Page 221 of The Encore’s Crown

I don’t.

At Jade Mountain, she starts looking at me differently. The private arrival leads to stone paths and impressively strange architecture that rises into the hillside. Staff greet us like they’ve been expecting royalty instead of a bassist and a woman who brought enough products to open a cosmetics counter.

We're led along a winding walkway, the air warm and heavy with salt and flowers. Water moves below us, hidden behind walls of rock and thick green leaves. Natalia keeps looking around like she expects the place to reveal whatever trick I’m playing, but the path only curves higher, each turn opening another glimpse of blue ocean between the trees. At the end of it, two enormous wooden doors wait beneath a stone arch, dark and polished, carved with patterns that catch the light.

Natalia slows beside me.

“Kiri, what did you do?”

"Nothing yet, not until you walk through those doors."

Two members of staff stand on either side of the entrance. One smiles at us, says something soft about welcoming us to the sanctuary, then they each take hold of a brass handle. The doors swing inward together. I take Natalia’s hand and lead her through and the room opens around us. There's no glass separating us from the sky. Just rocks, air, the private infinity pool stretching toward the horizon, and the Pitons rising beyond it from the sea. Natalia stops. I watch the view hit her and her mouth falls open. Her sunglasses slide down her nose, and she pushes them onto her head without taking her eyes from the mountains.

“What the fuck is this?”

I laugh. “Yeah I thought the big rocks would be boring. We can leave.”

She turns in a slow circle, while hysterical laughter escapes her. She takes in the pool, the enormous bed dressed in white, the carved walls and the open sky.

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Now we're even.”

Her laughter stops.

“Misiu.”

“This is for you. For the career you put on hold for everyone else,” I add before the emotion on her face can kill me. “Best pictures you’ll ever take.”

My throat tightens. I swallow hard, trying to force the rest out.

“For Ma. For Rithy. For me. For everything you’ve done.” I look toward the mountains. “I don’t really have the words. That’s not my thing. So I thought the pretty rocks could say it for me.”

“They’re mountains.”

“Very large, pretty rocks.”

Her eyes narrow, but they’re already shining.

“This is genuinely insane.”

“I have money,” I say quietly. “I have time, so I'm spending both on you. If I were Rafe I'd say the fates allowed me a chance to have both together to visit some part of Olympus or whatever. All I know, is that whatever I have, I want to share it with you.”

Her chin lifts as she fights back the tears, so fiercely proud and stunning at the same time. My favorite fucking view in the world, and the Pitons are right behind her.

“This is too much,” she says.

“Kroppy,” I take her hand and bring her knuckles to my mouth. “It's not.”

Her lashes lower.

“You don’t have to pay me back in some other way,” I say. “You don’t have to be grateful or even turn it into content unless you want to. You don’t have to make this useful.”

Her breathing changes. That’s the line that reaches her.

Useful.

Because Natalia makes everything useful. Pain, beauty, even attention. Her face, her body and most of all her grief. She hones her anger. She knows how to use her perfect mouth and proud chin and every bit of softness she's polished into a weapon before anyone can touch it. I know that because I do it too. Different tools of the same process. The stage made my armor profitable and her camera does the same for her.