Chapter 596: Welcome to My Life
Chapter 596: Welcome to My Life
Reyna’s breath caught. A tiny sound. Almost inaudible. But I heard it because the rooftop was quiet and because I’d been listening for it since she’d kissed me outside the compound last night.
"Everyone else at the Academy looked at me and saw a ranking," I said. "A number on a board. An obstacle or an opportunity. Julian saw a target. The Sentinels saw a threat. Even the recruiters see a commodity. But you walked across that arena and looked at me like I was someone worth figuring out. Not my stats. Not my Aspect. Me."
Reyna’s hands unclenched from around her knee. Her fingers found the edge of the concrete planter and gripped it hard enough that the tendons in her forearms stood out.
"You can’t say things like that."
"Why not?"
"Because I’ll believe you."
"Good."
She moved. Fast. The kind of fast that reminded me she was an A-Rank prodigy trained since childhood by the best fighters money could buy. One moment she was sitting beside me. The next she was straddling my lap on the concrete planter, her knees bracketing my hips, her hands on my shoulders, her face inches from mine.
The pendant went cold.
Extremely cold.
Natalia-is-awake-and-murderously-aware cold.
Reyna’s green eyes burned in the city light. Her crimson hair fell around us like curtains. Her weight settled against me, warm and alive and completely terrifying.
"I’m going to kiss you again."
"I’m going to get hypothermia from this pendant."
"Is that a no?"
"It’s a warning that my girlfriend has a psychic connection to a piece of jewelry and can probably feel my heartbeat right now."
Reyna’s lips twitched. "How fast is it going?"
"About a hundred and sixty."
"Only a hundred and sixty?" She shifted her weight. The leather jacket creaked. Her tank top rode up just enough that I could feel the heat of her stomach against mine through my shirt. "I can do better."
She kissed me.
Not the soft kiss from last night outside the compound. Not the tournament kiss from the assessment mat. This was the real Reyna. The girl behind La Sirena. The one who screamed on rooftops and cursed in Spanish and watched magical girl anime at three in the morning.
Her mouth was warm and tasted like the spearmint gum she’d been chewing when I walked through the door. Her hands slid from my shoulders into my hair and pulled. Not gently. Her tongue found mine and the Nectar of Devotion flooded through the contact, hitting her nervous system like a tidal wave.
Reyna shuddered. Full body. Her grip in my hair tightened until my scalp stung. She made a sound against my mouth that was half gasp and half something primal that belonged in a bedroom rather than a rooftop. She pulled back just enough to breathe, her pupils blown so wide that her irises were thin rings of green around black.
"What the hell was that?"
"The kissing?"
"No. The..." She licked her lips. Involuntary. Her body chasing the trace of Nectar that lingered on her mouth. "Something happened. When you kissed me. It felt like..."
"Lightning?"
"Better than lightning. I know what lightning feels like. This was different." Her eyes narrowed. "Is this part of whatever you’re hiding?"
The honest answer was yes. The Nectar of Devotion saturated every fluid in my body. My saliva. My sweat. Everything. Anyone who kissed me, who tasted me in any capacity, experienced a rush of euphoria that their brain would associate with my specific presence. Repeated exposure created dependency. Not the cruel addiction of the original Nectar of the Gods. Aphrodite had evolved the trait after the Impossible Mode night. The new version amplified genuine attraction without manufacturing false emotion. It could only intensify what already existed.
Which meant Reyna already wanted me before the Nectar hit.
"Part of it," I said. "I’ll explain everything. Soon. Not tonight."
"You keep saying that."
"And I keep meaning it."
She searched my face. Looking for the lie. I let her look. Let her see whatever she needed to see. Kaelen would have constructed a performance. The original Satori would have crumbled under the scrutiny. I just sat there on a concrete planter forty-seven stories up with a beautiful girl in my lap and a freezing pendant against my chest and let the truth do whatever it was going to do.
Reyna kissed me again.
Slower this time. Deeper. Her hands cupped my face and her thumbs traced my cheekbones and she kissed me like she was memorizing the shape of my mouth for later reference. The Nectar hummed between us. Her body pressed closer, seeking more contact, more warmth, more of whatever chemical miracle was rewiring her pleasure centers in real time.
When she finally pulled away, her breathing came ragged and uneven. A flush spread from her cheeks down her neck and vanished beneath her tank top. She rested her forehead against mine and closed her eyes.
"Mierda."
"Yeah."
"I’m in trouble."
"We both are."
"Your girlfriend is going to freeze me into a statue."
"Probably."
"Worth it." She opened her eyes. Green meeting dark in the space between us. "This isn’t a game for me."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Reyna. You brought me to the place where you go to scream. That’s not a game."
Something shifted in her expression. The last wall between the public image and the private girl collapsed quietly, without fanfare, without the dramatic crumbling that movies promised. One second it was there. The next it wasn’t.
"Come back tomorrow night."
"I have the Aegis Prime secondary placement starting Thursday."
"Then come back Wednesday night. Before you leave." She climbed off my lap with the athletic grace of someone who’d been moving through combat stances since childhood. Her hair was mussed from where my hands had found it during the second kiss. A fact I registered with distant alarm. "Bring your weird cat."
Maki’s ears perked from across the rooftop. Both tails rose like antennae.
"She’ll be insufferable about this."
"Already am," Maki said from her concrete perch. "Master kisses too many humans. Maki is jealous."
Reyna stared at the cat. Then at me. Then back at the cat.
"Did your cat just talk?"
"Birth defect."
"That cat just talked."
"She does that sometimes. Bad habit."
"THAT CAT JUST TALKED IN COMPLETE SENTENCES."
"Welcome to my life."
Reyna looked at me with an expression that combined total disbelief with the resigned acceptance of someone who’d already committed to whatever insanity I was selling. She pointed at the cat. Pointed at me. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Wednesday night. This rooftop. You’re explaining everything."
"Everything?"
"The talking cat. The pendant. The lightning absorption. The whatever-it-is that makes kissing you feel like mainlining pure serotonin. All of it."
She walked toward the maintenance door. Stopped. Turned back.
"And Nakano?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell Kuzmina I said hi."
The door closed behind her.
The pendant burned so cold against my chest that I could feel ice crystals forming on the chain.
Maki padded over and hopped onto my lap, occupying the warm spot Reyna had left behind. She looked up at me with hazel-gold eyes that held three centuries of accumulated judgment.
"Master is going to die."
"Probably."
"Maki will miss Master."
"Thanks."
"Master was adequate."
"High praise."
She curled into a ball against my stomach and purred. The sound was oddly comforting for something produced by an entity that had once murdered its previous owner with lightning.
I sat on the rooftop for a long time. The city moved below me in its endless patterns of light and shadow. The pendant throbbed with Natalia’s displeasure, three hundred miles of ocean unable to dampen the force of her awareness.
My phone buzzed. A single message from a number I recognized.
Natalia.
I felt that.
I stared at the screen for thirty seconds.
I can explain.
You always can. That’s the problem.
Are you angry?
The typing indicator appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Disappeared. This went on for a full minute. I watched the tiny pulsing dots with the focused intensity of a man watching a bomb timer.
Her response came as a voice message. I pressed play and held the phone to my ear.
Natalia’s voice filled the dark rooftop. Low. Controlled. The specific register she used when she was too angry for cold and too hurt for fire and had settled into something more dangerous than either.
"I’m not angry. I’m keeping score."
The message ended.
Maki looked up from my lap.
"Master should run."