Chapter 66: Tracing the Lines of Her Palm
"I’ll tell them the truth. Controlled transfer. No emergency. No spike."
"And the rest?"
"The rest is ours."
A faint breath of something almost like a smile touched her mouth before she forced it away.
"You’re still restricted for twenty-four hours. Don’t make me drag you off another bathroom floor."
"I’ll do my best."
She reached past me and opened the door. Before she could pull it fully open, I caught her wrist.
Gianna stopped.
The surprise that flickered across her face was light, almost fleeting. The defensive jerk she would have given me only days ago never fully formed. Her muscles tensed once, then eased under my fingers.
"What is it?" Her voice came out softer than usual.
I didn’t answer right away.
Instead, I let my hand slide slowly from her wrist, tracing the lines of her palm with deliberate care until my fingers found hers and tangled between them.
Her skin was warmer than I expected. Softer, too, despite every hour of rigorous training that had shaped her into a Vanguard.
Gianna scoffed, though the sound lacked its usual bite.
"I told you not to do this."
"I want to try these things with you," I said quietly.
"Starting from this. Holding your hand."
A blue flicker appeared at the edge of my vision.
[Contact Established]
[Duration: 0:01...]
She didn’t pull away. Not immediately. The tension in her fingers remained, caught between the instinct to break contact and something more reluctant underneath.
I could feel the resonance from the transfer we had just completed still humming faintly between us, her energy sitting cleanly near my core where the Echo Partition had anchored it.
Staying silent would only make the moment heavier, so I spoke.
"What’s your answer?"
She looked confused.
"About what?"
"Tomorrow. For our date. I want to be with you from morning."
"I just said you have a twenty-four-hour cooldown."
"So what? It’s almost evening now."
I kept my grip gentle but steady.
"I want to sightsee the city without worrying about anything. No drills. No monitoring patches. No political noise. Just... walking. Looking at things. I feel like if I miss this window, I won’t get another chance like it."
Gianna’s eyes narrowed.
"What are you planning? Trying to leave me behind?"
The question landed harder than she probably intended.
A small ache settled under my ribs that had nothing to do with the earlier overload.
It made sense, though.
She was still on guard.
Only minutes ago she had admitted how much it scared her to feel herself changing.
Bringing up a full day together right after that confession must have sounded like the beginning of an exit strategy.
I shook my head once.
"I’m not planning to leave you behind. I don’t even know how that would work."
My thumb brushed lightly across the back of her hand.
"The time is going to start moving faster soon. Combined training. The academy. Raids. Official evaluations. All of it is going to eat the hours we have left. I just... don’t want the first real stretch of time we get together to be another monitored session or a rushed evening movie with a timer hanging over it."
[Contact Duration: 0:08...]
[Partner Mapping: Minor synchronization detected]
[Favorability fluctuation noted]
She was quiet for several seconds. Her fingers twitched once inside mine, not quite returning the hold, not quite rejecting it either.
The soft pad of her thumb brushed against the side of my hand almost by accident before she caught herself.
"You’re still restricted," she said, but the protest sounded thinner than before.
"I can walk. I can look at buildings. I can buy overpriced street food and listen to you complain about how slow I am."
I let a small smile pull at the corner of my mouth.
"The cooldown is on high-output transfers and experimental use. Sightseeing isn’t listed."
Gianna exhaled through her nose.
"You’re impossible."
"I’ve been told."
The timer in the corner of my vision kept climbing.
Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.
Multiple system windows stacked and faded without fanfare.
The quest has been completed.
I didn’t force anything further. I simply held her hand the way I had wanted to earlier on the training mat, when the quest had tried to push the moment, and she had shut it down.
After a while, I lifted our joined hands and brought hers to my mouth.
I kept my eyes locked on hers as I pressed a slow kiss against her knuckles.
Gianna’s cheeks colored.
It was the first clear blush I had seen from her since the early days after we met, unhidden, unguarded, and gone almost as quickly as it appeared.
She tried to tug her hand free, but the motion lacked real strength.
"Wha... stop doing this."
I smiled, held on for one extra second, then let her fingers slip from mine.
"Let’s go."
She stared at me for a beat longer, lips parted like she still had something to say and had forgotten the words.
Then she turned, pulled the door open the rest of the way, and stepped out into the main room without looking back.
I followed.
Jenna and Mira were exactly where we had left them.
Mira’s tablet was still active, the live feed from my monitoring patch scrolling in quiet green lines.
Jenna’s gaze moved from Gianna’s face to mine, then down to the faint residual warmth that must have still been visible in the data.
"Everything stable?" Jenna asked.
"Controlled transfer," I answered.
"No emergency. No spike. The rest is logged."
Mira made a small sound of acknowledgment and updated the file.
Gianna had already moved toward the exit, posture straight, expression carefully reset.
The flush across her cheeks had faded, but the tension in her shoulders had not completely returned to its usual rigid line.
Jenna watched her daughter leave, then looked at me again.
"Twenty-four hours," she reminded me.
"No exceptions."
"I know."
I glanced toward the door Gianna had just passed through.
"I’m still taking the full day tomorrow. City first. Movie after. Low output. No experiments."
Jenna studied me for a moment, then gave a short nod.
"I’ll clear the monitoring schedule. Don’t make me regret it."