Chapter 607: How to Survive My Girlfriends
Chapter 607: How to Survive My Girlfriends
I set the phone down. The pendant warmed slightly. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something less than murderous rage. An acknowledgment, maybe, that I’d texted her in the middle of the night from another woman’s bed because I couldn’t stand the silence.
Reyna stirred against me. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused with sleep.
"Everything okay?"
"Natalia texted."
"And?"
"I’m still alive."
"That’s a good sign?"
"The best I could hope for."
She nodded drowsily and burrowed closer, her face pressing into the curve of my neck. Her breath was warm against my skin. Her body was soft against mine. The pendant continued its cool pulse, but the temperature had stabilized. Natalia was still angry, still hurt, still planning elaborate revenge. But she wasn’t escalating.
For now.
I closed my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under.
Morning arrived with aggressive sunlight through windows I didn’t remember having curtains. My body ached in places I’d forgotten could ache, and the pendant against my chest had settled into a steady cool that felt less like rage and more like resignation.
Reyna was already awake. She sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a silk robe that probably cost more than most people’s monthly rent, scrolling through her phone with the focused intensity of someone reviewing battle footage.
"You’re awake," she said without looking up.
"Barely."
"Your phone has been buzzing for the last thirty minutes. I resisted the urge to look."
I found the device on the nightstand. Seventeen notifications. Eight texts from Emi asking if I was okay. Three from Skylar that consisted entirely of raised eyebrow emojis. Two from Akari with betting odds on various outcomes. One from Cel stating simply that she’d heard interesting rumors and expected a full debriefing upon my return.
Nothing from Natalia since her midnight messages.
That worried me more than anything else would have.
"Big day ahead?" Reyna asked.
"Assessment at oh-nine-hundred. Tactical seminar at thirteen-hundred. Evening free." I paused. "Assuming your sister doesn’t have other plans."
"She always has other plans." Reyna finally looked up from her phone. Her hair was a disaster and her makeup from last night had smeared into dark circles under her eyes and she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen first thing in the morning. "But she’s giving us space. I asked."
"You asked?"
"I told her I needed time to figure things out. She agreed." A small smile. "She wants me to be happy. Even if happy looks different than she expected."
"And are you? Happy?"
Reyna considered the question with the same seriousness she brought to everything. Her green eyes found mine and held them. No mask. No performance. Just the girl I’d met on a rooftop.
"Yes," she said. "I think I am."
"Good."
"Good?" She raised an eyebrow. "That’s all you have to say?"
"I’m working with limited vocabulary before coffee."
She threw a pillow at my head. I caught it. Her aim was perfect even when she was aiming at me with bedding.
"Pendejo."
"You keep using that word. I’m starting to think it’s affectionate."
"It’s not."
"Your face says otherwise."
She threw another pillow. I caught that one too. And somehow, between the pillow throwing and the insults and the way she was looking at me like I was simultaneously the worst decision she’d ever made and the best thing that had ever happened to her, I felt something shift.
Not the Nectar. Not the pendant. Not any of the supernatural bullshit that had become my daily existence.
Just hope.
Fragile and stupid and probably doomed, but hope nonetheless.
"I should shower," I said.
"You should."
"And then I should eat."
"Also true."
"And then I should probably figure out how to survive the next two weeks without making my situation worse."
Reyna stood. The silk robe gaped at the collar, revealing the marks I’d left on her skin the night before. She didn’t bother fixing it.
"Let me know how that goes."
"You’ll be the first."
"I better be." She walked toward the bathroom, pausing at the door. "Satori?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For last night. For all of it."
"Don’t mention it."
"I’m going to mention it. A lot. Probably at inappropriate times in front of your other girlfriends just to see their reactions."
I groaned. "You’re going to get me killed."
"Then you’ll die knowing you were loved." She winked and disappeared into the bathroom.
The pendant pulsed cold.
Three hundred miles away, Natalia Kuzmina was definitely adding "Reyna winking" to the list of transgressions.
I was so dead.
But somehow, lying in a bed that smelled like another woman, wearing marks that proved my infidelity, knowing that the girl I loved most was planning my eventual destruction with the same methodical precision she brought to everything, I found myself smiling.
This was my life now. Complicated beyond any reasonable measure. Dangerous in ways I couldn’t fully calculate. Full of women who were either going to love me to death or just plain kill me.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Nel’s voice drifted through my consciousness.
The Audience is highly engaged with this romantic subplot. Apollo has declared it his favorite narrative thread of the current arc. Nike is taking notes on relationship management strategies. Aphrodite has sent another gift basket.
I did not want to know what was in Aphrodite’s gift basket.
Also, your survival probability has improved slightly. Twenty-seven percent now.
Four percentage points. That was basically a landslide.
The shower started in the bathroom. Steam began curling under the door. Reyna’s voice floated out, singing something in Spanish that sounded suspiciously like a magical girl anime opening theme.
I touched the pendant against my chest. Cold, but steady. A reminder of what waited for me back home. A promise of reckoning that I couldn’t escape and didn’t want to.
Two more weeks on the mainland. Aegis Prime assessment starting Thursday. Guild politics and corporate maneuvering and Julian Valerius lurking somewhere with hatred in his eyes and schemes in his heart.
And through all of it, a girl with crimson hair who’d never been loved, learning what it meant to be wanted.
I could work with that.