Chapter 76: Honey Refused to Call It Destiny

Honey’s flowers opened when they pleased, which Dante considered a deeply unreliable way to run a department. Five pots sat beneath the library work corner’s steady lamps. The sixth remained partly closed despite receiving the same measured care, and a small flower sprite was asleep beneath its outer leaf with a pencil across its knees.

Honey tapped the pot gently. “You can’t record it if you aren’t awake.”

The sprite opened one eye, pointed at the closed flower, and went back to sleep. Dante approved of the argument while disliking its effect on productivity. He set his wooden practice frame on the clear bench beside her. Professor Bell had allowed ordinary lift practice here, provided he used the marked space and left the plant equipment alone. Nothing in that agreement promised the plants would leave him alone in return. A vine reached toward his sleeve. Honey redirected it with a thin support stick before he could accept its loyalty.

“Show me what happens at the heavy corner,” she said. Dante raised the frame a few inches. A pale line joined his hand to its middle, but the added wood on one side pulled that corner lower. He lifted harder, making the entire shape rise while the tilt remained.

Honey waited until he lowered it. “You fixed the height. You didn’t fix where you were holding the weight.”

“I was establishing that height wasn’t the main problem.”

“You established it very thoroughly.” She slid a finger beneath the frame near its center, then moved it toward the heavy corner. When she raised her hand, the wood balanced more easily.

Dante watched the position instead of the movement. He had been picturing the middle of the shape because it looked correct. The weight had not agreed to that arrangement. Honey’s open flowers faced slightly different directions. Their stems bent beneath uneven heads, and the supports met them where the strain actually fell, not where someone wanted a tidy row. He tried again, choosing a point closer to the heavy side. The line met the wood there, and the frame rose level.

A clean, ridiculous delight went through him. He moved it between the marked blocks, settled all four corners on the bench, and opened his hand. Nobody had been hurt. Nothing had required a blood sample. The wood had simply gone where he wanted because he had finally asked it the right way.

“That was good,” Honey said. “You noticed what the load was doing before making it do more.”

He could have accepted that victory. Instead, he tried adding a smooth turn while bringing the frame back. The near corner caught a watering cloth. It lifted, folded over his wrist, and dripped cold water into his cuff before he lowered the frame. Honey laughed so suddenly that she sat on the stool rather than continue hovering. Dante examined his wet sleeve with the gravity of a man receiving an unexpected declaration of war.

“The demonstration included a warning about unnecessary decoration,” he said.

“It did, and the warning suited you.” He took the cloth off, wrung it into the little basin, and repeated the clean movement without the flourish. Honey’s laughter remained in the room after she stopped, making him suspect the first disaster had produced a second useful result.

She checked the underside of the frame while he held one corner. Her honey-brown hair fell close to his hand, and the light through her wings painted faint warm shapes across the bench. He remembered wanting magic to look like something when he first arrived. It had turned out to look like a woman arguing with a flower while making him want to behave intelligently.

“You’ve measured that one more times than the others,” he said, nodding toward the closed bud.

“It keeps giving me a reason,” she said, checking the marked pot.

“You didn’t replace it with one that made your work look better.”

Honey looked at him over her glasses. “That would have made the results useless.”

“I know. I liked that you kept it anyway.” For a moment she did not answer. Then she asked him to hold the frame steady while she checked the joint, and her fingers remained against his a little longer than the task required.

Dante concentrated on keeping the wood level. His imagination, which had shown little interest in research methods earlier, discovered several possible uses for shared bench space. Honey’s wing brushed a bookmark from the shelf. He caught it before it landed in the basin and placed it beside her notebook.

“You were distracting,” she told him, rescuing the bookmark from his hand.

“I had barely begun,” he said, enjoying how easily she caught the meaning.

“That was the problem.” She smiled down at the joint, and he allowed himself the private victory without trying to make it larger.

While she wrote the measurement, he moved the empty spare stool away from the narrow gap behind her wings. He did not interrupt to explain the rescue. She shifted back a moment later and found the space clear. The flower sprite woke when the frame’s shadow passed over its pot. It climbed onto a leaf, inspected Dante’s clean landing, and tapped Honey’s notebook as though requesting credit for supervision.

Dante bowed his head with great seriousness. “Your contribution will appear in the report.”

Honey asked what the contribution had been. The sprite pointed toward the cloth drying beside the basin, then mimed covering its face. She started laughing again, and Dante allowed the insult because he had never expected an ordinary afternoon to contain a tiny person with such strong opinions about him. He still loved that magic was real. Even after the costs and the arguments, a leaf-sized critic could make him feel like the boy staring through Blackwell’s gate for the first time.

They practiced until he could keep the frame level through three slow turns. Honey made him stop before tired hands turned a useful lesson into a test of pride. Jett’s message arrived while Dante packed the wood. The attached clip showed the relay’s final demonstration, with padded balls passing through openings in the side nets. One struck the carrier near the bell. The impact tipped the whole load, and the clapper rang against the brass before the operator could steady it.

Honey watched over Dante’s shoulder. “Keeping it level helped until something hit it.”

On the screen, a second ball struck from the other side. Dante replayed the clip. A taller screen would protect more of the bell but fail beneath the gates. A fixed screen on one side would leave the other open. Their neat sketch had been answering only half the question. He sent the clip to Lucan and called Jett.

“We need to change the roof,” he said, looking at the frame he had finally learned to balance.

His enemies had developed the unpleasant habit of arriving from more than one direction.