Riven’s hand had been in the sa position for over fifteen minutes. Not cooking. Not even monitoring. Just resting on the handle of his grilling fork while he stared at the burning wood with the glazed expression of soone whose brain had taken a private trip and not told his body when it was coming back.
His steak, at this point, had opinions about what had happened to it. Specifically, it had ceased to be a steak.
"Riven." Cael looked over from his own section of the grill. "Your steak."
"I know." Riven said it with the flatness of soone who technically was not knowing. "I like it overcooked."
"It’s on fire. Actual fire."
Riven looked down.
Where the steak had been, there was now a small, committed fire operating independently on the grill rack. In reflex, he grabbed it — or rather, grabbed the fork — then threw the entire thing sideways toward Cael in one underthought motion.
Cael yelled and knocked it away with his hand. It landed on the sand between them.
"What the hell is wrong with you, dude!" Cael shook his hand out, blowing across the knuckles. "What was that for?!"
"I don’t know, man." Riven dragged his chair back and dropped into it with the full weight of soone who had been standing too long in cold weather. "We’ve been out here over thirty minutes. It’s freezing. Where is he?"
"Maybe give it another five minutes before deciding there’s a crisis." Cael reached beside his chair for a water bottle, took a long drink. "Or is soone waiting for you? Let guess—"
"Don’t."
"Your girlfriend—"
"I said don’t, Cael."
Headlights cut through the dark — white, approaching at the specific angle of soone who was aware they were making an entrance. A white rcedes ca in fast, veered to a stop just off the edge of their camp, and threw a small cloud of dust their direction.
"What the—"
Zael stepped out of the driver’s side, keys moving in slow circles around one finger. He had the smile on, the specific one that ant sothing had happened and he was enjoying the shape of it, and also possibly had caused it.
"Things are about to get interesting for us boys." he said before he’d even found his chair.
Cael set the water bottle down. "You’ve been back in the city for what, forty-eight hours? And you’re already running at Dante?"
"I know what you’re going to say." Zael pulled a cigarette from his coat, lit it, took a drag in one smooth sequence. "And Dante made his decision on his own. I offered him a clean resolution. He rejected it and used so creative language doing so." Another drag, slow. "If he touches Silvic High after this, the consequences are his." His eyes moved. "Where’s Sera?"
"Shouldn’t you know that?" Riven asked.
Seraphine Reese. Two titles, both significant, with different kinds of weight attached. Queen of Silvic High, which she’d beco specifically because Zael had chosen her for it, a decision that had puzzled people until the rumour about the two of them confird what the decision had already suggested. The titles existed together in a way that didn’t feel coincidental.
They were dating.
"She’s been locked up again," Cael said. "Sa thing she does when sothing’s sitting with her; she goes quiet, closes the door, doesn’t co out for a while." He t Zael’s eyes. "You could call her."
Cael knew Zael’s architecture around Seraphine, the way the chemistry between them operated, or the way Zael chose to make it operate, which wasn’t always the sa thing.
He’d seen it enough tis to predict the response: discontinue the eting, get back in the car, drive to wherever she was. That was the version Cael had prepared for.
Zael exhaled smoke and surprised him.
"She doesn’t need to be here." He took another drag, and both Cael and Riven went quiet in that particular way that happened when Zael said sothing that contradicted the expected script. Then, without transition: "Cael. This thing with Dante— I heard whispers that it started with soone from our school. What was his na..."
He pressed his palm against his forehead. Actually tried to rember.
"Ren Mora." He said. "Right."
Riven turned to look at Cael imdiately, and the smile that moved across his face was the unhelpful kind. "Isn’t that the one competing with you for—"
"Zael." Cael cut across him cleanly. "You rember Ren Mora. He’s the cripple. Low-tier. No rank to speak of. There’s no realistic way soone like that gets Dante involved. You must have the wrong student."
"Interesting calculation." Zael tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. "What I was told is that he beat Dante’s brother. Comprehensively." He tilted his head. "Dante’s brother is a high-tier, yes?"
"Presumably—"
"So." Zael said it the way soone places the last piece of sothing. "A cripple, by your own description— a low-tier with no ability— beats a high-tier badly enough that the high-tier’s gang boss older brother sends eight people into my arena on a Friday night." He let that breathe for a mont. "You can see why I’m finding that difficult to file as a coincidence."
"What are you suggesting?" Cael asked.
Zael’s smile had that specific quality, the one that showed up when his life was becoming more interesting to him than it already was. He looked out at the dark between the trees and the fire.
"Turns out we were tricked," he said. "Ren Mora was never a cripple."
***
[Author’s POV]
"Here we go."
WHACK.
I watched the numbers climb the mont my fist made contact, holding my breath without having decided to.
Then it started to slow. The way it always did, that gradual deceleration that the machine produced specifically to demonstrate how far away from enough I still was.
290. I stared at the number.
The smile ca before I’d processed why, the previous ceiling had been 213. A jump of more than eighty points, and that hadn’t even been a full swing. I’d been testing the form, not the force. Which ant if I actually committed—
My hand went to my pocket. Hit emptiness.
I had ten dollars converted to cents and I’d already burned through all of it.
"Still not breaking 300?"
I looked up. Aria, she had a juice carton in hand, walking in with the unhurried energy of soone who had nowhere to be and was comfortable with that. The mocking smile was already installed.
"You don’t know the half of it." I turned back to the machine and put both hands on the sides of it like that was going to help sohow. "I’m holding back."
"Sure you are." She slurped. Loud. Deliberate.
"I heard sothing interesting though." She leaned against a nearby surface. "That Dante ca after you."
"Yes." I turned to look at her. "Because you punched his brother in the face."
"Oh." She tapped the straw against her bottom lip. "I didn’t think about that. He probably doesn’t know it was ."
"Probably doesn’t. Which ans I’m the one absorbing the follow-up." I turned fully to face her. "Exactly, Aria. Why am I the one dealing with this? That was your punch. That was your evening. I was literally being poisoned on a couch."
She was looking at blankly. The juice carton straw still in her mouth, her eyes present but sowhere slightly behind present.
"Against you, Dante’s not a serious threat," I continued. "But I’m not you. I’m the one they’re going to keep coming after because I’m the weaker target and they think they can actually get sothing done with . Is that sothing you’ve thought about for even a second?"
She pulled the straw out. The carton made a sound that ant it was empty. She aid it at the trash can but missed. It landed on the floor.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I’m hungry."
The specific kind of calm that ca over in that mont was the kind that preceded a decision about a window and whether a person could physically fit through one. I had a shoe. I had access to her teeth. I was genuinely considering the logistics.
Then my phone buzzed.
Rowan. His na was on the screen.
Right. After the karaoke parlour situation, he’d insisted on getting my number and had spent the following week using it to apologise for the being Tyler’s obedient asshole.
I hadn’t made it easy for him, not out of cruelty, more out of the principle that apologies that ca with expectations were not exactly apologies. But he’d outlasted my resistance, had lunch with on a Wednesday, and had sohow landed in the category of person whose calls I was willing to answer.
I slid the button.
"Hello."
"Hello, son of bitch."
Yep. Definitely not Rowan.
"Who is this?" I asked. I knew who it was. I was giving the situation a mont to be sothing else before confirming it.
"Disappointing. You forgot already?" The voice had that specific quality, calm on the surface, the kind of calm that was there to let you know sothing was sitting underneath it. "I’m hurt, Ren."
Aria’s expression had already shifted. She was watching .
"Sancho," I said.
She frowned. Deep and imdiate.
"Why do you have Rowan’s phone?" I said into the speaker. My other hand had made a fist at my side without being asked to.
"Take a guess." He chuckled. "Did you really think that was going to be the end of it? After what you and your girlfriend pulled?"
"What we pulled." I stayed level. "You poisoned at a karaoke bar. I survived. Aria hit you once. That’s the whole story. What exactly is the grievance here?"
The laugh that ca back was the specific variety of laughter that belonged to people who had convinced themselves the upper hand was theirs. I recognised the type. I’d been on the receiving end of it before, from people who hadn’t held the upper hand as long as they thought.
"Thirty minutes, Ren." No more preamble. "Abandoned warehouse on Hereford’s Block. Co before ti’s up and your friend walks away. That’s the offer."
"He’s not my friend," I said.
I ended the call.
Aria was looking at with the expression of soone calibrating how serious this was.
"So you’re just going to let him die."
"I only specified that he’s not my friend." I put the phone in my pocket. The smile ca on its own. "I didn’t say I wasn’t in the mood to go break that asshole’s nose again."
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