Chapter 266

Astrid excused herself shortly afterward under the guise of ‘letting Zoey get some rest.’ In reality, Zoey knew she just needed time to think about what had been revealed. She wondered if she could have handled the talk better. There’d been no time to plan since Astrid had been the one to confront her, rather than the intended other way around. Her cheeks burned from how, apparently, it’d been easy to see through their attempts at subtlety.

She’d been awake for close to twenty-four hours straight, so she went to her room, washed up, and put on her sleeping clothes. A quick teleportation trip through the portal-door and she arrived to Rosalie’s room across the d’Celestin estate. Delta was there alongside the blonde, both girls already in their casual nightwear. Delta was sprawled out on the bed taking up as much space as possible, and Rosalie was seated on the edge flipping through a small notebook with a frown. They both glanced up as Zoey arrived.

“So? What was that about?” Delta asked. “Why’d Astrid drag you off?”

“She knew.”

“She ... knew? As in—?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, boy.”

Rosalie groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I told you you weren’t being careful enough.”

“It’s fine,” Zoey said. “We talked. I ended up telling her everything.”

Delta’s eyebrows shot up. Rosalie also seemed alarmed. More than the foxgirl, even.

“Everything?” Delta asked.

“About my class, I mean. Why we were—doing it in the first place.” There was still the matter of the world ending and what little they knew about the shard eaters. She hadn’t gone over the skills not relevant to her either, like those related to her burgeoning temple.

“How’d she take it?”

“Good? I mean, she wasn’t grossed out or horrified or anything. Mostly, she blushed a lot and then excused herself.”

Delta considered. “Yeah, that’s as good as we could hope. She seems like a bit of a prude, I think.”

“You and I have vastly different definitions of prude,” Rosalie said dryly.

Zoey agreed; she wouldn’t call Astrid a prude. Just not as open as Delta had been their first meeting. Perhaps she was more open than Rosalie, for that matter. But Zoey didn’t have the advantage of an incredible ice-breaker like the first shard had been.

“Either way, she needs to think on it. I believed her when she said that she’ll keep our secrets. She said she’ll only tell her father if it affects her clan directly. And she’d talk with us beforehand if she feels like she has to.”

Rosalie nodded slowly. “Reasonable. If she doesn’t seek you out first thing come morning, I’ll see if I can talk with her first.”

“She didn’t seem upset,” Zoey offered. “Just surprised, and flustered. I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Though—I’m not entirely sure if that means she’ll want to, you know.”

Delta wiggled her eyebrows and made a lewd gesture. Zoey ignored her, but yes, that was the implication.

“In any case, it’s a problem for tomorrow.” Rosalie tucked away the notebook she’d been reading and shuffled into bed. “I’m tired. Save any insatiable desires until morning, please. I want sleep first.”

Delta snickered. “She’s such a romantic, isn’t she?”

Zoey laughed, but she was wrung out too, and she knew Delta was as well. She flipped off the light and climbed into bed with her two girlfriends. They snuggled in on either side of her. After the exhausting day they’d had, sleep found them quickly.

Zoey woke up last among the three of them. Rosalie and Delta had already extricated themselves from her side, sadly, and were sitting up in bed, murmuring about something.

“I mean, neither of us? That’s a first. There’s always been some advancement.”

“Maybe Zoey did? We don’t know for sure yet.”

“Maybe I did what?” Zoey asked.

The two girls glanced at her.

“Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” Delta said, raising her voice from its whisper. “Were we too loud?”

“‘S Fine.” Zoey yawned and stretched out, muscles sore from the vigorous activities yesterday. Burning through so many spells had left a lingering not-really-but-sort-of exhaustion. Something close to mental strain, but not that either. The invisible magical muscle, whatever it was, had been worked thoroughly. “What are you two talking about?”

“Advancements. Neither of us got one, on any of our runes. Did you?”

Zoey paused, then checked. Even if she couldn’t read her tabula anima herself, she knew when she leveled by a tingling on the back of her neck. A supernatural sense.

“Nope,” Zoey said, blinking in surprise. “Huh. You’re right, that’s the first time. It’s always at least one of us.” And recently, usually multiple. She did have powerful skills geared specifically toward fast advancement.