Riven's hand had been in the same position for over fifteen minutes. Not cooking. Not even monitoring. Just resting on the handle of his grilling fork while he stared at the burning wood with the glazed expression of someone whose brain had taken a private trip and not told his body when it was coming back.
His steak, at this point, had opinions about what had happened to it. Specifically, it had ceased to be a steak.
"Riven." Cael looked over from his own section of the grill. "Your steak."
"I know." Riven said it with the flatness of someone who technically was not knowing. "I like it overcooked."
"It's on fire. Actual fire."
Riven looked down.
Where the steak had been, there was now a small, committed fire operating independently on the grill rack. In reflex, he grabbed it — or rather, grabbed the fork — then threw the entire thing sideways toward Cael in one underthought motion.
Cael yelled and knocked it away with his hand. It landed on the sand between them.
"What the hell is wrong with you, dude!" Cael shook his hand out, blowing across the knuckles. "What was that for?!"
"I don't know, man." Riven dragged his chair back and dropped into it with the full weight of someone who had been standing too long in cold weather. "We've been out here over thirty minutes. It's freezing. Where is he?"
"Maybe give it another five minutes before deciding there's a crisis." Cael reached beside his chair for a water bottle, took a long drink. "Or is someone waiting for you? Let me guess—"
"Don't."
"Your girlfriend—"
"I said don't, Cael."
Headlights cut through the dark — white, approaching at the specific angle of someone who was aware they were making an entrance. A white Mercedes came in fast, veered to a stop just off the edge of their camp, and threw a small cloud of dust their direction.
"What the—"
Zael stepped out of the driver's side, keys moving in slow circles around one finger. He had the smile on, the specific one that meant something had happened and he was enjoying the shape of it, and also possibly had caused it.
"Things are about to get interesting for us boys." he said before he'd even found his chair.
Cael set the water bottle down. "You've been back in the city for what, forty-eight hours? And you're already running at Dante?"
"I know what you're going to say." Zael pulled a cigarette from his coat, lit it, took a drag in one smooth sequence. "And Dante made his decision on his own. I offered him a clean resolution. He rejected it and used some creative language doing so." Another drag, slow. "If he touches Silvic High after this, the consequences are his." His eyes moved. "Where's Sera?"
"Shouldn't you know that?" Riven asked.
Seraphine Reese. Two titles, both significant, with different kinds of weight attached. Queen of Silvic High, which she'd become specifically because Zael had chosen her for it, a decision that had puzzled people until the rumour about the two of them confirmed what the decision had already suggested. The titles existed together in a way that didn't feel coincidental.
They were dating.
"She's been locked up again," Cael said. "Same thing she does when something's sitting with her; she goes quiet, closes the door, doesn't come out for a while." He met Zael's eyes. "You could call her."
Cael knew Zael's architecture around Seraphine, the way the chemistry between them operated, or the way Zael chose to make it operate, which wasn't always the same thing.
He'd seen it enough times to predict the response: discontinue the meeting, get back in the car, drive to wherever she was. That was the version Cael had prepared for.
Zael exhaled smoke and surprised him.
"She doesn't need to be here." He took another drag, and both Cael and Riven went quiet in that particular way that happened when Zael said something that contradicted the expected script. Then, without transition: "Cael. This thing with Dante— I heard whispers that it started with someone from our school. What was his name..."
He pressed his palm against his forehead. Actually tried to remember.
"Ren Mora." He said. "Right."
Riven turned to look at Cael immediately, and the smile that moved across his face was the unhelpful kind. "Isn't that the one competing with you for—"
"Zael." Cael cut across him cleanly. "You remember Ren Mora. He's the cripple. Low-tier. No rank to speak of. There's no realistic way someone like that gets Dante involved. You must have the wrong student."
"Interesting calculation." Zael tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. "What I was told is that he beat Dante's brother. Comprehensively." He tilted his head. "Dante's brother is a high-tier, yes?"
"Presumably—"
"So." Zael said it the way someone places the last piece of something. "A cripple, by your own description— a low-tier with no ability— beats a high-tier badly enough that the high-tier's gang boss older brother sends eight people into my arena on a Friday night." He let that breathe for a moment. "You can see why I'm finding that difficult to file as a coincidence."
"What are you suggesting?" Cael asked.
Zael's smile had that specific quality, the one that showed up when his life was becoming more interesting to him than it already was. He looked out at the dark between the trees and the fire.
"Turns out we were tricked," he said. "Ren Mora was never a cripple."
***
[Author's POV]
"Here we go."
WHACK.
I watched the numbers climb the moment my fist made contact, holding my breath without having decided to.
Then it started to slow. The way it always did, that gradual deceleration that the machine produced specifically to demonstrate how far away from enough I still was.
290. I stared at the number.
The smile came before I'd processed why, the previous ceiling had been 213. A jump of more than eighty points, and that hadn't even been a full swing. I'd been testing the form, not the force. Which meant if I actually committed—
My hand went to my pocket. Hit emptiness.
I had ten dollars converted to cents and I'd already burned through all of it.
"Still not breaking 300?"
I looked up. Aria, she had a juice carton in hand, walking in with the unhurried energy of someone who had nowhere to be and was comfortable with that. The mocking smile was already installed.
"You don't know the half of it." I turned back to the machine and put both hands on the sides of it like that was going to help somehow. "I'm holding back."
"Sure you are." She slurped. Loud. Deliberate.
"I heard something interesting though." She leaned against a nearby surface. "That Dante came after you."
"Yes." I turned to look at her. "Because you punched his brother in the face."
"Oh." She tapped the straw against her bottom lip. "I didn't think about that. He probably doesn't know it was me."
"Probably doesn't. Which means I'm the one absorbing the follow-up." I turned fully to face her. "Exactly, Aria. Why am I the one dealing with this? That was your punch. That was your evening. I was literally being poisoned on a couch."
She was looking at me blankly. The juice carton straw still in her mouth, her eyes present but somewhere slightly behind present.
"Against you, Dante's not a serious threat," I continued. "But I'm not you. I'm the one they're going to keep coming after because I'm the weaker target and they think they can actually get something done with me. Is that something you've thought about for even a second?"
She pulled the straw out. The carton made a sound that meant it was empty. She aimed it at the trash can but missed. It landed on the floor.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I'm hungry."
The specific kind of calm that came over me in that moment was the kind that preceded a decision about a window and whether a person could physically fit through one. I had a shoe. I had access to her teeth. I was genuinely considering the logistics.
Then my phone buzzed.
Rowan. His name was on the screen.
Right. After the karaoke parlour situation, he'd insisted on getting my number and had spent the following week using it to apologise for the being Tyler's obedient asshole.
I hadn't made it easy for him, not out of cruelty, more out of the principle that apologies that came with expectations were not exactly apologies. But he'd outlasted my resistance, had lunch with me on a Wednesday, and had somehow landed in the category of person whose calls I was willing to answer.
I slid the button.
"Hello."
"Hello, son of bitch."
Yep. Definitely not Rowan.
"Who is this?" I asked. I knew who it was. I was giving the situation a moment to be something else before confirming it.
"Disappointing. You forgot me already?" The voice had that specific quality, calm on the surface, the kind of calm that was there to let you know something was sitting underneath it. "I'm hurt, Ren."
Aria's expression had already shifted. She was watching me.
"Sancho," I said.
She frowned. Deep and immediate.
"Why do you have Rowan's phone?" I said into the speaker. My other hand had made a fist at my side without being asked to.
"Take a guess." He chuckled. "Did you really think that was going to be the end of it? After what you and your girlfriend pulled?"
"What we pulled." I stayed level. "You poisoned me at a karaoke bar. I survived. Aria hit you once. That's the whole story. What exactly is the grievance here?"
The laugh that came back was the specific variety of laughter that belonged to people who had convinced themselves the upper hand was theirs. I recognised the type. I'd been on the receiving end of it before, from people who hadn't held the upper hand as long as they thought.
"Thirty minutes, Ren." No more preamble. "Abandoned warehouse on Hereford's Block. Come before time's up and your friend walks away. That's the offer."
"He's not my friend," I said.
I ended the call.
Aria was looking at me with the expression of someone calibrating how serious this was.
"So you're just going to let him die."
"I only specified that he's not my friend." I put the phone in my pocket. The smile came on its own. "I didn't say I wasn't in the mood to go break that asshole's nose again."