My Yandere Tamer System: Every Beast Becomes a Sexy Goddess

Chapter 146: The Committee Called Her Decorative and My Ice Queen Broke Their Instruments Without Raising Her Voice

Mona’s not-augh had not left Soren by the time the public run-through was called, and it had not left Selah either.

She rode the walk down to the reception hall with two fingers hooked into the cuff of his sleeve.

She did that when she wanted a small piece of him with her and did not want to say so.

He didn’t move his arm.

She took, he did not object, and neither of them named the transaction.

◆◆◆◆

The reception hall had been half-dressed for the festival.

Bunting on one side, tablecloths folded on the tables, a technician on a ladder frowning at the spotlight rig. The Continental delegation was in the stands.

Three of them. Not four.

The fourth seat was empty.

Soren clocked it and did not comment.

Voss was at the back with her handheld and Soren clocked her too.

She was not making notes.

She was standing where she could see, and her thumb was not moving on the device.

She had been doing that more since the committee room.

Faculty Marsh had the run-through.

Small man but with a big vocabulary.

A class-mid antagonist in the novel who never quite mattered enough to earn a subplot, and who was now giving Class Z the smile of a person doing them a favor.

He addressed the delegation.

"For our guests," Marsh said, "the Class Z contribution to this festival is one of texture. Not craft."

He paused for a small nod at his own line.

"Their role is to enrich the atmosphere at the level appropriate to their standing. We appreciate their willingness to participate."

Maren made a noise on Soren’s other side.

"Did he just call us wallpaper?" she asked, under her breath.

"He said texture."

"That’s wallpaper"

Selah’s grip tightened on his sleeve.

Not enough that anyone looking from the stands would have caught it.

Enough that Soren felt her decide something under his arm and he did not try to unmake the decision.

You did not talk Selah out of a small line she had drawn for herself.

You watched to see how far she was going to walk past it.

Marsh gestured toward the mark on the floor at the center of the hall.

"Miss Young. Your decorative contribution, please. A brief sample just enough for our guests to appreciate the ambient qualities."

Selah let go of Soren’s sleeve.

She did not look back at him.

Soren clocked that too.

Selah checking in with him before a thing meant she was working within limits she had set with him.

Selah not checking in meant she had set her own limits and they were larger than his.

She walked out to the mark and stopped on it.

She raised her hand.

The hall had been cool already because the vents were running for the tech on the ladder.

It got colder by degrees while Selah stood there.

She was not moving.

She was standing on the mark with her hand open, and the temperature in the room dropped enough that Soren watched a delegate touch his own throat.

Then Selah opened her palm and let it come.

The frost did not come from the air.

That was the thing about her, and Soren had known it since the bridge bond a long time ago, and nobody in the stands had seen it done at scale.

The ice did not condense out of the room’s moisture. It came out of her.

Off her skin.

Out of her breath.

Up her arm and out through her open palm into the hall, and the hall took it because the hall did not have a say.

Ice grew on the floor around her feet in a widening ring.

It reached the pillars nearest the mark and climbed them in patterns nobody had drawn, patterns Selah wasn’t thinking about, because her hand was flat and open and the fusion was doing its own work now.

She raised her other hand.

The ceiling started to catch it.

A lattice grew across the underside of the dome, thin, spreading outward from where her breath was reaching, and where the lattice crossed itself it dropped small flakes onto the tables under.

The delegates were sitting very still.

The tech on the ladder had stopped adjusting the spotlight and was watching her over one shoulder without moving his hands.

Marsh’s smile was doing the small mechanical work of trying to stay in place while his eyes tried to figure out what he was watching.

There was a man near the delegation seats with a handheld instrument on his lap.

Small screen. Not an academy issue.

He’d been pointing it at the center of the hall the whole time and he was frowning at it.

Soren clocked the frown.

He knew what it meant.

He had seen the same frown on a Bureau scanner tech in a corridor a couple of months ago, the one who’d tried to read Selah the first time and come up with nothing.

The instrument was reading for a source signature on the ice, and the source was a fused seam, and fused seams did not read on standard equipment.

The tech moved his thumb on the device. He was making a note, and the note was not going into the committee’s log, because his angle was wrong for that.

The foreign delegation was learning what the Council had learned this winter.

Selah’s frost was not measurable.

◆◆◆◆

That was fine for the Council.

The Council had already decided she was a problem to categorize and had spent months trying to file her anyway.

It was less fine for a foreign delegation that had just seen the problem for the first time and did not have twelve years of file to explain it to itself.

Soren watched the tech’s thumb finish the note.

Selah lowered her hands.

The ring on the floor held. The lattice on the ceiling held.

Nothing melted, because nothing she had made was pulling warmth out of the room anymore. It was just there.

Permanent for as long as she chose to leave it.

She turned to face the committee.

"Was that adequate?"

Marsh’s mouth did the thing.

"That was," he said.

He did not finish, because he did not have a word for it that would not embarrass him in front of the delegation.

"I can do more," Selah said.

"That will not be necessary."

" If the guests would like it, I can."

"That will not be necessary, Miss Young."

She walked back across the hall without hurrying.

She did not look at Marsh. She looked at Soren and stopped next to him.

She put her hand on his forearm and held it there, the trace on her fingers at full, cold biting through his sleeve into the skin under.

She held it long enough that Soren felt the numbness climb past his wrist.

Then she let go.

[DING! — Obsession Index: Selah Young 84 → 85 / 100. Voluntary public over-delivery. Loyalty and pride event.]

Soren read it and did not react.

He put his own hand low on the small of her back for a count of one and took it away, which was as close to a public claim as the two of them ran, and Selah stayed a half step closer to his side than she had been before he did it.

◆◆◆◆

The instrument tech in the stands was still working his handheld.

Soren watched him finish the note and stand up, quietly, and leave the hall before the run-through was formally closed.

He didn’t go toward the committee.

He went out the back doors, where the delegation’s own runners waited on the other side, and the doors closed behind him without anyone at the front of the room noticing they had.

Marsh did not notice.

The delegates in the stands were watching the doors.

Soren felt Selah’s hand find the cuff of his sleeve again and hook two fingers into it.

He did not move his arm.

The scanners could not read what she had just done.