Chapter 62: He Chose Who Stayed

The music carried across the lake while Dante waited for Honey to explain how hearing a man ask to stop had become a reason to keep going. A water pixie landed on the unused dessert spoon beside her, took one look at the table, and carried its lantern somewhere more cheerful.

“The reading was improving,” Honey said. “The transfer held, and none of us were showing the same strain. I wanted enough time to know whether it would stay that way.”

The director rubbed his shaking hand against his pants. “You had enough time to hear me.”

“I heard you,” she said, and Dante hated how little room she left him to argue.

He had prepared for enemies who lied about him. Apparently his government also required a department for friends who told the truth after doing something awful, which seemed a poor use of limited resources.

Rhae pushed her chair back far enough to face him. “I told Honey to end it when she kept watching the reading. That doesn’t change how we put him there.”

“You could have said something before that,” the director replied.

“I could have,” Rhae said. Her red tail lay still beside the chair leg. “You asked us to stop, and we should have.”

Anika set her phone beside her plate. “I held air against the door so it couldn’t open into the workshop. I knew why he wanted it open.”

Dante pictured her small weather spells, the neat turn of a draft that kept rain off a table. There had been no grand dark ritual, apparently. Someone he liked had found a practical use for a door.

“I was in the other room,” he said, then heard how quickly the words had arrived.

Jett rested his forearms on the table. “Could you have gone in before it started? Was anyone keeping you out?”

“She did, and I stayed with the screen.” Dante pressed his thumb against the edge of his plate. “I wanted to do the part everyone would watch.”

There went the defense prepared by his imaginary council. It had survived almost eight seconds, which was embarrassing even by government standards.

The director’s eyes moved between them. “I want the record kept. I want your professor told what happened, and I don’t want you connecting me to anything again.”

“You won’t be used again,” Dante said. “Professor Bell will get what each of us actually did, including me. Nobody will use the ruby while we’re here.”

It remained in the lodge safe, sealed inside its case. Dante could feel the claim ticket behind his phone cover, a small piece of paper that had become much heavier without learning a single spell.

“The loan doesn’t make this settled,” the director said.

“I wasn’t saying it did.” Dante looked toward the broad walkway. “Do you want help getting back, or someone from the resort’s medical desk?”

“Someone from the desk,” the man said after a pause. “The walk down was a mistake.”

Lucan caught the nearby server’s attention and spoke quietly beside the rail. He returned with a chair cushion while she went to call assistance, performing several useful acts without once appearing to consider their dramatic importance. Dante found him especially difficult to dislike when he deserved it least.

Across the water, two performers sent a shining fish through a hoop of spray. A child at another table cheered, and the director shut his eyes until the applause ended.

Dante slid the untouched bread basket closer, then stopped before offering food as though that might repair the evening. “You don’t have to wait for us to agree with your account before you send it.”

“I already know that,” the director replied, opening his eyes.

Before the attendant arrived, the director asked who would receive the findings. Dante named Professor Bell and the agreed contact address, then asked whether he wanted anybody else copied. The man said he would choose that himself, and Dante wrote it down instead of offering to take over.

It should have been a small courtesy. He found it irritating to be useful without being in charge, especially when the person receiving the help had every reason to refuse his version of it. Across the table, Honey watched him keep the man’s wording in the message. Dante resisted improving it, although several improvements remained available in his head.

Honey gathered her phone and bag. Her wings lifted behind her, but she stayed on her feet rather than rising above the table. “I should give you some room.”

Dante caught the back of her empty chair and pulled it toward his, leaving a clear space for the director to pass. “Sit down, Honey. You can help write the account.”

She looked at the chair, then at him. “You still want me here?”

“I want answers, and I want you here. Both things fit at the table.”

Posey’s hand settled against his knee beneath the cloth. He liked the contact too much to examine it properly, and he liked the way Honey sat when he asked. Choosing who remained beside him felt good even now, which his council wisely declined to discuss. The director wanted a record of what had happened. Dante wanted that too, but he also wanted every person at this table to understand that anger with Honey did not give them the right to decide where she belonged.

The server returned with an attendant and a wheeled chair fitted with broad rubber tires. Small blue lights along its frame brightened when the director sat, lifting enough weight from the wheels to carry him smoothly over the boards. The attendant asked where he hurt instead of announcing that magic would fix him.

Dante walked with them to the shore end of the platform. The director kept his coat folded over his shaking hands and gave the attendant his room number.

“Send the account to the same address,” he told Dante. “Don’t send me a better version of it.”

Dante watched them take the lodge path before returning. The dinner tables remained warm and bright behind him, which seemed almost rude. He had expected the world to acknowledge that something had happened.

At their table, Rhae stacked abandoned plates while Jett kept an empty chair out of the walkway. Anika had opened a blank message addressed to Professor Bell. Nobody suggested a toast.

Honey showed Dante the photograph before adding it to the account. It displayed the outside warning light, the early-stop mark, and enough of the equipment label to identify the test. She explained where she had stood when she took it and that the service seal had remained intact.

He looked at the date on her phone. It came before their plant walk, before she had let him brush a strand of hair away from her glasses, before their first kiss.

“You already had this when we were together,” he said.

Honey’s fingers tightened around the phone case. “I kept trying to find a way to tell you.”

“When you kissed me, did you know what you were leaving out?”

“Yes, I knew,” she said, and waited while he kept holding the evidence between them.