Chapter 24: Grinning Into My Toast

Miss Vale opened the office beside the yoga studio so Anika could finish her call away from the hallway. Dante followed Anika inside at her request and waited beside the desk while she asked her father exactly what his office had paid for, finding it hard to look away when she kept mentioning her brother’s restraint.

Her father said the family funded medical equipment through the trust, not compulsory support work. He would send the agreements to their lawyer, which was something investigators could check without requiring Anika to choose between loving him and believing a denial.

Dante offered to stay, and she told him to stop looking at her like something expensive had cracked. He admitted he would usually have guessed expensive, earning a tired laugh before she sat close enough for their sleeves to touch.

"I don’t need you to fix my family," she said, keeping him beside her with a hand on his sleeve. "You can stop planning a speech and sit with me for five minutes."

He asked whether she wanted him closer, and Anika pulled his sleeve until their shoulders met. "There, you’ve survived asking," she said. He stayed for the five minutes while Miss Vale arranged escorts, discovering that silence could be something they shared.

Mrs. Han met them at residence in a long honeycomb-patterned dress, knitted flowers framing her badge. She checked Dante’s replacement pass, then jumped when the desk bell rang behind her and complained that enchanted objects enjoyed workplace harassment.

Anika explained the original pass remained isolated in the laboratory. Mrs. Han compared the new one with her list, showing a gold tooth when she approved it, and said visitors would now wait downstairs rather than wander toward bedrooms.

When he asked about the little hoof-shaped rune on her desk, she explained that she made the stamps herself. Her orc and deer parents had disagreed about almost everything except feeding guests, apparently leaving her with a talent for care and a startle response that the doorbell found hilarious. Behind her, a tray of glass potion bottles sat wrapped in thick padding, ready to ship, as though she trusted delivery companies considerably less than runes.

She showed him a stopper that changed color when properly sealed, then reminded him that knowing how an object worked was more helpful than deciding it looked mysterious. He reluctantly considered applying that advice.

Posey carried Dante’s bag to his door while Anika asked about access to Jett’s room. He wanted to invite Posey inside, but his attempt to sound respectable became an offer to inspect his sleeping arrangements.

"I’ve already seen your bed," she said, blushing while he considered walking into the door. They agreed on breakfast instead, and she touched his sleeve before leaving with the desk escort, making tomorrow feel like something he had been invited into.

At sixteen, he had asked a girl to lunch and believed her when she said yes. The next day, her friends had laughed while she explained that accepting had been a joke, and he had spent the rest of the school year eating in a bathroom stall.

He still had friends, including the one he trusted with his location on Friday, but that didn’t stop a room full of strangers from feeling like a test. He set his alarm early enough for breakfast with Posey, then put his phone down before he could turn her invitation into another reason to worry.

Posey had saved him the seat beside her on Tuesday morning, and her smile when he arrived made getting up early seem like his first sensible decision all week. She moved her bag off the chair and waited until he sat before asking how Bell’s exercise had worked, listening over her toast as though his answer was worth hearing.

When he used his good hand to show how the ring had moved, she leaned closer to follow the small motion, her sleeve brushing his arm and her knee resting against his beneath the table. He lost his place halfway through explaining it, suddenly aware of her blue eyes on him and how little space separated their faces.

"Was that the difficult part, or did I distract you?" she asked, glancing down at their knees before looking back at him with pink cheeks. "I can move a little, if you need me to."

"You can stay, but I might need a second attempt at the explanation," he admitted, and she smiled before asking him to start with the part that had made him proud. Her knee stayed against his while he answered, leaving him pleased enough to grin into his toast and filthy enough to be grateful that she couldn’t read minds.

By noon, Jett returned under supervised residence care, wearing a loose red shirt over stocky shoulders and complaining that medical had confiscated his compliment-whistling pen.

Anika said that must have made it wonderfully quiet. Jett handed Mrs. Han a honey drink as thanks for checking his room, and she accepted it while making clear that bribery did not cancel the nurse’s instructions.

Once Mrs. Han finished checking Jett in, they joined the other students in the residence common room downstairs from the bedrooms, where Mr. Glint had claimed a sofa for the film. He wore his dressing gown and enormous glasses, with long rabbit ears folded behind the frames and delicate patterned membranes visible at his wrists as he held out a hand for honey.

Posey quietly explained the rabbit and lotus-bug mix while Dante tried remembering whether his old biology course had covered anything useful. Glint warned them that discussing his ancestry wasn’t payment for his services.

Jett supplied the honey and requested heroic men appreciated by their families. Anika recommended fiction while Posey made room beside her, and Dante sat down before overthinking turned a sofa into another entrance examination.

In the film, a knight dropped to one knee to propose, and the woman climbed onto his horse and rode away before he finished asking. "He hasn’t even married her, and she’s already taken half his stuff," Jett said, while Dante felt better about his own awkward breakfast. Beside him, Posey opened a pudding from the table, took a spoonful and grew luminous blue freckles.

Lucan appeared carrying seedlings, recognized the empty lid and looked wounded for a reason unrelated to Dante. It was his competition pudding, marked beneath the tub because the gardening club’s enchanted labels disliked condensation.

Posey apologized with such misery that Dante offered to find a replacement, but Lucan said it came from a town bakery. Rhea arrived in time to confirm the harmless color charm and remind Jett his aftercare ban included testing products on visitors.

"We’ll replace it after Thursday tennis," Posey promised, writing the bakery name down rather than expecting her smile to solve everything. Lucan accepted, confirmed the court after football practice and took his seedlings to Bell’s gardening club.

Dante liked her more for looking embarrassed and doing something about it. Jett whispered that the freckles improved visibility during kissing, earning a cushion from Anika and a warning from Glint that his audience was competing with the dialogue.

Miss Vale arrived with Iris, the archive assistant who had helped check Jett’s false withdrawal papers. Dante recognized her round glasses as she asked whether Jett felt ready to formally identify the laundry staff member, and his friend’s jokes stopped when he agreed to speak with them. He went into the adjoining room with Anika, leaving Dante and Posey beside the muted film.

Afterward, Iris said the staff member admitted following trust transport instructions. Mercer and Ryker had lost access to patients and relevant systems while investigators checked their roles, which wasn’t proof that every suspicion about either man was correct.

They wanted Dante at Wednesday’s controlled theater examination to identify recordings, with Bell, Vale and technical staff present. No audience or support volunteers would attend, and refusing any part would not cost him his place.

Dante asked for secured copies before agreeing. He could mark each cut against the original and stop the next patient mistaking a performance for permission. Posey would come as a witness, while Anika represented Jett; he asked both to interrupt if he started guessing.

Before leaving, Iris showed him the final inventory: two speaking figures delivered, one recovered. The second had been signed out under Dante’s name, which meant somebody had taken his face for a walk while he was learning how to belong here.