’s worse somehow, so you’re in trouble twice." She cracked one pink eye open, and it glowed faintly in the lamplight. "You smell like the library and a little like stress. Come here and explain yourself."

I kicked my shoes off and climbed onto the bed beside her, still in my jeans, and she rolled over into my side before I even settled. Her hand found my stomach under my shirt and spread flat, warm against my skin, right where she always put it when she wanted to check that I was still solid.

"Blair’s lawyer sent me a contract," I said.

"Of course he did." She yawned so wide her jaw popped. "Is it a restraining order, or a marriage license?"

"Somewhere in between."