Chapter 604: The Metronome of Jealousy
Chapter 604: The Metronome of Jealousy
The pendant went so cold that frost actually formed on the chain links. Tiny ice crystals blooming across the silver like flowers made of pure rage.
Three hundred miles away, Natalia Kuzmina was having a very bad night.
I groaned. "You just made my life significantly harder."
"Good." Reyna sat up, still straddling me, gloriously naked and completely unashamed. Her crimson hair fell over one shoulder. Her skin was flushed and marked with the evidence of what we’d done. "I refuse to be your convenient secret. If I’m doing this, I’m doing it for real. The girl with the ice ring is going to have to learn to share, because I’m not going anywhere."
"She doesn’t share well."
"Neither do I." Reyna traced her finger along the line of my jaw. "Guess you’ll have to be enough for both of us."
I stared at the ceiling. Counted the crown molding. Considered the mathematical impossibility of surviving Natalia’s eventual reckoning, which now included not just the rooftop kiss and tonight’s dinner but also the fact that Reyna Cabana had kissed her pendant and declared ownership via supernatural FaceTime.
Nel’s voice drifted through my consciousness like smoke from a distant fire.
The Audience has reached historic engagement levels. Apollo is weeping. Nike is impressed. Aphrodite has ordered champagne.
Also, Natalia’s heart rate suggests she is currently dismantling furniture. Estimated survival probability upon your return has dropped to twenty-three percent.
Twenty-three percent. That was generous.
Reyna climbed off me and padded toward the bathroom, her body moving with that boneless post-coital grace that made her hips sway in a way my brain cataloged against my will. She paused at the door and looked back over her shoulder. No mask. No performance. Just Reyna.
"Are you coming, or are you going to lie there calculating how angry your girlfriend is?"
"She’s going to freeze my blood solid."
"Then you should enjoy being warm while you can."
She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard water running. Steam began curling through the doorway.
The pendant pulsed once more against my chest. Cold, but underneath the cold, something else. Something that felt less like rage and more like resignation. Like Natalia had screamed herself hoarse and was now sitting in silence, processing the reality that the man she’d bound her soul to had done exactly what she’d feared he would do.
I’d deal with it. I’d deal with all of it. The punishment, the anger, the itemized list of transgressions she was probably already drafting in that terrifyingly organized mind of hers.
But right now, a girl who’d never been loved was running a bath and waiting for me to join her. A girl who cursed in Spanglish when she was nervous and watched magical girl anime when she couldn’t sleep and had never shown anyone her secret rooftop until tonight.
I got up and followed her.
The bathroom was enormous. White marble. Gold fixtures. A tub the size of a small pool, already filling with steaming water that caught the light and threw liquid patterns across the ceiling. Reyna stood at the vanity, removing the remains of her makeup with a cotton pad. Her reflection met my eyes in the mirror.
"You’re thinking again."
"Bad habit."
"Thinking about Kuzmina?"
"Among other things."
She tossed the cotton pad into the trash and turned to face me. Leaned back against the vanity. Naked and unbothered by it. Her body on full display in the unforgiving bathroom lights, every curve and angle visible without shadow or suggestion.
I walked toward her. Placed my hands on the marble counter on either side of her hips. Leaned in until our noses nearly touched.
"You’re beautiful," I said. "And not in the way the magazines mean. Not in the way Veronica sells. In the way that matters, the kind nobody’s told you about because everyone was too busy looking at your Aspect rankings."
Her eyes went glassy. She blinked fast. Swallowed hard.
"Pendejo." But her voice cracked on the word. "You can’t just say things like that."
"Watch me."
I kissed her shoulder. The curve of muscle where her deltoid met her bicep. She’d trained this body since she was five years old, and every inch of it showed the investment. I kissed the inside of her elbow, where a faint scar ran perpendicular to the vein from some childhood training injury. She watched me do it with the expression of someone witnessing a miracle they didn’t order.
"The bath’s going to overflow."
"Then turn off the water."
She reached behind herself and found the tap without looking. The room went quiet except for the settling water and my mouth against her skin. I kissed her wrist. Each knuckle of her right hand. The calluses on her palm that told the story of a lifetime spent gripping weapons and making fists.
"You’re worshiping me," she said. Quiet. Almost accusatory.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because someone should have done this years ago, and nobody did."
Her composure shattered. Not dramatically. Not with tears or sobs or any display La Sirena would allow. Just a single, devastating crack in the armor she’d worn since childhood. Her chin trembled once. She caught it. Swallowed it down. But her hand found the back of my head and held me against her palm with a grip that asked me to stay without words.
I pulled back and met her eyes.
"Come on," I said. "Bath’s ready."
The water was perfect. Hot enough to turn skin pink. Reyna settled between my legs with her back against my chest, her hair pooling across the surface in crimson swirls. I wrapped my arms around her middle and pressed my lips to the crown of her head.
"This is nice," she said. Like the concept of nice was something she needed to verify through external sources.
"It is."
"Is this what it’s like? Being with someone?"
"Sometimes. When both people stop performing."
"I’m not performing."
"I know. That’s why it’s nice."
She sank lower into the water. Tilted her head back until it rested against my shoulder. Her eyes drifted shut. For the first time since I’d known Reyna Cabana, she looked completely at peace. No tension in her jaw. No watchfulness in her gaze. No constant assessment of threat levels and exit strategies.
Just a girl in a bath with someone she’d chosen.
The pendant continued its arctic pulse. A metronome of jealousy keeping time three hundred miles away. Natalia knew everything. Felt everything. And she was, at this very moment, probably adding extremely detailed entries to whatever document she’d prepared for my eventual execution.
But the girl leaning against my chest had never been held like this. Had never heard the words I’d said. Had never been kissed on her eyelids or her knuckles or the scar on her elbow.
So I held her. Let the water cool around us. Let the night grow late. Let the pendant burn until I could barely feel it anymore.
Reyna’s breathing evened out. Slowed. For a terrifying moment I thought she’d fallen asleep, which would have been simultaneously the most adorable and logistically complicated development of the evening. But her hand found mine beneath the water and squeezed.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"For what?"
"For seeing me. The real me. Not La Sirena."
"La Sirena is boring. You’re much better."