Chapter 462 | Four Items Requiring Your Signature [CASTLE BONUS]

Chapter 462: 462 | Four Items Requiring Your Signature [CASTLE BONUS]

Not casual knocks. Firm and sharp and spaced with the rhythmic precision of someone who knocked exactly this way every single time because inconsistency in any behavior was a sign of insufficient preparation.

Camille’s hand lifted from my stomach. Felicity’s palm stayed on my chest for one additional second, a claiming gesture that communicated she was not finished and the interruption was personal, before she withdrew.

I grabbed my shirt from the bed and pulled it over my head.

"Belmont." The voice through the door was cold and modulated and carrying the specific combination of impatience and architectural certainty that belonged to exactly one person in the building. "I know you’re awake. Your light has been on since I passed the hallway at twenty-one forty-seven and the sound profile suggests multiple occupants."

Petra Lang.

I opened the door.

Petra stood in the hallway wearing a cream silk pajama set that cost more than my monthly food budget. The material caught the light with the specific sheen of something purchased at a store I would never walk into without an appointment. Her geometric black waves fell precisely to her shoulders in the way hair falls when it has been professionally cut and maintained on a schedule that most people don’t keep for dentist visits. Her emerald eyes swept past me and into the room behind me with the speed of someone who processed visual information the way Percy processed exit routes, cataloging the entire scene before her expression had time to register what she was cataloging.

Her leather planner was tucked under her left arm, pressed against the curve of her chest with the posture of a woman carrying state documents rather than homework. The planner had metal corners and an embossed monogram that I could see from here. Everything Petra owned looked like it had been selected by a committee tasked with maximizing the impression of competence per square inch.

Her eyes landed on Felicity first. Felicity sat cross-legged on the bed in pink booty shorts and a cropped white tank that had ridden up enough to show the curve of her stomach. Her blonde hair was loose over one shoulder. Her expression was the pleasant warmth of someone who had been interrupted mid-conversation and was waiting to see if the interruption had a point.

Petra’s gaze moved to Camille next. Camille’s navy tank top had abandoned any pretense of modesty approximately three hours ago when she decided she was comfortable enough here to stop performing it. She was leaning back on her hands. Her posture communicated she was exactly as unbothered by the scrutiny as she looked.

Then Petra’s eyes tracked to the scattered cards across the comforter, the glasses on the nightstand with condensation rings underneath them, the mostly-empty bottle of sake sitting next to my pillow like evidence in a file someone was going to open later.

Then back to me.

"Your shirt is inside out," Petra said.

I looked down. She was right. The Halloran crest tag stuck out from the collar at an angle that told the exact story I was hoping it wouldn’t.

Behind Petra, partially obscured by the doorframe, stood Vivienne Cross. Vivienne occupied the hallway with the calm stillness of someone who had already assessed every person in the room before the door finished opening, her vivid green eyes cataloging details with the passive efficiency of her Resonance Read operating in the background. She wore an oversized grey cardigan over a black camisole, her blonde hair up in a loose style that looked effortless and probably took forty minutes, and she carried a tablet with notes already visible on the screen.

"Vivienne is assisting me with the Crucible coordination appendix," Petra said, her voice maintaining the flat professional register she deployed when feelings were too expensive to process in real time. "There are four items requiring your signature before Monday’s faculty review and I refuse to explain to Steele that the brief was incomplete because my co-representative was hosting a slumber party."

Vivienne’s eyes moved from Felicity to Camille to the bottle to me to the inside-out shirt and back to Petra with an expression that communicated she had built a complete model of the situation in approximately two seconds and found the data fascinating in ways she would not share until the moment it became most useful.

"May we come in," Petra said, and it was not a question.

Camille leaned back on my bed and propped herself on one elbow with the aggressive indifference of someone who had been interrupted during something she was enjoying and had no intention of pretending otherwise. Her brown eyes met Petra’s emerald ones across the room and the temperature in the hallway dropped by a measurable amount.

Felicity adjusted her cropped top with one hand and reached for the sparkling beverage with the other. "We have drinks," she offered, bright and sweet and loaded with the particular frequency of invitation that sounded innocent until you realized it was a dare. "And Cards Against Humanity. And there’s room on the bed."

Petra’s jaw worked once. Her emerald eyes found my amber ones and the look she gave me contained multitudes, every single one of them promising that this conversation was not over and that the next installment would be conducted in a soundproofed conference room with the door locked and her hand on my chest and her voice in a register that I was going to hear in my sleep for the next seventy-two hours minimum.

She stepped inside.

Vivienne followed, her green eyes settling on me with the gentle weight of someone who saw everything, understood most of it, and was content to watch the rest unfold according to whatever model she’d already constructed.

The door closed behind them.

Four women in my room. Cards on the bed. A bottle on the nightstand. And a quest timer ticking in my peripheral vision reminding me that sunrise was approximately seven hours away and I had promised the universe I would do my own thing and the universe had taken me at my word.

I sat back down on the bed between Felicity and Camille while Petra claimed the reading chair with territorial precision and Vivienne settled onto the desk chair with the patient calm of someone who had decided this evening was going to be the most interesting thing she’d observed all semester.

"The coordination appendix," Petra said, opening her planner to a page marked with an emerald sticky tab. Her voice was glass. "Page seven. Environmental compatibility grids for the flooded sublevels."

Felicity looked at me. I looked at Camille. Camille looked at the inside-out tag still protruding from my collar.

Vivienne uncapped her pen with a soft click and smiled.