“I care even less now,” Constantine said. “You mistake the source of my relief.”
He narrowed his eyes on his roommate as Axer sunk his fingers into the dirt—streams of magic flowing out as the vegetation bloomed from his magic—relieving him of all the overflowing excess. Guard Rock shadowed him, watching Axer poke around and examine each particle of magic, sometimes copying his motions. Shoring up wards in ways that I hadn't thought of, accelerating habitats and making them lusher, coaxing the bees to do...something—shimmering magic imbuing everything.
“Are we playing house?” Constantine asked.
“If you paid attention to the bees on the Fourth Circle versus the ones in the Midlands, you wouldn’t be asking,” Axer responded mildly, pointing at Guard Rock to repeat the motions with another hive.
Constantine narrowed his eyes and pulled out the two sleek boards of his traveling chair. Then pulled out another set of chair boards for me.
“We’re here. Call Price,” Constantine said. “She’s been going out of her mind without an open link, and one of us is going to need a lobotomy after this.”
I frowned, sitting in the chair next to him. “We don't have a—”
He touched my temple and pulled a thread of magic downward into my palm, his eyes slipping closed for a moment in bliss as he shivered, in full control of his abilities once more. He cupped his hands underneath mine for a long moment before slowly pulling them away, still connected by the wisps of whatever mental magic he had done—flush with power once more and skirting the impossible.
I blinked to see our room at Excelsine form in my hand.
Olivia was alone, scribbling something ferociously at her desk. The heavy, heady relief at seeing her nearly flattened me.
My side of the room looked untouched—though I could see the indentation on my bed that someone hadn't smoothed out all the way. Olivia sleeping there, or Neph.
I swallowed and looked back at my roommate. The wards were reaching down toward her, but there was a stretched feeling, like too many strings pulling in opposing directions.
“Our wards are still in place,” Axer murmured from somewhere behind me, seeing where my gaze was focused. “But it won't be enough soon. Not with the three of us expelled now. She'll be forced to get a roommate.”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “She needs one. It's okay. And...”
Sadness mixed with irritation all over Constantine's emotions suddenly as he cupped the back of my neck with his palm—his other hand still holding the threads of the window to my room. The irritation was standard, the sadness was unusual. “You'll find Price again. And you can be her wonder twin once more and have sleepovers.”
We could make cookie dough and eat it all. Or quiz each other on the latest regulations, legal constraints, and parliamentarian procedures.
Or argue about the portal I painted on the ceiling that dropped stardust on her hair at inopportune moments.
Even if, by that time, we weren't roommates anymore.
“She could do my nails,” I said half-heartedly. “And I could do her hair.”
Constantine paused in the magic he was sending to me, expression disturbed, as if the image of Olivia Price painting nails—or me knowing my way around a hairbrush—was alien to his worldview. “I meant your kind of sleepovers—weird debates and cantankerous cheer. Not a delusional kind.”
Olivia looked up suddenly, as if realizing something was amiss. Her head shot toward my side of the room and naked, pained relief made her sag for a split second before she held out her hand. A glass ball zoomed into her palm, and suddenly I was looking at her eye-to-eye in mine.
“Where are you that you are calling like this?” she demanded. I could feel her magic reaching for mine, and vice-versa. But it was a thin, distant connection under the null zone surrounding our Eden. It was like having a video chat through a pair of old tablets instead of the extended ultra-reality of our hologram visits. “I can barely feel you, though this is better than the alternative of nothing.”
Her accusatory gaze went to Constantine, parked next to me with his hands over his lap working on his string manipulations once more, as if he had picked up knitting and was casually engaged in the hobby after a day at work.
“We are in Corpus Sun,” I said.
“Where?” Olivia’s voice went flat.
“Corpus Sun.”
She narrowed her eyes and touched beneath her ear. “I see that the Third Layer underground verifies that possibility. They are sending twenty units to apprehend anyone who exits the sealed dome in Corpus Sun. Quietly.”
“Well, here we are. Safe!” Completely surrounded! I cleared my throat, searching quickly for another topic. When looking at Constantine, flushed with health, I couldn’t regret our destination. But I’d save up telling everyone our insane exit strategy for later. “Where is everyone?”
It was rare to find Olivia without her own comforting force of people when she was waiting on news.
“Everyone is fine.”
“I asked where they are,” I said slowly. “Not how they are.” None of them had been involved in the Awakenings. There shouldn't have been a status needed on their end.
“We had some mishaps.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why there? You’ll ruin your secret test case.”
I blinked.
“You aren’t subtle. Neither is William.” She waved a hand. “Why are you no longer in the Western Territories' complex where you built a fortress? I’ve been trying to break into Leandred’s mind for days. All of us have.” She looked at him. “Repeatedly. And the Western Territory leaders are being tight-lipped, but all feeds confirmed you left two days ago. Neph has been trying to cut ties with the commune—renouncing her musehood—trying to get off campus ever since.”
I swallowed, tears choking me. I concentrated on Neph’s threads and sent everything in me through the tiny straws the null zone surrounding the city allowed beneath. I felt her shock, followed by a severe return of desperate emotions.
A tear slipped down my cheek. “Don’t let her do that.”
“We are, all of us, half-sitting on her, and half encouraging it to see if we can do the same,” Olivia said grimly. “Marsgrove locked down campus. The Department is trying to get campus turned over again, citing the lot of us as accomplices. Only Marsgrove has been able to keep Neph here, invoking death contracts. No one is pleased, not even him. Why are you there?”
“We were kicked out,” Constantine said, lounging back in his chair, wisps of magic still connecting his hand to mine, even as he worked.
Olivia's brows drew together, then straightened. “Ingrates.”
Constantine absently motioned to her, then to me, in a way that said “exactly.”
“How long can you stay there?” she asked.