13. echo #3
Lacey listened with her arms folded, then tried to frame Priya as someone backing out of a debt because she had suddenly acquired better friends.
She insisted that covering the access log had been a risk and that asking for information in return was hardly unreasonable.
I let her finish because the more she talked, the clearer the problem became.
She wasn’t denying the threat. She simply thought the original favor gave her permanent discretion over what repayment looked like.
“That would be fine if Priya agreed to it,” I said.
“She didn’t. You gave her access, she agreed to repay you, and you collected on that more than once.
Now you’re threatening to alter evidence if she won’t feed you information about me and the Kings.
That isn’t a favor anymore. That’s blackmail, and you’re doing it badly enough that I found four other people tied to the same pattern before my feet stopped bleeding. ”
Her gaze dropped despite herself, catching on the bandages before returning to my face.
Malakai made some pleased sound behind me that I refused to acknowledge.
Lacey’s attention shifted to him anyway, probably hoping his presence meant there was a higher authority involved.
He offered her nothing, which left the conversation exactly where it belonged.
Priya stepped forward before I could close it.
Her voice was steadier than it had been in the café when she told Lacey to send her the original access record, including the timestamps and the credential chain, and then delete the copy she had been holding over her.
If the issue ever resurfaced, Priya wanted proof of what actually happened rather than relying on Lacey’s version of it.
She also made it clear that whatever remained of the original favor was finished the second Lacey tried to use it to get information about me.
I looked at Priya and had to bite back a smile. There she fucking was.
Lacey agreed because she understood the alternative now.
We stayed while the file transferred and until Priya had confirmation that the copy was deleted from the account Lacey had been using.
I doubted she was stupid enough to keep only one backup, but that didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that she now knew using another would expose everything else she’d built.
When we walked away, Priya’s shoulders finally dropped.
She carried her phone loosely at her side instead of checking it every few seconds, and by the time we reached the main path, she was complaining about my bare feet again like the last hour had never happened.
Malakai fell into step on my other side without invitation, because apparently that part of my life was permanent now, and I let him stay there while Priya started describing exactly how much she hated admitting I had been useful.
I didn’t need the thank-you. The fact that she was laughing again was enough.
By the time we made it back to the Kings’ lounge, my feet hurt less and my patience had recovered enough that Hunter probably had a chance of surviving the next five minutes.
Malakai reached the door before me, because apparently walking beside someone was too ordinary when he could turn every hallway into a competition, and I followed him inside with my heels dangling from one hand.
The lounge looked almost exactly as we had left it that morning.
Hunter was still at his desk when I crossed to my corner chair, dropped my bag against the wall, and set the shoes on the floor before sitting down barefoot.
I crossed straight to it, dropped my bag against the wall, and set the shoes on the floor like evidence in a criminal trial before sitting down barefoot.
Hunter noticed within seconds. His attention moved from the papers in front of him to Malakai, then to me, and finally settled on my bandaged heels.
The tightening of his mouth told me the conversation was coming before he said anything, so I saved him the effort of building toward it.
“The shoes are right there. I wore them through two classes and most of the morning, they took skin off both feet, and I’m done putting them back on until the wounds close.
You’re welcome to be offended by that from across the room. ”
Malakai dropped onto the arm of my chair as though we had assigned seats now, but Hunter ignored him. “You walked across Aldrich barefoot.”
“I walked across Aldrich in the uniform you picked while carrying the shoes you picked, which feels like an impressive amount of cooperation from me.” I stretched one leg out and checked the edge of the blister pad that had started lifting near my ankle.
“If you want footwear on my body every second I’m outside this room, give me my boots back.
Otherwise, I’m going to follow your rules however I decide to follow them. ”
Hunter sat back and studied me with the expression he used whenever I found a hole in something he thought had been perfectly clear. “The point of changing your clothes was to stop you from deliberately drawing attention every time you crossed campus.”
“That plan is going beautifully. Everyone stared at the barefoot woman instead of the boots you hated.”
Ronan’s mouth shifted behind his laptop, but he kept his attention on the screen. Hunter caught the movement anyway and looked even less pleased when he returned his attention to me. “You could have changed into another pair.”
“I could have if somebody hadn’t filled my closet with variations of the same mistake. I’ll wear the skirts, the jackets, the ridiculous little shirts, whatever makes the three of you feel like Aldrich hasn’t been personally insulted by my wardrobe. My boots are where I stop negotiating.”
For a few seconds, Hunter said nothing. His gaze stayed on me long enough that I knew this was no longer really about shoes.
Every agreement between us seemed to end the same way: Hunter wrote a boundary broad enough to satisfy himself, and I discovered exactly how much room existed inside it.
He hated that I kept doing it. I had started enjoying how long it took him to decide whether correcting me was worth the fight.
Malakai leaned toward my feet and frowned at the bandages. “Those look worse than they did earlier.”
I pushed his shoulder until he straightened again. “Aeron already gave me the parental lecture, so unless you’ve recently qualified in podiatry, you can keep your medical opinions to yourself.”
That got Hunter’s attention for a different reason. “You talked to your family.”
The question was casual enough that someone who didn’t know him might have missed the interest underneath it.
I didn’t. My conversation with Samael had been sitting in the back of my head ever since I hung up, and Hunter was still the most obvious explanation for someone suddenly scratching at Primrose-era records.
“I talk to them regularly,” I said, watching him instead of pretending the subject meant nothing. “They’re annoyingly invested in whether I eat, sleep, wear shoes, and survive college.”
Hunter’s expression barely changed. “Anything interesting?”
There it was.
I smiled and reached for the book inside my bag. “They told me to put bandages on my feet. Life-changing stuff.”
He held my gaze for another moment before letting it go.
I did the same. If Hunter wanted to tell me exactly what he had started digging through, he could use his words.
Until then, Samael had asked for anything suspicious, and Hunter asking after a routine call home immediately after somebody had started pulling old family records qualified nicely.