A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

The city was still loud with Floor 15 when James reached Maeve’s door.

His phone had not stopped the whole way over. It buzzed against his leg now, one alert stacking on another, and he left it where it was. The house in front of him was quiet in the way money bought quiet, set back from the road behind a wall, the kind of place built so that no camera and no stranger ever got close to the door.

Maeve opened it herself.

She was dressed down, casual enough that it did not look like she was going anywhere. But it was the kind of casual that had been chosen, not thrown on, and James noticed the difference before he could stop himself.

She watched him notice.

"Before I decide what I’m doing next," she said, "I need to know what you really are."

Then she stepped back to let him in, and she smiled like that was exactly the answer she had been waiting for.

James came in expecting a serious talk.

He had it completely wrong, and she let him.

She led him through to a low-lit front room and did not say anything for a while.

James filled the silence the way she clearly knew he would. He started in on the press conference, on Marcus wanting to frame the story, on the circlet and how the public would tie it to her now, on what Floor 15 meant for the team going forward. He talked like there was a problem on the table that needed solving, because that was the kind of conversation he knew how to have.

Maeve let him go on.

She sat on the arm of the couch with one leg crossed over the other and watched him talk, and the longer he went the more amused she looked. She was not listening to the words. She was watching how he stood, too straight, like he was reporting in. How he kept his hands still and deliberate. How he kept his eyes somewhere just to the side of her instead of on her.

When she finally cut in, her voice was light.

"James."

He stopped.

"This isn’t a meeting."

He looked at her properly for the first time since the door.

"You think too much," she said, "for someone who walks around acting like he has everything under control." She stood off the arm of the couch. "It’s actually kind of a lot, watching you do it."

"I don’t—"

She crossed the room while he was still talking.

She reached up and straightened the collar of his jacket, slow, two fingers, though there was nothing wrong with it. Then her hand moved to his sleeve and smoothed it down. Then it settled on his shoulder and stayed there.

Each touch was small. Each one was deliberate enough that he felt it land and casual enough that he could not say a word about it without admitting it had.

James went quiet.

She kept at it, easy and unhurried, like she had all night and knew it.

A fold of his collar that did not need fixing. A shoulder brushing his arm on her way past to the side table. Light talk the whole time, half about nothing, except the way she said it turned the words into something else underneath.

James caught on late.

That was the part he hated. In the Tower he read a room in a second, found the threat, found the angle, made the call. Here he was a step behind the whole time, stiff and careful and reading wrong, and she could see it on him.

"You’re doing it again," Maeve said.

"Doing what."

"Acting calm." She tilted her head. "You’re not calm. You’ve been not-calm since you walked in. You’re just very committed to the performance."

He opened his mouth to answer and did not have one ready.

Then her hand came to rest flat against his chest, more direct than any of the small touches before it, and James went still for half a second.

It was nothing. It was a hand. But his whole body locked for that half second, and Maeve felt it under her palm.

She did not laugh at him.

"Do you want me to stop?"

It came out plain and unhurried, a real question, nothing formal in it.

"No."

The answer left him too fast and too honest, before he had decided to give it, and he heard how it sounded the moment it was out.

Maeve’s expression changed. Not much. Something settled in it.

"This is your first time," she said. It was not really a question either.

James held her eyes and did not try to lie his way around it.

"Yeah."

For a moment she just looked at him, and the careless edge went out of her, replaced by something steadier. She was still bold. She was still leading. But she stopped playing it like a game she was winning off him.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Then slow down. I’ve got it."

She kissed him first.

One hand slid up to the side of his neck and held him where she wanted him. James held still for a beat, and then he wasn’t holding still, and most of the control he had carried in through the door went with it.

His hands didn’t know where to be. He kept half-pausing, checking her, and she could feel him doing it.

"Hey." She caught his hands and moved them. "Stop trying to figure out the next part. There’s no exam."

A jacket came off. Then more than that.

She led, and he followed, and the rest of it happened in her bed with the curtains shut and his buzzing phone forgotten on the floor. For once James Ganner was not thinking about the Tower, or the duel, or any debt at all.

After, the room was quiet.

Maeve lay on her back with one arm behind her head, relaxed and unbothered, the sheet drawn up loose. She looked like someone who had gotten precisely what she came for and had no second thoughts about any of it.

James lay next to her on his back, staring at the ceiling, quiet in a different way. He was still putting the last hour somewhere in his head and the slot for it didn’t fit cleanly.

Maeve turned her head and looked at him.

"Don’t make it weird," she said.

"I’m not making it weird."