Chapter 525 | Bad Poetry

Chapter 525: 525 | Bad Poetry

She pressed her face into my chest, right over the scar the leopard left, right over the graft that hummed warm and satisfied with her proximity. Her arms came up around my back, and we stood there in the alcove while the world moved past us and didn’t matter.

"Sunday," she said into my shirt. "Boba. No thinking about gates."

"No thinking about gates."

"And you’re paying."

"I always pay."

"Because you have Aurora’s credit card."

"Technically I have Aurora’s emergency backup credit card that she doesn’t know I have."

Naomi laughed, and the sound of it was worth every broken bone Vale had given me. She pulled back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, pretending she hadn’t almost cried, and I pretended I hadn’t noticed because that was what she needed.

"Class," she said. "Nishimura reading."

"Nishimura’s the one who throws chalk at people who fall asleep."

"Nishimura’s the one who threw chalk at Jordan so hard it left a mark." She grinned. "I’m not Jordan."

"You’re definitely not Jordan."

She kissed me then, quick and sweet, brown sugar boba and the warmth that had become my anchor through collapsing dimensions. Then she was gone, pink and black hair bouncing as she jogged toward the academic wing, and I was alone in the alcove with the taste of her on my lips and the weight of everything she’d said settling into my bones.

The graft pulsed. Eight rings in the back of my skull, burning steady, and one flickering at the edge where Blair Davenport hadn’t decided what she felt yet.

Eighteen days on the clock. A gate in Monterey. A weapon forging in Santa Barbara. A world full of problems I couldn’t punch my way through.

I pushed off the wall and started walking.

The training field was empty when I got there, which made sense because anyone with sense was in class or sleeping off the morning drills. The grass still showed the damage from our exercises, scorch marks where Blair had lost control, depressions where Jordan’s shadows had pinned clones to the earth, a perfect arc of destruction where Naomi’s Wave Motion had swept through the formation.

I found a spot near the cliff edge and sat down. The Pacific stretched out below, blue and endless, indifferent to the academy and the students and the gates that kept opening in the fabric between worlds. Somewhere down there, fish were doing fish things. Having fish problems. Living fish lives.

I envied the fish.

My phone buzzed. A message from Addison: "If you’re sulking somewhere I will find you and there will be consequences."

I typed back: "Not sulking. Contemplating the meaninglessness of existence."

"Same thing. Where are you."

"Training field. Cliff side."

"Stay there. Bringing supplies."

I didn’t know what supplies meant and I was mildly terrified to find out. Addison’s definition of supplies ranged from coffee jellies to actual weapons depending on her mood and whether Aurora had done something to annoy her in the past hour.

She appeared fifteen minutes later with a paper bag and two drinks. Her purple-streaked hair was down instead of in its usual chaotic bun, and she’d changed out of the leather she’d worn to the party into something that looked almost normal. Black jeans. A band shirt for a group I’d never heard of. Combat boots that had seen actual combat.

"Caught you brooding." She dropped down beside me and shoved one of the drinks into my hand. "Coffee. Black. Like your soul."

"My soul is more of a medium gray."

"Optimist." She pulled a cherry lollipop from the bag and unwrapped it with her teeth. "Aurora says you’re spiraling."

"Aurora’s in guild orientation."

"Aurora’s omniscient. Also she has cameras everywhere. Don’t ask." Addison stuck the lollipop in her mouth and stared out at the ocean. "So. Eighteen days. Monterey. Vale beating the shit out of you every morning. Multiple women with complicated feelings about your continued existence. How are we feeling about all that?"

"Overwhelmed."

"Good. You should be." She pulled the lollipop out and pointed it at me. "You know what your problem is?"

"I have a lot of problems."

"Your problem is you think you’re supposed to have all of this figured out. Like there’s some version of Jace Monroe who handles everything perfectly and never feels like the world’s about to crush him." She put the lollipop back in. "That guy doesn’t exist. He’s a lie you tell yourself to feel bad about not being him."

"That’s surprisingly insightful."

"I’m a deeply complex person." She leaned back on her hands, combat boots dangling over the cliff edge. "I used to think I had to have everything together. Before the scythe manifested. Before the academy. I was going to be normal. Have normal problems. Date normal boys who didn’t make me feel like I was going to vibrate out of my skin."

"And then?"

"And then I manifested a weapon made of death energy and everyone started treating me like a bomb that might go off." She shrugged. "So I leaned into it. Became the thing they were afraid of. Easier than proving them wrong."

I thought about that. About Blair’s fire and the way she used it to keep people at distance. About Misato’s walls and the nine years she’d spent making herself hard enough that nothing could hurt her. About Naomi’s apologies, always apologizing for existing, until I’d shown her she didn’t have to.

"You’re not a bomb," I said.

"No." She looked at me, brown eyes warm in a way she only let happen when she thought nobody was watching. "I’m just a girl who likes coffee jellies and writes bad poetry and has a stuffed bat named Vlad." Her mouth quirked. "Aurora told you about Vlad."

"Aurora tells me everything."

"Aurora needs to learn boundaries." But she didn’t sound angry. She sounded like someone who’d been seen and was deciding whether to be grateful or terrified about it. "Point is. You don’t have to be the guy who has it all together. You can be the guy who’s figuring it out. Who makes mistakes and breaks things and comes back anyway."

"That’s the guy I am."