Chapter 645 | Her Vocal Range Is Impressive

Chapter 645: 645 | Her Vocal Range Is Impressive

We fell back onto the bed together in a tangle of limbs and damp sheets. She stayed on top of me with her cheek on my shoulder and one leg thrown over my hip, and I pulled the stolen blanket up over both of us because her skin was cooling fast and she had started to shiver.

My phone buzzed again on the nightstand. I reached over without looking and turned it face down.

"Was that Maribelle?" Felicity asked into my neck.

"It was probably Maribelle."

"What did she say this time?"

I flipped the phone back over and read the new message, which said, three twelve, i lose, worth it, tell blondie her range is impressive, and i mean vocal range.

Felicity read it over my shoulder and groaned so loud that the bed shook. She dragged the blanket up over her face and lay there underneath it like a corpse in a morgue.

"I’m going to change my name and move to Fresno, and you can visit me on weekends."

"Dralun’s sister lives in Fresno."

"Then I’ll move in with Dralun’s sister and we’ll start a new life together." She pulled the blanket down to her nose and peeked out at me, her eyes crinkled at the corners. "Is she nice, at least?"

"I’ve never met her, but I’m drinking out of her mug now."

"That’s the most Eastside sentence you’ve ever said to me." Felicity laughed and the sound came out raw and tired and real. Then she went quiet, and her fingers started tracing slow circles on my chest, right over the fading shadow marks from the black fire. "Lukas, can I ask you something serious now?"

"You can ask me anything."

"Are you going to tell Sloane about tonight?"

The question landed soft, the way Felicity said all the dangerous things, and it sat on my chest heavier than she did.

I thought about Sloane asleep fourteen kilometers away in Creston Hills, wearing one of my hoodies and probably holding her phone in her fist. I thought about her standing in a cafeteria three weeks ago and making me swear I would tell her first, before she heard anything from a hallway or felt it through a bond she could not turn off. I thought about a stairwell landing and a bruise on my collarbone that she left on purpose so everyone in Hero Brand would know who I came home to.

"I’m telling her first thing tomorrow," I said. "She’ll hear it from me before anyone else opens their mouth."

Felicity nodded against my shoulder. Her fingers stopped moving.

"I promised her too, you know, back in the sublevel during the dome." She said it carefully, and her voice dropped into the low register she saved for things she meant. "I told her I’d tell her myself if anything ever happened, so she wouldn’t have to hear it from some idiot in a hallway."

"I remember she told me about that."

"So I’m going to tell her too, separately, from me to her." Felicity lifted her head and looked at me, her chin resting on my sternum, her hair falling in a gold mess across my chest. "I don’t want her to think I snuck around her, because I didn’t, and I’m not going to start now."

"She might blow up your room."

"She might, and I’d honestly respect it." Felicity’s mouth twitched. "But I think she won’t, because I think she already knows this was coming, and I think she decided a while ago what she was going to do about it."

I looked at her for a long time. The fairy lights caught the gold flecks in her eyes, the ones I had never seen until tonight, and the smudged mascara under her left eye, and the bite mark she had left on my shoulder that the Demigod trait was already trying to erase.

"You’re smarter than people think," I told her.

"I know I am, and I’ve known it my whole life." She smiled, small and soft and nothing like the bright public smile she wore in the cafeteria. "But you’re the only person who keeps saying it out loud, and I’m starting to get used to hearing it."

The interface waited until her eyes closed before it spoke up again. I gave it credit for the restraint, at least.

? Temptation Gauge Update: Felicity Hardy now reads fifty-eight percent. The subject is approaching the Devoted threshold at an accelerated pace. ?

? Side observation: The Host has been inside a heroine’s room for one hour and fourteen minutes without once checking the clock. This marks a first. ?

? Reminder: The Host has made a commitment to inform Sloane Fitzgerald before she learns of this encounter through alternative channels. The Heroine Bond Resonance will register a truthful account. It will also register a delayed one. ?

I closed the window and stared up at the ceiling where the mirror had been mounted just minutes before. Nothing remained up there now except blank plaster and a water stain shaped vaguely like a lopsided rabbit. Or maybe a deformed cloud. The lighting in here made it hard to tell, but knowing Felicity’s decorating philosophy, she had probably assigned it a personality and stuck something cute on it.

She had stuck a heart sticker on it. I could see the pink edges catching the fairy light, right in the center of the rabbit’s theoretical body.

"You stuck a sticker on your water stain," I said, still looking up at Gerald the emotionally available rabbit.

"His name is Gerald." She didn’t open her eyes. Her voice carried that specific lazy warmth people only managed when they were halfway to sleep and had no filter left between brain and mouth. "He’s emotionally available, unlike some people I could mention."

"There’s a fish on campus named Gerald Junior."

"Then they’re related." The logic was airtight, apparently. "They should meet each other. I’ll introduce them. It’ll be super wholesome." She snuggled closer, shifting her weight until her leg hooked more securely over my hip, her breath evening out against the side of my neck. "Stay until I fall asleep, okay? Then you can go do whatever mysterious nighttime stuff you do."

"I’ll stay as long as you want."

"Don’t say stuff like that when I’m this tired." Her voice was already going soft at the edges, sliding toward sleep.