Chapter 647 | Everyone is Correct [CASTLE BONUS]

Chapter 647: 647 | Everyone is Correct [CASTLE BONUS]

"I heard all of it through two walls and a closet full of my winter coats." Her tail flicked once, sharp and amused. "These walls are rated for Aspect discharge, apparently, but they were never rated for Felicity Hardy at full volume. Nyx put in earplugs at the eleven minute mark and went to bed angry."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Somewhere across campus Sloane slept, and in five hours I had to walk into a conversation that would decide whether I kept the most important person in my life or became a crater on the 1-A residence lawn.

Maribelle watched me do that and something in her face shifted. The tail stopped swaying. Her voice dropped out of its bright gossip register and into the firm clear one I had only heard twice before, once in the north corridor during the dome and once when she asked me what I actually was.

"Hey, real talk for a second, okay?"

"I’m listening to you."

"Is she okay?" Maribelle tilted her head toward Room 304. "Felicity, I mean, and not the version she shows everybody at lunch. She sounded happy through the wall, and I’ve known her a few months, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sound happy before."

I thought about Felicity under the blanket asking if she was too much, and Felicity pressing her mouth over my second heartbeat and saying she would wait.

"She’s asleep and she’s happy," I told her. "I left her a note so she doesn’t wake up alone and spiral."

Maribelle studied me for a long moment in the dim hallway light. Her lips pressed together, painted even at one in the morning in a glossy berry color that smelled faintly of burnt sugar from four feet away.

"Okay, that’s a good answer, so you get to live." The bright register came back, and her tail resumed its lazy swing. "Now go away before Lang wakes up and smells you, because she has opinions about this hallway and she writes them in her planner."

I made it six steps toward the stairwell before her voice followed me again.

"Belmont, one more thing before you go."

I turned around. She had stepped back into her doorway, one hand on the frame and one on her hip, and her shirt had slipped further down her shoulder until the neckline hung on the very edge of decency. She knew it had slipped. She left it exactly where it was.

"When Fitzgerald finds out, and she will find out, you should tell her before Nyx does." Maribelle’s golden eyes held mine without blinking. "Nyx keeps a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet has a column with your name on it."

"I’m telling Sloane in the morning, before anyone else wakes up."

"Good boy, then, I guess." Maribelle smirked and shut her door with a soft click, and her laughter leaked through the wood for a full three seconds after.

The interface pinged the moment I hit the stairwell.

? Temptation Gauge Update: Maribelle Kennedy now reads eleven percent. The subject has registered the Host’s care for a mutual friend as attractive. ?

? Advisory: The Host has now generated gauge movement from a heroine he did not touch, did not flirt with, and spoke to for less than three minutes in a hallway. Ecchi Logic notes that this is either a feature or a warning. ?

I dismissed it and took the stairs two at a time, which my body handled fine because the Demigod trait did not care that I had just spent an hour getting wrecked by a blonde girl with a mirror Aspect and no inhibitions. The debuff still sat at the base of my skull like a wet towel, and when I hit the landing on the second floor my foot came down a fraction later than I told it to. I filed that away and kept moving.

The walkway between towers ran outdoors under a covered roof, and the November air hit my face cold enough to make my eyes water. The WARDEN pillar at the East Tower door lit up when I approached it, and its voice came out low and polite at the volume of a librarian who had seen everything.

"Good evening, Lukas Belmont, and welcome back to your residence."

"Hey there, pillar, how’s your night going?"

"My night has been uneventful, and I prefer it that way." The pillar paused, and its lens rotated a few degrees to look at me head on. "Your core temperature is elevated, and your heart rate remains above your resting baseline. I recommend hydration and rest before your morning obligations."

"Everyone keeps telling me to sleep tonight."

"Everyone is correct, and I am glad you survived the dome." The door clicked open. "I mean that slightly more each time I see you, though I cannot explain why."

I stood there for a second holding the door open, staring at a security pillar that had just admitted to having feelings about me, and decided that was a problem for a version of myself who had slept more than four hours this week.

Room 205 sat exactly where I left it on Monday morning. Marcus and Reina smiled at me from their frame on the desk with the sun behind them, both of them dressed in their old costumes, both of them looking like people who had never had to explain anything to a girlfriend. I dropped my jacket over the sage reading chair and sat down on the terrible mattress, and the springs groaned under me like they had heard the whole night through the walls too.

I opened the interface because avoiding it never worked and only made it petty.

? Status Check ?

? Defiance Points: forty out of fifty. Systemic Suppression expires in fourteen hours and nine minutes. ?

? Active Side Quest: The Frictionless Thief. Wednesday, midnight, Halverson Street. Reward pending. ?

? Heroine Bond Resonance, Sloane Fitzgerald: Subject asleep. Distance from Host is approximately four hundred meters. Emotional state reads restful. ?

? Advisory: The Host has a narrow window to deliver a truthful account. The Emotional Duplex activates at fifty meters. When the Host enters range, the subject will feel whatever the Host is carrying. ?