Day 5 - Night 2/2

Van saw the hesitation in Mara. It was held in the tension of her neck when she was thinking, in the way she took a breath to say something difficult then stopped herself.

For the last few minutes, the conversation had been sinking by degrees. Fiona's name had come up less often. Mara's chair had accepted her as if it had been designed around the exact shape of a tired woman trying to keep her back straight after making dinner for nine people, and Van had let the silence stretch because it no longer felt like something broken.

The suite had done a good job.

He didn’t like giving it credit for anything, but it had. The living room looked less like a prize and more like a place people had been careless in for years. The lamp beside Mara's chair cast a soft amber cone over the stacks of books the hotel had stolen from her memory, or copied from it, or guessed at with cruel accuracy.

The pictures on the walls had stopped feeling like traps only because they had been there long enough to become furniture.

Mara looked at one of them now, not at him. It showed the group at dinner, a moment that had never been photographed by any method he knew of. Lizzy was half hidden behind Naomi. Claire was laughing with her mouth open. Evelyn looked as if she had accepted amusement as a temporary necessity. Fiona was in the background with her arms crossed and her face turned away from the table, but not away from the people.

"You're thinking very loudly," Van said.

Mara's eyes moved from the picture to him. "I am not."

He smiled, because she sounded like herself again. Mara didn’t relax so much as choose what work to put down for a while. But her shoulders had loosened against the recliner. The tea mug rested empty on the small table at her side. Her fingers had stopped flexing from where the ceramic had burned them.

Van looked toward the hallway that led to the bedroom. "If this is about the bed, I promise to not take up much space."

"The bed?"

"You seemed like you were trying to decide how to say something unpleasant. Given the theme of the evening, I made a guess."

Mara's expression changed before she could stop it. A twitch at her mouth. A faint lift of her chin. A warmth in her cheeks that she absolutely noticed the second it arrived.

"I am perfectly fine sharing your bed."

Van's eyebrows went up.

Mara closed her eyes.

He gave her three whole seconds because he was not a monster.

"I mean," she said carefully, "I am not frightened of sharing the bed assigned to us by a coercive magical hospitality prison."

She covered her face with one hand, and for the first time since he had met her, Mara Ellison looked properly flustered. Just a capable adult woman betrayed by her own mouth and furious at herself for allowing it.

Van felt laughter rise and tried to keep it gentle.

Mara heard the attempt and lowered her hand enough to glare at him over her knuckles. "Go ahead, I deserve that. It was bad."

That broke both of them.

The laugh didn’t last long, but it did its work. It cleared the tightness left by Fiona, by the hotel, by a suite trying to sell them a life with the future already chosen. Mara leaned back in the recliner and exhaled until her face stopped being red.

"That," she said, "is unfortunately close to the problem."

Van let the smile fade. "The bed?"

"No. Me sounding like Lizzy."

Mara looked at the picture again, but this time it seemed to help her speak instead of letting her avoid him. "Something happened when I was transformed. My illusions are sharper and more defined, but…"

Van held his hands up defensively, “You don’t owe me an explanation. If it’s private…”

"That’s exactly the problem," she said. "Apparently, my dreams have been leaking into my dorm."

Mara took a steadying breath and continued, "Lizzy says they have been…racy is a generous word."

"I see," Van said helplessly.

"This week has been so centered on intimacy and sex, and a harem, and everything that goes with that." Mara’s face was red. "I’m usually more composed than this, but you have to admit this situation is unique."

Van's mouth tightened. "I'm sorry."

"You didn’t do it to me, Verena did."

"No, but I can still be sorry it happened."

That answer found her unprepared. She stopped preparing the next sentence.

Mara rubbed her thumb along the arm of the recliner. The leather had been made soft by an imaginary decade of use. "This week has been difficult for that."

He knew enough to keep still. There was nothing he could add that wouldn’t sound like he was trying to steal the focus.

"I need you to know," Mara said, "that if something appears tonight, it will be my transformation misbehaving. I don’t want you surprised or offended. I don’t even remember them that well. I mean, I never have remembered my dreams clearly."

"All right." Van nodded. "I won't be hurt or offended. I do reserve the right to be surprised."

Mara studied him for a second longer, then seemed satisfied enough to accept the answer.

He looked down at his own hands. He had not meant to say anything else. That would have been the sensible choice. But sense had never been a complete defense in this place.

"I have something adjacent," he said. "Not magic," he said quickly. "Just, uh. Biology."

Mara didn’t smile. Her dignity was too generous for that. Her eyes, however, betrayed her completely.

Van pressed on because stopping would only make it worse. "Mornings are not always convenient. Especially in a situation where the hotel keeps putting someone next to me and then acting like any physical reaction is a mission statement."

Mara's face was carefully blank.

"So," Van said, "if I ignore any accidental dream visions, perhaps you could ignore any evidence that my body is not as careful as I would like."

For a moment, Mara looked as if she was weighing whether compassion required her to save him from the sentence, then she laughed.

Not the light laugh from before. This one escaped her. She bent forward in the recliner, one hand at her mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort not to make it too loud. Van felt his own embarrassment burn hot enough to threaten structural damage, but the laugh was warm. It did not make him feel smaller.

"I’m sorry," she managed. "I’m sorry. It is only that I appear to be negotiating with a man to share his bed and ignore his body, which is not the usual complaint."

"I'm innovating," he said with a shy grin. "But it's mostly panic."

"That I believe." She wiped at one eye with the side of her finger. When she looked at him again, the humor remained, but it had softened around something steadier.

"Agreed," she said. "You will not treat my transformation as some kind of confession. I will not treat your body as an attack. We will both behave like responsible adults while an evil hotel tries to convince us to abandon our morals."

—----------------------------

Fiona’s room didn’t have space for a proper confrontation, which Katherine suspected was part of why the hotel had built it this way. There was barely room for the both of them, but at least Cassie was out of earshot.

Cassie had obeyed, but not gracefully. She’d gone into the bathroom with one last look at Fiona, one at Katherine. The shower roared against the tile in a rushing slither, but without the noises associated with the void a person made in the falling water. Cassie paced back and forth before settling on the toilet lid.

Fiona stood near the foot of her bed with her arms loose at her sides. Her red hair was unbound around her shoulders, and the issued clothes the hotel had given her made her look younger than her posture allowed.

"You have my attention," Fiona said. "Use it."

Katherine inclined her head. "I intend to."

Fiona's eyes narrowed.

"Don’t try to make this about whether I am afraid of your temper," Katherine said. "You don’t get to dress up self-destruction as moral clarity."

Fiona stared at her.

Katherine could feel the assessment moving. Not telepathy. Fiona's gift was more crude. Her eyes mapped weight, balance, intention, old training, new injuries, likely openings. Katherine let her look.

Her mouth tightened. "You came here to scold me."

"No. I came here because I did the math and I’m the one you are most likely to listen to." Katherine took one step deeper into the room. Not close enough to corner her. Not far enough to look like a retreat.

"You’re angry," she said. "You have reason to be angry. The system is vile. Verena is vile. The fact that we have been required to make distinctions between different varieties of violation is vile. I am not here to make you feel better or to sell you on the virtues of the system."

"How generous."

"I am here because your anger is becoming stupid."

Behind the bathroom door, something shifted. Cassie, hearing tone if not words.

Katherine didn’t look away from Fiona. "There. That. You want to punish me for the insult because it is easier than examining the part of you that knows I’m right."

"You don't know anything about me," Fiona hissed. "You’re not Evelyn."

"No. I’m not a telepath, and I’m grateful for it daily." Katherine's voice stayed low. "But I have spent most of my adult life surviving by understanding people who were lying to me, hunting me, trying to recruit me, trying to kill me, or trying to sleep with me. I read shoulders. Breath. How someone chooses a door. Where their eyes go before they decide to be cruel. I do not need to hear your thoughts to know you are carrying something that hurts."

Fiona's expression didn’t change enough to count as a flinch. But her hands did.

"I can’t make you talk about it," Katherine said. "I can’t make you heal. But I won’t allow you to keep pretending that what you are doing affects only you."

Fiona's voice went quiet. "Be careful, people don’t ‘allow’ me to do things."

"No, I won’t be careful."

The first word cut harder than volume could have. Fiona watched her for the trap and did not find it.

Katherine let the shower fill the pause.

"If Verena removes you as a contestant," Katherine said, "she won’t send you home with a stern note. She’ll rewrite you. You know that. Everyone knows that, though some of them are working very hard to pretend it isn’t true. She will take the shape of you that resists and turn it into a decorative lesson. Something hungry. Something compliant in exactly the way that makes the old you scream."

Fiona's eyes sharpened with disgust.

"Yes," Katherine said. "That is what is waiting at the end of the noble charge you keep rehearsing."

"You think I don't know?"

"I think you know and you’re so afraid of changing that you are baiting someone else to do it for you."

Fiona bared her teeth without smiling. "And now you’re supposed to be worried about me."

"I am worried about you, you idiot. We all are." That answer did not fit Fiona's prepared response. Katherine saw the irritation of it.

"I am also worried about everyone standing behind you," Katherine continued. "Lizzy would see you erased and fold around the shape of it. She would still move. She might even smile if instructed. But the part of her beginning to believe resistance can survive fear would be eaten alive."

Fiona said nothing.

"Cassie would follow you."

The bathroom shadow moved again.

Katherine raised her voice only enough to cut through water at the edges. "Not immediately, perhaps. Not by plan. She would tell herself she was making a stand, that someone had to answer force with force. She would charge into elimination with both hands bright and call it loyalty."

"Leave her out of this."

"Why? You’re not."

Fiona took one step forward.

Katherine didn’t.

"Claire would try to hold the group together," Katherine said. "She would make jokes until they cut her mouth. She would try to be brave because she is very young and has mistaken exhaustion for a leadership style. But she would lose something she needs."

Fiona's breathing stayed controlled. Barely.

"Naomi would despair," Katherine said. "Quietly. Politely. In a way that inconvenienced no one until she was gone inside herself. Mara would blame herself for failing to help you even though you would have never let her. Evelyn would bury herself in the system and die trying to find a way to undo all of this. Van would take responsibility because that seems to be his preferred method of self-harm."

Fiona's eyes cut toward the bathroom door, then back.

"And the world," Katherine said, "the one outside this hotel, the one we have all been too busy surviving to mourn properly, would lose one more chance. We were told a bonded group could beat the Architect. I’m not sentimental enough to accept that as prophecy. I am practical enough to treat it as a usable clue."

"So this is strategy."

"Yes, but that’s not all that it is. I care, Fiona, we all do. You are surrounded by Empowered heroines who save people every day, or try to." Katherine finally took that step to meet Fiona. "You are people, you furious idiot. Let us help you."

Fiona's face hardened around the answer.

Katherine sighed. "I realize you prefer your enemies simple. It saves time. Unfortunately, I am complex and inconvenient."

"You break into my room, banish Cassie to the bathroom, and tell me I am too important to be angry."

"No. I said you are too important to use anger carelessly."

"And if I decline your expert assessment?"

"Then at least leave Van alone."

Fiona laughed once, sharp and humorless. "Of course."

Katherine didn’t take the bait.

Fiona's lip curled. "You people keep coming back to him. Always him. The system shoves us at him and then everyone acts shocked when I object to being shoved."

"That objection remains viable in principle. It is no longer sufficient as a complete explanation."

"Because he’s got a nice smile? Because he’s funny?" She scoffed, “I am not putting my life in the hands of some man with control fantasies.”

"Because Evelyn has been in his head, rooting around for trauma and motivation. Because Claire, Cassie, and Naomi have each spent a night in the bed assigned to him and returned with their boundaries intact. Because every piece of evidence we have says he is frightened of frightening us."

"Evidence gathered under coercion."

"Yes. Most evidence is imperfect.” Katherine’s eyes were hard. “Adults use it anyway."

Fiona's gaze stayed locked on hers, but the angle of her shoulders changed. The first edge of hearing, not yielding.

Katherine continued before pride could rebuild the wall. "Unless your theory is that Van has a secret, uncontrollable attraction to women who shout at him and make his life more difficult, I suspect distance and a closed mouth will keep him from troubling you on any intimate level."

For half a second, Fiona looked as if she might actually choke on the response.

Katherine allowed herself nothing so vulgar as a smile.

"You are being obscene on purpose," Fiona said.

"I am being plain on purpose. Obscenity is the hotel's department."

"And what if all of you are wrong?"

Katherine nodded once. She had expected the question. Hoped for it, in fact. It meant Fiona was still dealing in possibilities rather than absolutes.

"If Van ever becomes what you fear," Katherine said, "if he uses the system as cover, if he ignores refusal, if he becomes a danger the others cannot safely name, I will handle it."

"You’ll handle it?"

"Personally."

Fiona's assessment sharpened again, deeper this time.

Katherine let her see the cost. The old work. The dark line crossed in places where there had been no good solution to dangerous work. She didn’t show it with a confession. She showed it by not looking away.

"And I will take whatever follows," Katherine said. "Elimination, punishment, alteration. Whatever Verena chooses. Losing me would hurt, but it wouldn’t break this group the way losing you would."

For several seconds, the only sound was the shower.

Then Fiona said, "You think too highly of me."

"No," Katherine said. "You are more than your pain, you just won’t look at it."

—------------------------

Evelyn didn’t answer Claire's question immediately. Claire sat on the edge of the bed with one knee tucked beneath her robe, looking as if she regretted the question but intended to stand by it out of stubbornness. The cream fabric had slipped from one shoulder. Her hair moved in slow crimson threads around her face, not floating so much as listening.

Now the strands curled, uncurled, and twisted in hesitant anticipation.

Evelyn folded the silver-gray sleeve of her sleepwear at the wrist. "Why do you want to know?"

Claire's mouth pulled to one side. "That sounds like a yes."

"Fine." Claire looked down at her hands. "I don't know. Maybe I wanted to ask someone who wouldn’t make it weird."

"That narrows the field considerably."

"Right?"

Evelyn watched her for the lie and found several, none of them malicious. Claire wasn’t asking because she had discovered Evelyn's reaction to Van catching her in training. She wasn’t asking because she had noticed the treacherous way Evelyn's thoughts had tried to organize themselves around the memory of his hands at her waist, his alarm, his immediate release.

Thank God for small mercies and teenage self-absorption. No. Claire's curiosity pointed elsewhere. Outward first, then inward by accident.

"Have you?" Evelyn asked.

"Been in love?" Claire's nose wrinkled. "I don't think so."

"You don’t think so."

Claire leaned back on her hands. "I liked people. I had crushes. A couple of them were serious at the time, in the way everything is serious when you are trying to figure out whether a text message means someone hates you or wants to kiss you."

"A harrowing period," Evelyn agreed.

"You have no idea."

"I have some idea."

Claire looked up at that.

Evelyn considered giving a version of the answer that was useful and bloodless. It would be easy. People usually accepted those versions.

But Claire had asked her. Claire was brave and earnest. She was obviously chewing on a real question, so Evelyn owed her something closer to the truth.

"Yes," Evelyn said. "A few times."

Claire went quiet.

"The first was a man I met when I was young," Evelyn said. "A fireman. Tall, strong, handsome in the obvious way. He was part of a rescue. I had been badly frightened, and he was kind to me when I needed the encouragement and his kindness felt larger than it probably was."

Claire's expression softened. "That sounds romantic."

"It wasn’t. He was married."

"Oh."

"Very married. Happily married, which I found deeply inconsiderate at the time."

Claire made a small sympathetic sound that was not quite a laugh.

Evelyn let herself remember him as he had been, then let the memory pass. "Nothing happened. He loved his wife. He was decent enough not to pretend otherwise. I, however, was young and dramatic and convinced that my feelings had the weight of destiny because they were heavy to me."

"That is unfairly relatable."

"I spent far longer than was healthy imagining the life we would have if he realized the universe had made some clerical error. I built conversations. Homes. Apologies he would give his wife. The noble sadness with which I would accept that I had ruined nothing because love had justified everything."

Claire's hair curled toward her cheeks.

"It wasn’t love," Evelyn said. "Not by the end. It may have begun as a crush, or gratitude, or infatuation wearing a very expensive coat. But I fed it until it became an obsession. I had to stop. Deliberately. Not because the feeling vanished, but because I finally understood that the feeling had no right to govern anyone else's life."

Claire nodded slowly. "How did you stop?"

"Badly, for a while."

"That is not encouraging."

"It is honest. I avoided places I might see him. I stopped rehearsing conversations. I made myself notice when fantasy was becoming theft. Eventually I had less to feed. Eventually it starved."

Claire sat with that. Evelyn could have ended there. A useful cautionary tale. A clean lesson. But the question had not been whether she had once been foolish.

"Later," Evelyn said, "I loved a woman."

Claire's eyes lifted again.

"She was sweet when she chose to be. Stubborn more often. Very smart, though she had the annoying habit of pretending intelligence was less attractive than charm. We were together long enough to become ordinary with each other, which I now think is one of love's better tests."

Claire's voice was soft. "Ordinary?"

"Shopping lists. Arguments about windows being left open. Knowing which mug she wanted without asking. Irritation that did not frighten either of us because it had somewhere safe to settle."

"That sounds nice."

"It was."

Evelyn looked toward the dark window. It reflected the room back at her, pale and polished. A woman who looked composed enough to survive the story she was telling.

"We were discussing marriage when she died," Evelyn said.

Claire didn’t move.

"It was a car crash," Evelyn said. "No monster. No villain. No ancient curse. No warning worth anything. I have spent most of my life learning how to save people from things with claws and teeth and hunger. Then the person I loved died because one ordinary machine met another ordinary machine at the wrong angle."

Claire's hair had gone very quiet around her face.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"So am I." Evelyn had expected the old pain to come cold. It often did. This time it came tired, which was not better, exactly, but it was different.

Claire drew her robe tighter around herself. "Did it make you not want to love anyone again?"

"Yes."

"Did that work?"

"No."

Claire gave her a faint, sad smile. "Also not encouraging."

"I am not here to encourage. These are the questions we all ask, when the time is right."

Evelyn let the silence sit between them for a moment. Then she said, "Now tell me why you asked."

Claire pulled one of the robe ties through her fingers. "I think Lizzy might be falling in love with Van."

Evelyn kept her expression calm. "And that worries you."

"It worries me because she barely knows him."

"None of us know him well."

"I know. But Lizzy..." Claire stopped, searching for a version of the sentence that would not betray her friend by making her small. "Lizzy feels things like they are happening to her whole body at once. She gets scared and sweet and brave and embarrassed and then she gets overwhelmed when she can’t separate them out again."

Claire's mouth tightened. "He's nice. Van is. And a little funny when he forgets he is being watched. And he is not bad to look at. Obviously. And strong, which is annoying because it shouldn’t matter but my brain is apparently committed to being embarrassing."

Evelyn's empathy brushed the edges of that admission and found more beneath it than Claire had put into words. Interest. Attraction. Irritation at the attraction. A protective instinct trying to disguise itself as superior judgment.

Evelyn didn’t expose it.

"But Lizzy," Claire said, "looks at him like he will make her safe. Maybe not all the time. Maybe not even in a way she understands. And after today with that statue, and dinner, and Mara, and all of this..." She gestured vaguely at the hotel, which did not deserve a more specific gesture. "I am worried she will decide what she feels before she has enough information."

"That can happen."

"It would be dangerous even somewhere normal. Here, with points and transformations and the system rewarding every charged moment? It feels like handing someone a match in a room full of dynamite."

Evelyn considered correcting the metaphor only because it was easier than acknowledging the accuracy. "You may be right," she said.

Claire's face shifted. She had expected resistance.

"Young women should be careful," Evelyn continued, "about investing romantic certainty in people they barely know."

Claire heard the plural. She sighed and fell back onto the bed, hair spreading across the pillow in restless red strands. "So what do I do?"

"About Lizzy?" Evelyn smiled with a bittersweet old memory. "There is no known superpower that prevents young people from behaving foolishly in romance."

"Tragic."

"Several civilizations have attempted substitutes. Chaperones. Etiquette. Poetry. Threatening older relatives. None achieved consistent results."

Claire smiled despite herself.

"You can be her friend," Evelyn said. "You can ask questions without humiliating her. You can remind her that wanting something does not require surrendering judgment. And you can avoid treating her feelings as evidence that she is foolish."

Claire covered her face with one sleeve. "I hate that last one because it is clearly the one I was about to do."

"Yes."

Claire lowered the sleeve and looked at her. "You survived it, though. Being stupid about love."

Evelyn thought of a fireman who had loved his wife, and a woman who had wanted the windows closed, and grief so ordinary it had felt insulting.

"Yes," she said. "So far."

—--------------------

The shower in Van's suite was large enough to double as a carwash. The entire bathroom looked expensive enough to insult several economies, but the shower was the worst. There were more jets than Van could figure out and a control panel that was probably stolen from a space shuttle. Mara took the first turn to shower after informing him, with considerable gravity, that elf magic might make her feel clean, but it was no substitute for actual cleanliness.

Van spent her absence wandering the bedroom while trying to slow his racing thoughts. He was trying to figure out what to do to make Mara feel safe. There was so much at stake here and he wasn’t sure he was managing.

His attention caught on the bedroom around him. The suite had continued its domestic argument here as well. The bed was large without being absurd, dressed in soft green and white instead of the usual hotel cream. There were two mismatched nightstands. One held a stack of books and reading glasses that did not belong to either of them but made Van think of Mara anyway. The other had a dented metal tray for keys and pocket change, though he had neither.

On the wall hung another picture that couldn’t exist. Van in a kitchen doorway, sleeves rolled, laughing at something beyond the edge of the frame. Mara seated at a table with a mug cupped in both hands, looking at him as if he had just said something terrible enough to deserve affection.

He turned it face down on the dresser. Then he turned it back upright because hiding it felt too much like fear.

He found the guest drawer before Mara came out. It held options. Pale silk, soft cotton, private-looking things sized for her filled the drawer. He realized that looking in there felt like voyeurism and slammed it closed before anyone caught him at it.

In the drawer beneath were men's shirts and flannel pants. He found a soft gray T-shirt large enough to hang loose without making a production of it. The same kind of compromise he had offered before, though each night made the ritual feel less like improvisation and more like a rule he was writing for himself.

He was focused on giving them an exit. It was just a plain shirt, but it felt like he was showing them his refusal of what the system wanted. He felt like he was always looking for proof that his bed wasn’t a trap just because Verena wanted it to be.

The bathroom door opened. Mara stepped out wrapped in a robe the suite had provided, hair damp around her shoulders. Her eyes went to the drawer, then to the shirt in his hands.

"Planning my wardrobe?" she asked with an arched brow.

He held it out. "You can pick something else, I just don’t have a lot of options." He eyed the guest drawer warily.

Mara took the shirt from him. "This is fine." She spared a glance to the drawer as well. "I have been told about the other options already."

"Good," he breathed out a relieved little sigh. "Okay, that’s settled. Now it’s my turn."

"Van."

He stopped halfway through turning toward the bathroom.

Her expression was unreadable in the careful way that meant she was being kind on purpose. "You don’t have to sound as if you are negotiating a hostage release every time you offer me a choice."

She set her shoulders. “I know things are unsettled, but I trust you.” She gave a shadow of a shrug, “Until you give me a reason not to.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

Mara's face softened and she pointed over his shoulder to the waiting bathroom. "Shower."

"Right."

By the time Van came back out, clean and in sleep pants and a plain shirt, Mara had changed. His shirt fell nearly to mid-thigh on her. The sleeves hung loose around her upper arms. It should have looked funny, maybe. Instead it made the room feel quieter. Less arranged. More honestly borrowed.

She stood by the bed watching him.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing."

He knew that tone. He didn’t have real experience with women, but that word had weight.

Still, he moved to the bed and began building the familiar border. Pillows first. Then the folded top blanket, angled to create a little ridge without making it look as if he was constructing a fortress. He had become efficient at it.

"This side is yours," he said. "Unless you want the other one. I can take whichever."

Mara didn’t answer.

He adjusted one of the pillows. "The bathroom is on this side, but the window is closer to that side, so if one matters more..."

"Van," her voice was soft like someone trying not to spook an animal. "Look at me."

Mara had one hand wrapped around the hem of the borrowed shirt. Not tugging it down in embarrassment. Holding it because she needed her fingers somewhere. Her damp hair lay dark against the gray fabric. In the lamplight, she looked very human and very tired.

"How many times have you done this?" she asked. "It feels like you’re trying to convince me you’re not a wild animal."

The question went through him cleanly enough that he did not feel it until after it had passed. "I don't know what you mean."

Mara's eyes narrowed with grief. "Yes, you do. I can tell you feel dangerous and you’re afraid to be seen that way."

He looked at the bed. The pillows. The carefully measured distance. The plain clothes, the offered side, the body angled away from doors so no one would feel cornered by him. The jokes placed where fear might otherwise land.

"They have reason to be scared," he said.

"Of the system," she corrected him. "Not because of anything you did."

"I’ve felt dangerous for as long as I can remember. I’ve always felt like a disaster waiting to happen."

Mara crossed the room slowly. "Van, I have seen all kinds of chaos and pain. I can tell when someone is running from it."

Van tried to smile. "This is going to become a very strange argument if you are about to tell me not to respect boundaries."

"I am telling you to stop trying to take responsibility for all the pain around you. You don’t owe anyone penance."

He didn’t have a joke for that.

Mara stopped at the foot of the bed. "Every girl who walks into this room is afraid of something. The hotel. You. Herself. What the system will reward. What refusal will cost. We have all had the luxury of treating you as part of the test."

"I am part of the test," he couldn’t help but remind her.

"You are also one of the ones taking it."

His throat tightened.

"You were kidnapped," she said. "You are watched, judged, threatened. Rewarded for things that shouldn’t be scored. And every night, you are handed a frightened woman and made responsible for trying to build a relationship with a stranger."

"I’m just trying to help," he said in a small tired voice.

"Yes." Mara's voice stayed even. "And you have. But I am not sure anyone has told you that what you’re doing is hard work."

He looked away, remembering hands dripping with blood. Remembered the certainty that the monsters would come back and take away anyone he was close to.

"I’m fine," he said.

Mara gave him a look so dry it would have made Evelyn proud. "That was terrible."

Mara climbed onto the bed.

Not her assigned side. Not his. She moved to the center, pushed the pillow barrier aside without ceremony, and sat cross-legged where the hotel had probably wanted something more dramatic to happen.

Van stared at her.

"Come here," she said, arms outstretched.

"Mara," his breath was caught in his throat.

"Come here, I said." Her voice was certain in a way he couldn’t recognize.

He stopped. "I don't want you to feel like you have to do that."

"I am aware." Mara held out both arms. Not coy or seductive. Just open and caring.

"You need a hug. You are terrified and you’ve been handling everyone else’s fear for days now."

He moved before he could outthink it.

The first contact was awkward. His knee caught the blanket. Her borrowed shirt pulled oddly at one shoulder. He didn’t know where to put his hands, and the not knowing almost made him pull back. Mara didn’t let him.

She drew him in with practical strength, one arm around his shoulders and the other across his back, until his forehead came down against the curve between her shoulder and neck. He froze there, breathing shallowly, every thought racing around in his head fighting for attention.

"You are allowed to be afraid," Mara said. "You can need help too, and the first part of learning to live with your trauma is to admit you aren’t okay all the time."

His hands clenched in the sheets at her sides. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to hold her in return.

"Not as some kind of system requirement," she said. "Not as a reward. You can be scared or sad or weak with me. Just breathe, Van."

His voice came out ragged, trembling with tension. "I'm trying not to make this weird." He dragged in a deep breath. "I don’t know the last time I hugged someone. Years, I’m sure."

"Just focus on your breathing, Van." She gave a small laugh. "Nobody hugs the wrong way."

That almost broke him.

Van made a sound that was not a laugh. Mara tightened her arms before he could apologize for it. He hadn’t known how tired he was of making himself smaller around other people’s fear. He hadn’t known there was a muscle for that until it began to shake.

He didn’t cry. His eyes burned. Water gathered faster than he could command it back, spilled over, and slipped down one cheek into the soft gray cotton of the shirt she had borrowed from him.

Mara said nothing about it. She held him in the center of the bed while the suite watched, while the pictures kept their impossible memories on the walls, while somewhere beyond the room a system sharp enough to count tenderness prepared to make itself known.

A pale blue notification opened beside the bed.

Van turned his head instinctively. Mara's hand came up, gentle but firm, and guided his face back to her shoulder.

"No," she said. "Don’t even look. It’s just the points, Van. They can’t take this from you."

He let out a breath that shook enough to embarrass him. Mara held him through that too.

The notification waited in bright, officious silence.

MARA ELLISON GAINED 4 VP

Hugging the Master +2 VP

First Time Bonus x2

Van didn’t read it, neither did Mara. In time, it faded, leaving the room in the muted colors of night.

—------------------

Lizzy hadn’t meant to stay awake. She had planned to wash her face, change into her night clothes, and go to bed. She wouldn’t think about Mara's date. She would especially not think about Mara sitting across from Van with candlelight on her face, or Mara laughing quietly at something he said, or Mara being calm and warm and exactly the kind of person a man might want near him after a day like this.

Mara had said she wasn’t after Van romantically. Lizzy believed her. Mostly.

Believing her didn’t stop her imagination. Lizzy had learned that the hard way before the hotel and then again here, where imagination had been given curtain times and intermission.

She rolled onto her side and tucked the blanket under her chin. She pictured the illusion of Van taking her into his arms.

No.

She rolled onto her back. She pictured the illusion of Van and Claire bound together by flowing red hair.

Also no.

She tried closing her eyes and immediately saw the little crystal statue from Nixie's shop. Tiny bubbles and flowing water. Tiny bodies clearly showing a private thought. A miniature version of ease so intimate it had made her chest hurt.

The Shower Caddy.

She squeezed her eyes tighter. Darkness gave the thought more room.

She didn’t want to be transformed. She didn’t want the system reaching into her and pulling out a version of her desire that could be worn, displayed, rewarded, used. She’d seen enough today to know that wanting anything in this place made it dangerous. Wanting Van's kindness had points attached. Wanting safety had rules. Wanting to be useful came with invisible hooks.

But the statue had not only been about being useful. It looked comfortable.

Not obscene, not the way she would have expected from Nixie's awful little shop. It looked like two people who knew where the soap was kept. Like stepping into warm water with someone who was already allowed to see your messy hair and sleepy face. Like being trusted with the ordinary parts of a body, not just the dramatic ones.

A bath with her boyfriend. It sounded simple, domestic, and exciting all at once.

Lizzy pressed both hands over her face. She didn’t have a boyfriend.

The system had assigned words. Master. Girlfriend. Contestant. It had made them sound official because that was what the system did when it wanted a cage to look like administration instead of captivity. Van had never asked her to call him anything. He had never looked at her like he was her master.

Would he have been secretly grateful if she had broken the statue?

The thought slipped in fast enough that she had no defense ready.

Would he have caught the crystal a little slower if he had known? Would part of him have wanted her to have it? He would resist, of course. Van resisted things on principle, sometimes before he knew what they were. He would say it was wrong. He would look embarrassed. He would tell her she didn’t have to do anything.

But would there be another look underneath? A hunger, maybe. The idea made her squirm.

Not cruel. Not like Verena. Not like the system. Something warmer and more frightening because it would be real. Van looking at her as if she wasn’t a problem to protect, or a small frightened thing, or another person he had to be careful around, but someone he wanted.

Lizzy's body reacted to the thought with such immediate betrayal that she sat up too fast. A heat bloomed in her chest and rose along the ivory slope of her collar to her throat.

Her imagination showed her the illusion of Mara trying on lingerie for a man. What if that man was Van? What if the woman was her?

The idea of Van watching her change clothes caused a hot bolt of excitement to run down her spine. Would he be tense? Would he be struggling to control himself, or would he be relaxed and take his time enjoying the sight of her? She didn’t know which one was scarier, but both answers caused her pulse to race.

She realized she was breathing raggedly and though no one was there, she reached up and covered her mouth with both hands.

Her mind was on fire with need and doubt and imagination so powerful that she couldn’t tell where her thoughts ended and her body began. The touch of her own hand to her face gave rise to a new idea, a darker one.

Would he be forceful or gentle? Would his strong hands hold her still, a captive to his desire? One of Lizzy's hands found its way drifting away from her mouth to trace down her body.

Would he caress her skin slowly, kissing the sensitive parts of her until she wanted to shatter? As the thought filled her mind, her fingers explored their way along the heat of her neck, over her chest. They passed over the swell of her breast, fingertips brushing the hardened nubs beneath her simple cotton shirt.

A strained whine escaped from the clenched fingers over her mouth as she caught one nipple between her fingers and squeezed. Her palm was filled with soft flesh as her back arched, pushing her breast into her hand, the cool air brushing across her ribs.

When had she taken her shirt off? Had she taken it off, or had her power given her what her mind couldn’t?

Her confusion was outmatched by her body’s building need for release. Her seeking hand trailed lower, across her navel and dipped towards her center. When her fingers reached the cleft of her thighs, they encountered slick swollen heat and hungry need. Her mind reeled with the images she had seen of Van with those other girls, before finally settling on her and him in the bath.

In Lizzy's mind, she was seated in Van's lap, filled and stretched tight around him. First one, then a second finger pressed inside her, slipped between her slick lips as she envisioned it.

He would be large, wouldn't he? Her fingers began to move. Did it matter how big he was? Did she want him to be big because Claire had said that Van was big and she wanted Van? Her fingers moved faster. Each time they slipped within her, her palm brushed her clit and a warm pulse of pleasure spread through her body, pushing her closer to the edge.

What would it be like? The thought was fitful, as elusive as the climax that seemed just out of reach. What would he do to make her come?

Or, God forbid, would he use her and leave her seething with need like this? Would he take that much control from her? Would she let him? Would she want him to?

There, in that moment of trembling desire, her final push dangling near the precipice, she saw a glowing screen appear floating directly over the bed like an accusation;

MARA ELLISON GAINED 4 VP

Hugging the Master +2 VP

First Time Bonus x2

Hugging? The absurd interruption slithered into her imagined scene. In her mind, she was perched on Van’s lap, filled and panting. She was bouncing in place, her sharp cries echoing on the tile. Van’s face was taut with hunger and his arms circled her holding her close to him. She imagined him growling at her low in his throat, when Mara’s blonde hair rose from behind his strong back. Her arms circled his chest, delicate nails tracing the hard planes of him, only inches from her own delicate skin.

Then Mara leaned in to kiss Van’s neck from behind, hugging him tightly. She rose up and leaned over his shoulder next, heavy breasts high and proud.

She looked Lizzy in the eye and whispered, “Good girl,” in a breathless voice.

Lizzy’s body clenched in a spasm, her fingers digging in, clenching inside of her with one hand and covering her screaming exhalation with the other. She shook as the orgasm washed through her leaving trembling aftershocks in its wake.

Slowly her swirling thoughts settled, leaving her spent and exhausted. Tangled in the sodden sheets.

Lizzy stared at the ceiling.

“Oh God, Eliza,” she muttered to herself as her breathing slowly returned to normal. “What was that about?”

Her face burned. Her whole body burned. She scrambled for the blanket, caught it, lost it when her fingers dipped through the edge, then caught it again and pulled it over herself with the frantic dignity of someone who had never been more grateful for fabric.

Lizzy lay very still on top of the twisted sheets, blanket clutched to her chest, clothes tangled uselessly beneath her, and felt something open in her that was not jealousy alone.

It was worse than jealousy. Jealousy would have been simpler.