Chapter 91: Maren And Joan Decided To Settle Who Keeps Me Alive And The Wall Paid For It

Soren untangled himself from Yara’s shadow at dawn and she didn’t wake up but she tracked him anyway.

She’d have his location before he reached the yard and she wouldn’t have to open her eyes to get it.

Selah was already dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed, watching him come out of the dark side of the room where the shadows had been wrong all night.

She didn’t say anything about it.

Mona said "augh" at the door frame on the way out.

◆◆◆◆

The morning drill was the same as every morning drill, which meant the yard was full and the grass was whole and everyone ran on top of the thing Soren hadn’t told anyone about.

He stood at the edge and watched them.

He’d known something was down there since the morning the surface put itself back over a hole it shouldn’t have been able to close.

This was the first time it reached up to check.

Two people moved before he finished registering it.

Maren was closer, she’d worn a path across the grounds with how often she came over, and the fire came off her before she’d taken a full step.

Joan moved slower and didn’t burn anything.

Joan had a Bureau sidearm out, a containment round chambered, and she’d already put herself at an angle that cut the limb off from the running students behind it.

The limb pulled back into the ground before either reached it.

It left a hole and a yard full of Z-class students who’d stopped running.

And it left Maren and Joan standing six feet apart over the closing hole, both of them having moved to protect the same person two different ways.

"You burned the grass," Joan said.

"I burned the danger."

"That thing was gone, you burned the grass over forty students."

"It was going for him." Maren’s hand still had fire on the knuckles. "You drew a gun and stood there."

"I cut its line to the crowd," Joan said.

"If it had come up behind you, you’d have been facing the wrong way, because you weren’t protecting anyone, you were running at the thing nearest him."

"That’s the same thing."

"It’s not."

Soren stood between the closing hole and the two of them.

It wasn’t jealousy.

He’d seen their jealousy, it had a different shape, it pointed at each other.

This pointed past each other at him and at the question of what protecting him even meant, and the two of them had different answers.

He pulled Maren’s line up while they argued.

It had been climbing on the same fuel as Selah’s, proximity and jealousy, with the ceiling at 100 leaving it room.

Maren wasn’t near the top, but the line was doing something he didn’t like, the number unsteady, and he knew why.

The Fracture seal was still bonded to her.

That hadn’t changed since the day it got set.

Her OI and the seal were on the same string, he’d watched the chain before, bond steadies, seal holds, bond spikes or drops wrong and the seal feels it.

Right now her line was spiking on the argument, going up on the wanting-to-be-the-one-who-saves-him of it.

The seal was feeling her.

"Stop."

He didn’t raise his voice.

Both of them turned.

"You’re arguing about who protects me better," Soren said. "Like it’s a thing you win."

"It is a thing," Maren started.

"It’s not."

He looked at Joan.

"You protect me because one day you sat down and decided to, with a Bureau career on the table and your name on the wrong list, and you chose it anyway."

He looked at Maren.

"You protect me because the bond pulls you and the system puts a string between us. Those aren’t the same and you’re both right and neither of you gets to be the one."

"Then who—" Maren said.

"Me."

He let it sit.

"The Heart doesn’t choose. It pulls you toward me and it dresses the pull up as devotion and you’ve been treating it like it’s a contest you can win by getting there first."

"It’s not. I decide who stands where and what you are to each other. The pull doesn’t, the system doesn’t, the thing in the ground doesn’t."

Maren’s line stopped oscillating.

The cold bleeding off the distant ground pulled back in.

The seal reseated. He felt that too, the chain running the other direction for once, bond steadies, seal holds.

[DING! — Obsession Index stabilizing. Pressure released. Value adjusted downward.]

[DING! — Bonded containment artifact: resonance reseated. Hold stable.]

Maren sat down on the torn grass where she’d been standing and put her hand over the banked fire like she was checking it was off.

"I hate that that worked," she said.

"I know."

Joan stayed standing.

"You said I chose it," she said, when the students had been waved back to the far end of the yard. "But there’s no number on me."

"No."

"Good," Joan said.

"Keep it that way. When I stand somewhere it’s because I looked at the spot and decided it was worth standing in, and I keep saying yes."

It was the same thing she’d told him months ago, the night she burned her career down, said cleaner now.

Soren didn’t argue it.

◆◆◆◆

The hole finished closing.

The grass knit back over it the way it had the first time, like the ground was hiding the work.

That was the part Soren stood and looked at after the two of them had gone quiet.

Something under the campus had pushed a single limb up to find out what was up here, and then it had pulled back down to think about it.

That wasn’t the thing.

Whatever the rest of it was, it was still down there, under the yard the whole school ran on every morning, and it had just learned that when it reached for him two different people came at it from two different directions without being told to.

It would account for that next time.

He looked at the seamless grass a while longer and then he went to help Maren up off the ground.