My Scumbag System-Chapter 409: The Queen’s Midnight Counsel

She pressed a kiss against the base of his throat. Soft. Not demanding anything. He made a quiet sound, low in his chest, and his arm tightened fractionally.

She had spent her whole life being certain of things. Rankings. Training schedules. The precise order of her priorities. She had been certain about Satori once too, certain in the way that only contempt allows, certain he was beneath her notice.

Then he had looked at her one morning with different eyes and that certainty had been the first thing to go.

She was still angry, sometimes, that it had gone so easily. That he had looked at her and seen the levers and pulled them and that she had, despite knowing it was happening, let him.

Except.

Except she had looked back. And what she had found was someone who was terrifying and wrong and who saw her, the real her, the ambitious calculating merciless version she kept tucked behind perfect posture and academic achievement.

He had seen it and he had smiled like he approved.

Nobody had ever approved before.

She pressed another kiss to his collarbone. He turned his head and found her forehead with his lips.

"Stop thinking so loud," he murmured.

"I’m always thinking."

"I know. Sleep anyway."

"You sleep. You have nineteen hours of exhaustion to deal with."

"So do you." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She tilted her head up. He was already looking down at her. The distance between their faces was negligible.

She kissed him slow. No urgency in it. No possessiveness for once, just the simple pressure of her mouth against his and his arm around her back and the warmth of him in her bed.

He kissed her back the same way. Like they had nowhere to be.

When she pulled back his eyes were still closed for a moment.

She studied him in those few seconds. The line of his jaw. The faint shadow beneath his eyes. The way his exhale slowed as he relaxed into her mattress.

This is mine, she thought. Not the performance he gave Sterling Weaver. Not the version who faced down Seraphina Vance without flinching. This specific tired version, in her room, breathing slowly.

This one.

She settled her head back against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

It still went a little fast. She thought it probably always would, his particular brand of restlessness. Even sleeping, some part of him was working.

"Emi is going to be at breakfast," she said.

"I know."

"She’s going to look at you."

"She usually does."

"I’m going to have to be gracious about it."

"You’re very gracious."

"I am absolutely not, and you know that."

He pressed another kiss into her hair. "You’re better at it than you think."

She considered this.

The thing about Emi was that it was impossible to hate her. Natalia had tried. She had spent approximately three days after the initial incident constructing a version of events in which Emi was calculating or naive or somehow to blame for her own warmth and she had abandoned the project because Emi was infuriatingly and genuinely kind.

She had introduced them.

That was the part that sat sideways in her chest sometimes. She had handed Satori a thread and he had pulled it and now Emi looked at him over breakfast with those reddish-brown eyes full of uncomplicated devotion and Natalia had to be, gracious.

She was getting better at it.

"Cel is going to need handling," she said.

"She’s not a horse, Natalia."

"I know that. I mean she’s going to need time to understand how this works. She grew up in the VHC. Everything is a transaction for her."

"I know."

"She’s going to think she’s the exception."

Silence.

"She might need to think that," Natalia said carefully, "for a while."

He shifted, looked down at her. "What does that mean."

"It means she’s Seraphina Vance’s sister and she’s been used as a political asset her whole life and if you handle her wrong she’ll close up like a vault and you’ll lose the only access you have to whatever happened to your father."

Natalia kept her voice even. "So you give her what she needs to stay open. Not forever. Just long enough."

He was quiet.

"I know what I’m saying," she added.

"I know you do."

"I hate that I know what I’m saying."

"Natalia."

"I’m fine." She pressed her face briefly into his shirt. "I’m completely fine. I am a very functional person who is making rational decisions about an irrational situation."

His hand moved through her hair. Slow. Careful.

"You’re my queen," he said quietly. "That’s not a word I use carelessly."

She knew that.

She had watched him use words carelessly his whole time at NVA. Everything he said in public was architecture. Deliberate and load-bearing and never one syllable more than necessary.

He was not careless with her.

"I know," she said.

"Then stop catastrophizing."

"I’m not catastrophizing. I’m contingency planning."

"In bed. At midnight."

"I do my best work under pressure."

He made a sound that was almost a laugh and was mostly fond and she felt it rumble in his chest where her ear was pressed.

She closed her eyes.

The room was dark and the building was settling into its nighttime quiet around them. Somewhere down the hall a door opened and closed. Braxton’s office light, probably, finally going out.

"Go to sleep," she said.

"You first."

"I’m not tired."

"Your eyes have been closed for two minutes."

"That’s just resting them."

"Natalia."

"Satori."

He tucked her closer. Her hand found his under the blanket and she laced her fingers through his without thinking about it, the way she had stopped thinking about a lot of things she did when they were alone.

She had given up trying to catalog when it stopped being strategy.

Sometime around when he had carried her out of a dying Gate with a punctured lung, she thought. Or possibly before that. Possibly the first time he had looked at her across a breakfast table like she was the most interesting problem in the room.

It didn’t matter when.

It was.