Petra came back out with the pen in her hand.
She’d found it in under ninety seconds, which told me everything about how much she’d actually been looking for it. Nobody searches a conference room that fast unless they already know where the thing is, and Petra Lang did not misplace objects. She catalogued her belongings the same way other people breathed.
"Fitzgerald." She stopped four feet away and held the pen up like an exhibit. "I trust the hallway outside the faculty offices is the appropriate venue for whatever this is."
"It’s a hallway," Sloane said. "People stand in hallways."
"People stand. That was not standing."
Sloane’s arm around my waist tightened by about eight percent, which for her was a declaration of war with paperwork already filed. I could feel her building toward something loud through the bond, that specific pressure she got right before she said something she’d regret in twenty minutes and defend for a week.
I put my hand over hers before she launched.
"You’re right," I said to Petra. "Bad optics. Won’t happen outside the faculty building again."
Petra blinked. She’d loaded ammunition for an argument and I’d conceded the point before she got to fire, and I watched her recalibrate in real time, her jaw shifting a fraction as she filed the concession somewhere she hadn’t prepared a folder for.
"Well." She adjusted her grip on the planner. "Naturally. I’m glad one of you understands the concept of institutional visibility."
"He’s not agreeing with you," Sloane said. "He’s managing you. There’s a difference and you’ll figure it out around November."
That landed. Petra’s flush climbed higher on her cheekbones, sitting there against all that porcelain like someone had dropped ink in milk, and for a second the whole imperial composure thing came apart at the seams. Her eyes flicked to me. Then away. Then back, faster than she meant to, and she caught herself doing it and her spine went rigid.
I noticed. I always noticed. That’s the problem with a hundred Intelligence and an interface that flags micro-expressions before my conscious brain finishes rendering the face: I get handed information I’d have been happier not receiving.
The Oracle Feed slid a line across the bottom of my vision.
Petra Lang. Gauge: 14%. Status: Curious. Emotional read: irritated, envious, physically responsive. Note: the envy is not about the position.
I dismissed it. Not because it was wrong. Because it was correct and I had exactly zero available bandwidth for another problem with green eyes and an agency-owning mother.
"Friday," Petra said. "Fourteen hundred. The conference room on the fourth floor, not this one, since apparently this one has become a public exhibition space."
"Fourteen hundred," I agreed.
"Do not be late."
"I’ve never been late."
"You were forty seconds late this afternoon."
"That’s not late. That’s arriving."
Her mouth did something. It wasn’t a smile, exactly, more like the ghost of one that she strangled in the crib, and she turned on her heel and walked away with her heels clicking out a beat that was faster than she’d come in with. She didn’t look back. She wanted to. I watched her not do it, watched the small stiffness in her shoulders holding the impulse down, and I thought about how much easier my life would be if I were slightly stupider.
Sloane exhaled. "God, I hate her."
"You don’t hate her. You hate that she’s competent."
"I can do both." Her fingers slid into the loop of my belt, which was not a hallway gesture. "I’m extremely good at multitasking."
She tugged. "Walk."
So we walked.
Late afternoon had gone gold over the campus, the light coming in sideways across all that white concrete and turning it something warmer than the architects intended. Students moved past us in loose knots, half of them still wrecked from Steele’s morning session, one guy from 1-A limping in a manner that suggested he’d learned something about hubris. A girl with green hair pointed at me and whispered to her friend, and the friend went wide-eyed, and I filed that under the growing stack of consequences from an interview I’d given on impulse outside the academic building.
Being recognizable is a currency. I just hadn’t finished reading the exchange rate.
Sloane didn’t let go of my belt loop the entire walk. Nine years of living in the same house and she’d never once touched me in public before three weeks ago. Now she’d developed a habit of keeping one hand hooked into me at all times, like I might drift off and get claimed by whoever was closest.
"Petra’s an asset to my ability," I said, because lying to her had a specific cost now and I’d promised.
Her step didn’t break. "Of course I know that."
"You’re not going to yell?"
"I’m going to yell later. In private. Where it counts." Her thumb moved against my hip through the fabric. "You told me. That’s the deal. The deal doesn’t say I have to like it, it says you don’t get to make me find out from a hallway."
"That’s very mature of you."
"Don’t." Her voice went sharp. "Don’t call me mature when I’m actively choosing not to detonate a load-bearing wall. That’s not maturity, that’s restraint, and restraint is exhausting and I’d like credit for the effort instead of a compliment about my character."
There it was. That was Sloane Fitzgerald in eleven words: the volume, the honesty leaking out underneath it, the demand for acknowledgment she’d deny wanting if anyone offered it kindly.
"Noted," I said. "You get credit."
Her building came up on the left, Prometheus House for 1-A, all glass and white stone with the training grounds spread out below it in the gold light. Two of her classmates were on the front steps arguing about something with real heat, and one of them was Koda, who spotted us and made a noise like a kettle.
"Belmont! Is it true you are a rep?"
"He’s the rep for 1-B," Sloane called back.
"That’s a conflict of interest!"
"It absolutely is." Sloane didn’t slow down. Didn’t stop dragging me toward the door either.
Koda cupped her hands around her mouth. "You know the whole cohort has a betting pool on whether you two are going to sabotage each other during the Crucible."
"Tell them to bet heavy on yes," I said.
Sloane elbowed me in the ribs, which at her strength was a legitimate medical event, and I made a sound that undermined my dignity considerably as we got through the doors and into the elevator. She hit the button for three. The doors closed. The little box started climbing.
She had me against the wall before we passed the second floor.
"Hey," I managed.
"Shut up."
Her mouth found mine and there was nothing careful in it. Sloane kissed like she fought, forward pressure and full commitment, teeth grazing my lower lip hard enough to make my hands come up to her waist on pure reflex. The bond flared between us, that two-way channel dumping her feelings straight into my chest with no filter and no delay, and what came through wasn’t gentle. It was possessive. It was hungry. It was nine years of watching me from across a kitchen table finally being allowed a body.
The elevator dinged.
"Move," she said against my mouth.
We moved.