Chapter 83: The Girls Kept the Receipt

Dante answered Posey before his mind could improve the order in which things had happened. "I saw her," he said. "I thought another second would be manageable."

Posey’s fingers loosened without leaving his hand. That small change hurt more than a loud accusation would have, mainly because it gave him nothing loud to fight.

"Manageable for who?" she asked. He looked toward Honey, who was listening to the attendant’s questions. His imaginary council proposed removing the phrase my people from the financial report, then discovered that the same man had signed every page.

"For me," he answered. Posey remained beside him while the event staff checked the others. She did not reward the honesty with immediate forgiveness, and he did not ask her to make the answer feel better.

Professor Bell took him aside once the rig was secure. Jett and Lucan stayed close enough to hear, their prize sheet folded between them. "You used an active control without permission," the professor said. "You displaced the operator and continued after the effect on others became visible."

Dante could still remember the canopy opening above him. Even now, with Posey’s cold hand recently in his, the sight pleased a part of him he did not want to lose.

"I released before the cutoff," he said, hearing how carefully he had chosen the fact.

"That explained how it ended. It didn’t explain why you began." Jett looked away toward the empty lane. Lucan said nothing, which was an unpleasant change from his usual helpfulness.

Dante folded his hands so he would stop looking at the one that had touched the bracket. "I wanted them to listen."

"They already were," Professor Bell replied. The professor suspended Dante’s independent use of university equipment pending a prompt review. Ordinary supervised coursework would continue. The relay result stood, but access to the new room would wait until its conditions had been checked.

"The equipment credit belonged to three of us," Dante said. "They didn’t agree to what I did on the stage."

"I know. It remains theirs as well as yours." Dante asked the professor to put that distinction in the account. He did not want Jett discovering that his best friend’s glory had eaten a set of tools he had earned.

Professor Bell agreed, then asked for a plain description of the control change. Dante supplied it without adding a crown to the wording. By the time he finished, the crowd had thinned. A few students still watched from beyond the work boundary, but the people who needed assessment had moved to the event’s quiet room with an attendant. Dante stayed to stack spectator chairs while Jett waited for the staff to release the area. It was ordinary work, dull enough that nobody photographed it.

He could carry a chair without becoming a lesson about humility. He carried the next one too. In the quiet room afterward, Honey’s wings had steadied, and Anika’s fingers no longer trembled when she held a cup. Posey was warm enough to take her hands out of her sleeves. The improvement mattered without proving every cost had ended. Honey described what she had noticed and when. Rhae added the time Posey first rubbed her fingers. The attendant wrote their answers separately and told them what changes should bring them back for further assessment.

Nobody found a convenient new explanation that made Dante’s choice harmless. He sat beside Honey after the questions ended. "I’m not asking you to shorten that account."

"I wasn’t going to," she answered, keeping the full account beside her.

"I know. I wanted to say it before I decided I sounded better in the shorter version."

She looked at him, tired and still very much herself. "Then keep that answer tomorrow too."

He promised he would. It was less impressive than the speech, and he suspected it would be harder to perform more than once. Jett took him back toward the residence when the women had their own plans for getting home. On the walk, his roommate talked about the ordinary win, reminding Dante of the screen, the clean landing, and the moment their lane turned gold.

Dante listened because none of that had vanished. He had added something ugly to a good afternoon, and it was tempting to let the ugly part claim the whole thing so he would not need to separate them.

"You could have left with the win," Jett said as they crossed the lawn. "We were already going to celebrate it."

Dante looked toward the residence, remembering the first afternoon when Jett had caught his suitcase after the cart rescue. His friend had been there for the impressive part and the stupid step afterward, without confusing either one for the whole person.

"I know," Dante said. "I wanted the last word too."

"You usually do. It doesn’t mean the room owes you one." A small cloud followed them for several yards, attracted by the damp towel hanging from Jett’s bag. Jett redirected it toward a garden tap, muttering that even weather thought he needed supervising. Dante laughed before he expected to, then carried one side of the bag when its strap began cutting into his friend’s shoulder. They could still walk home together while the argument remained unfinished. That was something he did not want to make harder next time.

Jett refused to do that work for him. Later, Honey sat with Posey, Rhae, and Anika in the library’s reserved room. Mira joined from Lakehaven, her shelves visible behind the screen. The door closed after the last ordinary visitor passed. Dante was not there, and neither were Jett, Lucan, or the ruby.

"That wasn’t a rescue," Mira said after hearing the account. "Nobody needed the canopy moved."

"He knows," Honey answered, remembering his account in the quiet room.

"Knowing afterward hasn’t kept this from happening again."

Anika held her cup between steady hands. "Then we need something that works when he makes a bad decision, not just when he remembers to make a good one."

Rhae’s tail shifted beneath her chair. "That doesn’t give us a person to put in the empty space."

"I didn’t name anyone," Anika said, setting down the cup she no longer needed to steady.

"You were looking for one before you finished the sentence."

Posey looked at Honey’s wings, now resting quietly behind her. "I don’t want another stranger asking to stop. I also don’t want to wait until one of us can’t stand up."

Honey knew both feelings. That was what made them dangerous together. Anika opened the paid-work notice the chairwoman had sent after their conversation. It contained ordinary jobs and public terms, no list of willing magical sources. She studied the advances, then the names of the people organizing the program.

"They keep finding students who can afford less choice," she said. "I wondered whether the people arranging that have ever been asked what they’re willing to give."