Chapter 549: Romantically Irresponsible
"You saw that?"
"Twenty million people saw that. I saw it from six feet away while lying on my back on an ice rink your girlfriend made." She touched the cut above her eye. "Isabelle got me with the spear handle on my way down. Tell her I said nice hit."
"Tell her yourself."
"I don’t compliment people. It’s a policy."
Natalia was the last to arrive.
She came through the door and the room temperature dropped three degrees. Not from her Aspect. Just from her presence. The Cryo-Lich Ring had dimmed to a faint pulse on her finger and her white-streaked hair hung loose around her shoulders, damp with sweat at the temples. The combat suit clung to her body in ways that should have been illegal given the current company. She had a bruise blooming on her left cheekbone where Satori’s bat, held by Satori’s hands, had come within an inch of connecting before she threw the yield.
She walked straight to me.
Emi pulled her hands away just in time as Natalia grabbed my collar and hauled me forward until our foreheads touched. Her breath was warm and tasted like frost and fury.
"You kissed me on television."
"You kissed me back."
"Because you kissed me first, you absolute moron."
"I regret nothing."
"My father just texted me."
That one actually made my stomach drop. "What did he say?"
"He said, and I quote, ’Tell Satori that was the worst combat exit in the history of competitive fighting and also I am proud of both of you.’"
I laughed. It hurt my ribs. I laughed harder.
Natalia’s hand found the back of my neck, fingers curling with enough pressure to leave the kind of marks that would show tomorrow. Her voice descended into that dangerously quiet register she used when she was one wrong word away from either killing someone or fucking them. Maybe both. "You fought me like I was a stranger. Full power. No holding back."
"You told me to."
"I know." Her thumb traced along my hairline in a way that was possessive enough to make my pulse spike despite the bone-deep exhaustion. "It was the hottest thing anyone has ever done to me. I’m absolutely furious about it."
"That tracks."
Cel appeared in the doorway with Noah trailing behind like a silent blonde shadow, radiating the particular energy of someone who had resigned herself to never being more than two meters from her charge. Cel wore her civilian clothes—a simple cream cashmere sweater and perfectly tailored jeans that somehow looked like they cost more than Raphael’s entire wardrobe combined. Her silver-white hair was braided loosely over one shoulder, a few strands escaping to frame her face, and her periwinkle eyes swept the room with that same clinical assessment I’d seen from Seraphina. When those eyes landed on me, they carried the weight of someone who had spent the entire match sitting beside the most powerful woman in Valoria, hands folded perfectly in her lap, pretending very hard not to panic every single time I took a hit.
"Your mother called," Cel said, her voice carrying that soft, hypnotic cadence that made every statement sound like it belonged in a royal proclamation.
"Oh no."
"She wants you to know that the kiss was, and I quote, ’romantically irresponsible but very well timed.’ She also wants you to eat something with protein before bed and asked me to remind you that she knows where you live."
Kimiko Nakano. The only woman in Valoria who could make emotional terrorism sound like practical cooking advice.
Akari swept in last, phone clutched in one hand like it was the Holy Grail, emerald eyes dancing with the particular glow of someone who had just made a significant amount of money doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She wore a cropped top and high-waisted shorts that left approximately zero room for imagination, all tan skin and curves and the kind of confidence that made fashion a weapon. She held her phone up like she was presenting a trophy at a guild ceremony.
"I made thirty-seven thousand credits today betting on you through six different offshore accounts. Also, you’re trending number one globally under four separate hashtags, Natalia is trending number two, and someone has already drawn extremely detailed fan art of the kiss that I am absolutely not showing you in present company because Natalia will freeze my phone and then probably freeze my hands for good measure."
"Show me later."
"Obviously."
Natalia’s grip on my neck tightened enough to make breathing slightly more difficult.
The bus ride back to the ferry terminal felt like it lasted approximately fourteen years. I sat in the back row with my head tilted against the window, watching the mainland scroll past in a blur of glass towers and maglev tracks. The regenerator brace hummed its mechanical lullaby against my sternum. Every bump in the road sent a small tremor through my ribs.
Natalia sat to my left with her thigh pressed against mine. She hadn’t let go of my hand since we left the arena and I didn’t think she planned to. Emi sat in front of us, turned sideways in her seat so she could maintain visual contact. Every few minutes she’d lean back and press her hand against my knee, sending a small pulse of green warmth that kept the pain at a four instead of an eight. Skylar occupied the seat across the aisle, legs tucked under her, headphones around her neck but not on her ears. Listening.
The ferry was worse. Salt air and engine vibration and the gentle rocking that would have been pleasant on any day where I hadn’t been hit by lightning, punched in the face by an aristocrat, and beaten senseless by my own girlfriend on national television.
I wanted a bath. The kind where you sink into water hot enough to boil lobsters and you don’t move for approximately three hours and the only sound is the quiet despair of your own muscle fibers accepting their fate.
Instead I got Onyx House.
