Chapter 63: His Majesty Paid for the Boat

Dante studied Honey’s photograph until the screen dimmed, then tapped it awake because darkness had not improved the answer. Behind her, the last little water fish from the performance broke into droplets above the lake.

“I liked kissing you,” he said. “I also hate that you let me thank you without telling me this.”

Honey took off her glasses and wiped a lens that looked perfectly clean. “I thought you might stop looking at me that way.”

“I’m looking at you now, and this isn’t easier.” He handed the phone back. “You don’t get to choose which facts reach me because you prefer the face I make without them.”

She replaced her glasses and nodded. He wanted a better response, perhaps one that allowed him to feel wise, generous, and completely comfortable. None arrived, so he helped finish the message instead.

They sent their separate accounts and the photograph to Professor Bell, copied the agreed information to the director, and left dinner without pretending the argument had disappeared. Honey walked beside Dante to the lodge, close enough for her wing to brush his sleeve once. Neither of them moved farther away.

By the following morning, the director had received assistance and the ruby remained sealed in the staffed safe. Professor Bell acknowledged the message and told them to bring the complete equipment record back. He offered no quick answer about the man’s recovery.

Their last full outing involved a rental boat, which Dante considered a welcome return to problems that could be solved by standing at the front of something.

The attendant handed him a price sheet instead. Eight seats, two pedal positions, one steering wheel, and no leaving the marked cove route made the launch sound less like a vessel of conquest than a floating family argument.

“Can the captain stand?” Dante asked as Jett climbed aboard.

“The captain can pay first,” the attendant said, pointing to the terminal.

Dante paid, and Jett announced that naval command had been purchased at a very fair rate. Lucan took the steering seat at the bow, leaving Dante and Jett side by side at the pedals. The women settled along the padded benches behind them, where an eighth seat held their lunch bag.

The glass floor showed pale stones passing beneath the boat. Farther along, a mermaid in a green work apron tied water plants to a hanging frame. Two pixies collected torn leaves in floating bubbles and carried them toward bins fixed beneath the public jetty.

Dante slowed to watch the mermaid’s tail sweep around a post. Their boat immediately turned into an advertisement for remaining in one place.

“Your government has stopped pedaling,” Jett said. “The people are suffering.”

Lucan offered to swap at the next jetty, which was exactly how a patient enemy would begin taking over the navy. Dante thanked him while privately placing him under observation.

Posey leaned forward on the bench behind Dante and rested a hand against his back. She wore a loose beach shirt over her swimsuit, and the clean pear-and-tea scent reached him whenever the breeze changed.

“There’s a clear patch to the right of that frame,” she told Lucan. “The long leaves are moving into the middle.”

“You can see around the corner from there,” Dante told Posey. “Stay close and warn us if Lucan starts steering toward anything that looks expensive.”

“Is staying close part of the job?” she asked, leaving her hand against his back while the boat cleared the trailing leaves.

“An essential condition,” he assured her. “I would hate to lose a capable navigator through poor working conditions.”

Pink spread across her cheeks. “I could help pedal if you wanted.”

“I can handle the thrust,” he assured her, which sounded excellent until Anika laughed into her cup.

“Not alone,” Jett said. “I’m doing half of it, and I expect credit.”

Dante decided that history would be written by somebody with more respect for context.

A line of white floats marked the turn toward the jetty. Beyond it, the water changed from clear green to a darker blue, and a mermaid attendant pointed a returning rental boat back inside the warm route. Anika touched the rail and reminded them that the cove’s comfort ended before the mountain lake did.

Dante looked through the glass at the gardens, then across the boundary at the deep water. Magic had made somewhere pleasant to spend an afternoon, but someone still had to maintain its edges. He filed that thought beside several less useful plans involving a personal harbor and a flag large enough to annoy Lucan.

At the public jetty, they tied the launch to a marked post and followed a short boardwalk through the water garden. Honey hovered beside a submerged flower whose petals held a silver pocket of air.

“It traps air before the bud goes under,” she explained. “The flower opens inside that pocket. See where the outside petals fold together?”

Dante crouched at the edge, keeping his hands on the dry boards. “Would opening too soon empty it?”

“It can, which is why the damaged ones don’t get counted as successful openings.” Honey pointed to a folded bud beside it. “Waiting isn’t the same as failing.”

He looked up at her, and she gave him a small, wary smile. They both knew the sentence could not do all the work she wanted it to do.

Rhae checked the garden’s ingredient list against her order notes while Anika bought cold drinks from a dock stall. A breeze held loose napkins beneath their cups until Anika released it, at which point Jett immediately lost one.

“I appoint you minister of refreshments,” Dante told her.

“I decline until the ministry carries its own bag,” she replied, placing it in his hands.

On the return trip, Lucan pedaled with Jett while Dante sat beside Honey. Her wing touched his upper arm when the boat turned, and he shifted toward the edge of the bench.

“You can stay there,” she said, catching his sleeve before he moved farther.

Several imaginary advisers demanded a useful reply. Dante managed, “I was planning to,” which fooled nobody and made her smile without looking away.

They ate grilled fish and corn near the lodge, where a stone gull tried to steal a wooden food marker and discovered it had no nutritional value. Dante moved the fries beneath the table until the gull lost interest, which Jett described as their first successful defense of the afternoon.

Later, while they packed their borrowed towels, a message reached Dante from the woman who had asked to join his study sessions. She included the Lakehaven guard clip that had been passed around campus, stopping it at the moment the creature lowered its head.

She wanted ordinary practice first, her message said, but could he eventually teach somebody to do that?

Dante replayed the kneeling creature while his thumb hovered above the reply. Then he began explaining his future teaching program with a confidence his unfinished homework had done nothing to earn.