Chương 19: Chapter 18

I woke up feeling refreshed for the first time in what felt like weeks, which was the first sign that something had gone very right. The second sign was the weight draped across my chest, snoring softly into it. I cracked one eye open to an unfamiliar ceiling, pale composite catching the first thin light of the station's morning cycle, and it took me a few seconds to work out that the reason the ceiling felt strange was because it wasn't mine.

It was two floors up from my bed, lying next to a shelf of rare paperbacks, a pretty plastic plant on the windowsill, with a silver haired naked beauty fast asleep on top of me. Right, my brain offered helpfully, and maybe a little smugly. That happened. Charlotte was a comfortable, faintly drooling weight against my side, one arm thrown across me as if to prevent me from running away. Her hair was... a mess, to put it lightly.

There was a crease on her cheek from the pillow, and she was, with no competition whatsoever, the best view I had ever had the pleasure of waking up to. Somewhere on the floor, knocked off the bed at some point in the night, the soft fluffy plushie she'd tried so hard to hide lay face-down in the wreckage of our clothes, thoroughly unbothered by it all. I lay still and just let myself bask in the moment for a while. The quiet always-present background hum of the station.

The cool, air conditioned air against the parts of me she wasn't snuggling. The simple, ridiculous fact of, well, her. My own bed two floors down had spent the whole night empty and disappointed, and I could not summon a single particle of regret about it. She stirred, eventually, as the station's filtered sunlight reached her, frowning slightly and gripping me tighter. She blinked slowly up at me, storm-grey eyes still soft and unfocused from sleep, and yet so, so cute.

"Hi," she mumbled. I chuckled, "Morning, beautiful." She slowly turned her head and took stock of the room, the bed, me, the distinct lack of clothing on either of us, the memory of exactly how that had come about, and went a delicate shade of pink right up to her ears.

"Oh. So that wasn't a dream."

"Afraid not." I brushed a strand of hair off her face.

"You snore, by the way."

"I do not." She smacked my chest, then winced, because she'd apparently strained something the night before, as had I, and we both lay there trying to figure out which obscure muscles we'd pulled, all while trying not to look as pleased about the current situation as we felt.

"Okay. Maybe a little. If you tell anyone though I'll vehemently deny it and throw you into a dungeon."

"Of course, princess." She huffed, and batted my chest lightly. I kissed the top of her head.

"Had a good sleep?"

"Mm." She tucked herself in closer and went quiet, her ear over my heartbeat, her fingers tracing slow shapes across my stomach, and for a few minutes the entire Empire would need to keep waiting before I did anything else. I'd never been the type to want to stay anywhere. I'd spent most of my life two steps from the door of every room I was in. I did not want to leave this one. Dangerous, I thought, and then shrugged mentally. Worth it. It couldn't last, of course. Nothing here ever did.

Her slate buzzed on the desk. I felt the change before I saw it, the way her whole body tensed just a bit, her movements just that tiny bit more careful than before, the tension slowly seeping back into her shoulders. She didn't move for a second, reluctant. Then, sighing, she reached out with one bare arm, dragged the slate off the desk, read whatever was on it, and I watched the warm, sleepy girl I'd woken up with quietly fold herself back into the neat box that was Charlotte Valen.

"Kass," she said, before I could ask.

"Oh, the friend you mentioned earlier?"

"Kinda. Originally she was supposed to be my minder, buuut…" Charlotte smirked.

"I guess I grew on her. And her on me. She's still very good at what she does, but is very selective about what my mother hears about, thank the Void." She turned the slate so I could see it without craning my neck. heyyyyy Charlieeee! been a few days! fyi your mom is asking when you'll be home for the Solstice. got, uh… guests coming soon. You know what kind. can't weasel you out of this one, so good luck! you'll pull through somehow. oh! also. congrats;) (p. s. half the building probably knows by know jsyk) I read it twice.

"Guests," I muttered.

"Suitors." Frowning, she set the slate down, very precisely, making sure to contain her anger.

"My mother has spent the better part of a year assembling a list. Sons of houses she wants tied to ours and all that jazz. The Solstice gathering is where she'd like me to start being charming with them." The word came out through gritted teeth.

"Light from the Darkness. We're so good at finding the useful thing in everyone... Even scum." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"And you don't want to deal with any of them." It was less a question and more just me stating what was plainly written on her face.

"I want none of them." She exhaled, some of the steel in her voice going with it, revealing underneath the same girl who'd been scared the night before, just about different things now.

"You have to understand what my family is, Jax. We don't say no to my mother. We outmaneuver her, or we lose. The new law was supposed to be her tool, giving her even more control over my choices. But a law works both ways." Her eyes came up to mine, and there was something fierce and frightened in them.

"It means I get to choose too. A path she probably never imagined I would take, but a path nonetheless." The morning had gotten very quiet. I was suddenly extremely aware that we were having this conversation naked, which felt either perfectly appropriate or deeply unfair, I hadn't decided which.

"You're talking about me," I hedged.

"I'm talking about me, and my agency." She propped herself up on an elbow, serious and vulnerable all at the same time.

"But yes. Also you. And I need you to hear the rest of it before you say anything sweet, because you have a habit of saying things that make it reaaal hard to focus on important stuff." She leered at me for a moment before she took a breath.

"A Valen choosing a commoner into her harem is an insult my mother can survive, and one the other houses will not care much for. A Valen choosing a commoner who's clever, who's in the Strategos Program, who beat an Aldric in front of half the Society? That's a threat. The moment anyone decides we're real, you stop being a simple curiosity or a flight of my fancy, and start being a target. There are girls in this academy who would marry you at the behest of their superiors just to take you off the board.

That snake, Priscilla Vane would do it before breakfast and smile the whole time while planning how to turn you into her dog. Especially if anyone learned of the rest of my plan."

"I have no idea who that is. And what do you mean?"

"You will." She sighed grimly.

"I'm not telling you this to scare you off. I'm telling you because I am done pretending I don't want this, and you deserve to know exactly how much danger you are putting yourself in going forward. As for the rest, well…" she tapped my chest and winked, "let's just say I have no interest in letting my mother decide anything about my life, and I can't do that if I am the one in charge of this relationship. Legally speaking." I opened my mouth but stopped, taking the time to properly mull her words over.

To really think, the way she'd just asked me to, instead of reaching for meaningless grandstanding. The Strategos Program could expel me on a bad grade. Now apparently the social calendar could do worse. A week ago that would have probably sent me running for the safe, quiet life I'd told everyone I wanted. Funny thing about safe and quiet. I'd had a taste of the alternative now, and she was lying next to me with bed hair and a battle plan. I nodded.

"Alright." She blinked.

"Alright?"

"Yes. All of it. The suitors, the target, Priscilla, whoever." I reached over and laced my fingers through hers, the way I had on a chair the night before.

"I'm not going to pretend it's nothing, because you're smart enough to see right through that in about half a second. So here's the thing. I'm already in the most dangerous program in the Empire on a sponsorship nobody can explain, with a mentor who throws me on the floor and abuses me physically for fun. I am not exactly playing it safe. And like you said, people have already started paying attention." I squeezed her hand.

"If I'm going to be a target, I'd rather it be standing next to you than for some reason I didn't get to pick." She stared at me for a long moment. Then her eyes went bright and wet at the edges and she scowled like it personally offended her.

"I told you not to say something sweet."

"That wasn't sweet. Just the truth." She laughed, a wet, undignified, beautiful sound, and dropped her forehead against my shoulder.

"I really did pick a dangerous one," she mumbled into my skin.

"Light from the Darkness," I chuckled, patting her head.

"You're supposed to be good at this." We stayed like that until my own slate, traitor that it was, lit up on the floor. Instead of moving and fishing it out of the tangle of clothes, I quickly disabled night mode in my ICI and pulled up the notifications. Three messages. The first was the academy schedule reminder, helpfully informing me that the day's session started in ninety minutes and that, with the graded sim's date being moved up, attendance was "strongly advised."

The second was from Vera, sent at some ungodly hour. Extra session. 0600 tomorrow. I shivered. The third was Lysara, in the group thread. morning lovebirds ^^ neither of you answered last night, very suspicious. anyway. Mira booked us the sim bay at noon and Maren bumped the graded run to FIVE DAYS from now so we are officially behind. and fucked. bring your brains and Jax's freakish luck. \o/"Five days…"

Charlotte read the same notification on her interface, the dignified noble already back behind the wheel, though unlike the fragile mask from before, she looked and felt a lot more steady and sure of herself.

"That's not enough time."

"It's never enough time." I sighed, getting out of the bed and started hunting for my clothes on the floor. I turned to look at her, silver-haired, still blushing, and already three moves into a plan I was sure was more convoluted than I ever imagined. The night was over. We had a lot of things on the agenda, and not enough time to finish them in.

First, the combat sim, then a competition, and somewhere out there, a controlling mother on a distant world holding a list of people I would probably want to punch in the face, and an academy full of people who were starting to notice that we were coming to the foreground. But… I pulled and kissed the still naked vixen before she could find her own clothes.

"Come on," I said, not moving an inch.

"We're going to be late."

"Terribly," she agreed, kissing me back.