33. Jules
Jules
My room in the dollhouse is quiet.
Not the bad kind. Not the kind that feels like something is about to crack, crawl out of the walls, or wear someone’s face like a mask. Just quiet.
The tour is over. Or paused. Or whatever word Eon is using to pretend everything has not gone completely off the rails.
We are back in the dollhouse, public appearances suspended while Jules Navarro bravely recovers from the catastrophic technical malfunction Eon definitely did not cause by feeding her to a supernatural extraction system.
Very inspiring. Ten out of ten crisis management.
No cameras. No stage lights. No scripts.
I sit on the edge of my bed with one leg tucked beneath me, staring through the windows at Los Angeles as though the city might offer an answer if I look long enough.
It does not.
Rude.
Behind me, the door clicks open.
I do not turn. I do not need to.
I feel Camille through the bond before she enters fully, that steady presence becoming sharper as she crosses into my apartment. It has grown so familiar that I barely remember what silence inside my own head felt like before her.
She moves around the room with the same precise energy she brings everywhere. Her tablet lands on my desk. Her bag goes beside the chair. She straightens the stack of books I deliberately left crooked because I knew she would fix them.
Rebuilding order.
Because that is what she does when she cannot control everything else.
I glance over my shoulder. She stands beside the desk in a cream blouse and tailored trousers, reading something on her tablet that probably matters more than anything I have ever voluntarily read.
Same as always.
Except not exactly.
The gold cuff I gave her sits beside her watch. She has worn it every day since Tokyo.
There is something else different too. Something subtle in the way she occupies my room, less like a visitor assessing the available exits and more like she belongs here.
I hate that I notice.
I hate even more that I love it.
“So,” I say.
Camille looks up. “So.”
I huff a laugh. “Wow. Incredible conversation. Truly. We’re thriving.”
She sets the tablet down rather than returning to it.
That gets my attention.
I pick at a loose thread on the blanket because apparently I need something to do with my hands that is not spiraling. “How bad is it?”
“The Council meeting?”
“Eon in general. Our lives. The whole evil-infrastructure situation. Dealer’s choice.”
“Eon is containing its displeasure beneath several layers of professional terminology.”
“Meaning?”
“Devin is furious about the new restrictions. Cohen wants access to my analysis. Voss has requested a complete record of every alteration I made in Tokyo.”
I turn towards her. “You’re not giving it to him.”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
Something warm curls through the bond.
“Hot,” I say.
Her expression remains level, but I catch the faintest shift at the corner of her mouth. “Blaire secured the recovery break. Eon believes removing the four of you from public view will reduce scrutiny over its decision to let you perform while injured.”
“Love when corporate guilt accidentally gives us a holiday.”
“It is not a holiday.”
“Road trip to find a woman hiding from the magical entertainment industry sounds pretty vacation-coded to me.”
“It should not.”
“Still does.”
Camille comes closer and stops beside the bed. “Remy believes the woman may run as soon as she recognizes anyone connected to Eon.”
“Reasonable. I also want to run whenever Devin enters a room.”
“She has survived undetected for years. We cannot assume she will respond well to four highly recognisable performers arriving at her door.”
“Five.”
Camille looks at me. “Five?”
“You’re coming.”
“That was already the plan.”
“Good.” I lean back on my hands, then immediately regret it when the movement pulls at my ribs. “Ow.”
Her expression changes at once.
“I’m fine.”
“You are still healing.”
“I said ow, not write my obituary.”
“You have repeatedly demonstrated that your assessment of your own physical condition is unreliable.”
“Wow. And here I was about to ask you something romantic.”
Camille goes still.
Interesting.
I let the silence stretch just long enough to make her suffer.
Then I look towards the city again. “So… still married?”
The words come out casual. Light. Easy. Completely unrelated to the way my pulse immediately starts trying to escape through my throat.
Behind me, Camille shifts.
Only slightly.
The pause is not long, but it is long enough for something tight to pull inside my chest.
“Yes,” she says.
Simple. Controlled. Not empty.
I stare harder through the window. “Cool. Good. Love that for us.”
“I was unaware the status was in question.”
“It was originally a two year fake marriage designed to keep me from getting demonically hijacked.”
“The public arrangement was temporary.”
I turn my head. “And the actual one?”
Camille meets my gaze. The bond opens between us, carrying something warm and careful. Not fear exactly. Hope restrained so tightly it almost hurts.
“I do not consider it temporary,” she says.
Heat climbs into my face.
Traitorous body.
“Well.” I clear my throat. “Good answer.”
“I was not aware I was being evaluated.”
“You’re always being evaluated. I learned it from you.”
She moves closer until her knee brushes mine. “And what is my current assessment?”
“Annoyingly excellent.”
Her mouth curves. An actual smile.
Small, but mine.
I look down at the cuff beside her watch because staring directly at Camille when she smiles at me feels medically inadvisable. “There’s another thing.”
“I assumed there would be.”
“You say that like I’m difficult,” I protest.
“You are rarely finished after one thing.”
“See? This is why communication is important. You know me so well.”
“Jules.”
“Right.” I take a breath. “Since we’re still married, you should move in.”
Camille says nothing, but the bond does. A bright pulse of surprise moves through it, followed so quickly by happiness that my chest aches.
I nudge her leg with my knee. “You’re already here most nights. Half your things are in my bathroom, you have a charger on both sides of my bed, and you keep emergency tea in my kitchen. You practically live here.”
“I do not practically do anything.”
I grin. “Then officially do it.”
Something in her expression softens. Not the careful version she allows during meetings. Not the brief crack in her composure she immediately repairs.
This stays.
“Yes,” she says.
I blink. “Yes?”
“Yes. I will move in.”
“That was disturbingly easy.”
“I have considered it already,” she admits.
My grin widens. “How much?”
She glances towards the desk. I follow her gaze to her bag. Camille pulls a folder from it, handing it to me.
“Is that what I think it is?” I ask.
The label on the front reads: RESIDENTIAL CONSOLIDATION
I stare at it, then at her.
“You made a moving-in plan?”
“It is a preliminary assessment,” she says.
“You already planned to move in?”
“I identified it as a reasonable possibility.”
There are tabs.
Actual tabs.
Wardrobe allocation. Security access. Shared expenses. Angel accommodation.
I press the folder against my chest. “You made Angel her own section.”
“She has specific needs.”
“She weighs six pounds.”
“She has destroyed two Eon-issued surveillance devices,” Camille counters.
“Literal hero.”
“I also accounted for the possibility that you would prefer to retain separate spaces.”
The happiness in the bond dims beneath a sudden edge of uncertainty.
I lower the folder. “Well, I don’t.”
Her posture remains perfectly controlled, but the bond carries the rest.
“You’re sure?” she asks.
I step closer and place the folder on the desk behind her. “I don’t want this because Bane says the bond works better when we sleep in the same room. I don’t want it because Eon thinks married women sharing an apartment will improve the public narrative.”
Camille’s gaze stays on mine.
“I want you here. Your tea. Your folders. Your weird inability to leave a pillow crooked. All of it.” I pause, then add, “I want to wake up with you.”
The room stills. There it is. The part jokes cannot make smaller.
“I don’t want to go back to sleeping alone because the emergency is technically over,” I continue. “It doesn’t feel temporary to me either.”
Camille is quiet for a moment. The bond hums between us. Familiar. Warm. Hers.
“There is something we should clarify,” she says.
“That sounds ominously contractual.”
“When the threat is neutralized, the Council will no longer have grounds to classify the bond as a security measure.”
I frown. “Meaning?”
“Meaning it becomes ours to choose.”
The words settle somewhere deep in my chest. Camille reaches for my hand, her fingers sliding between mine.
“The Council dictated the terms,” she says. “They decided why we bonded, how close we had to remain, and how long it was supposed to last.”
“But they don’t get to decide what it means now?”
“No.”
Her answer is immediate.
“The bond did not make me love you,” she continues. “It made avoiding you considerably more difficult, but that is not the same thing.”
I huff a laugh. “Romantic.”
“It is accurate.” Her thumb moves over my knuckles.
“When this is over, we can reaffirm it without their contracts or conditions,” she says. “Not as protection. Not because proximity is required.”
“Because we want it.”
“Yes.”
The bond warms around the word.
I lift our joined hands. “So we’re keeping the magical marriage?”
“If that is what we both choose.”
“It is.”
Camille’s mouth curves. “You answered very quickly.”
“I like having you emotionally adjacent to my brain.”
“I am not adjacent to your brain.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Unfortunately.”
I draw her closer.
“The Council may have started this,” I say, softer now. “But they don’t own it.”
“No,” Camille agrees. “We do.”
Something inside me settles. The bond hums around us. Low. Steady.
It is no longer something imposed between us. It’s something we choose to keep.
I inspect our joined hands. “Wow. Look at us. Healthy communication. Shared housing. Terrifying.”
“We have survived worse.”