Page 42 of Kingmakers, Year One

The girl is tall, which makes her legs look a mile long, especially up on tiptoe. She’s slim, but I can see the lean muscle flexing on her shoulders and back, and on her thighs and calves.

I see the muscle working, but her movements look utterly effortless. She seems to float across the rough stone. She bends and swoops like a bird in flight.

The early-morning light gleams silver on her skin, and on her long sheaf of pale hair that whips around her face as she spins. The open back of her leotard shows several tattoos on her shoulder blade, tricep, and wrist.

Her eyes are closed. She’s completely lost in the music, making up the dance as she goes along, or so it looks to me.

I’ve never seen dancing like this. It’s vulnerable, it’s raw, it’s emotional. The song is sad and yearning, about a love unrequited. It’s not the kind of thing I would usually listen to—I don’t give a fuck about love, and I certainly don’t listen to maudlin, whiny music.

But in this moment this girl seems to be embodying the emotion of the song to such a degree that I can’t ignore it. I can’t not feel what she’s feeling.

My heart is tight in my chest. My hands feel cold, and I realize I haven’t blinked once since I first laid eyes on this girl.

She’s been dancing with her back to me.

Now she turns, and I can see her face fully for the first time.

She’s stunning. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Her features are painfully sharp, with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a pouting mouth that turns down slightly at the corners, the top lip the same fulness as the bottom.

She wears too much makeup—white powder that makes her look even paler than she actually is, dark lipstick, and a mask of smoky shadow around her eyes.

Maybe she wants to look tough instead of pretty. It’s impossible. No amount of makeup can hide the loveliness of her features.

She opens her eyes at last, and I can see that her irises are a pale, clear blue, like glacial ice, like blue diamond.

Even through the leaves of the orange trees, those eyes fix on me at once, and her dreamy expression burns away in an instant, replaced by cold fury.

I’ve already drawn back and turned around, striding away from her as quickly as possible. I didn’t mean to watch her like a pervert hiding in the bushes. I didn’t mean to look at her at all. It just happened—the music pulled me in, and then I was transfixed by the strangeness of what I saw.

Now I shake my head, trying to physically shake the memory out of my brain.

It was just a girl practicing a dance, which is stupid and has no place at Kingmakers. She must be a Freshman—otherwise she’d be working on something useful instead of prancing around.

I jog over to the Armory, where I meant to go in the first place.

Pushing through the doors, I’m hit with the not-unpleasant scent of sweat, iron, and rubber mats. It reminds me of the gym where I trained in Moscow, and that makes me happy.

I spend the next hour punishing my body relentlessly. I alternate between hitting the heavy bag and the speed bag, jumping rope, and doing compound lifts in drop sets.

The gym is impressively equipped. There’s nothing I want that they don’t have. As the sun comes up, I’m joined by a few other students looking to get in an early-morning workout—though not quite as early as mine. By this point I’m dripping in sweat, and every muscle on my body is throbbing.

I’m working even harder than usual, trying to banish the image of that girl from my mind.

I don’t know why I’m still thinking about her. Because she was pretty? I’ve fucked plenty of pretty girls before.

I chug down a glass of cold water from the cooler, then head in what I hope is the direction of the showers. It’s obnoxious trying to find anything in this place—there are no signs like there would be at a normal college. Even the doors to the changing rooms lack the usual male and female stick figures.

It doesn’t matter—I’m the only person in here anyway.

The changing room is large and echoing, with double banks of lockers and a dozen showers in one open space.

I strip off my sweaty clothes, folding them neatly and stacking them on top of my sneakers, leaving the pile on a bench for the moment. Then I turn on one of the shower heads, twisting the nozzle till the spray runs hot and steady. I’m about to step under when I realize I forgot to grab a towel.

I hurry across the cold tiles, starting to get chilly now that the sweat is drying on my skin. Though it’s still more summer than fall, all the interior spaces of Kingmakers are well-insulated by the thick stone walls, and the wool uniforms are starting to make a lot more sense. It’s never entirely warm inside this place, especially when you’re naked.

I pull a scratchy, thin towel out of the linen cupboard and hurry back toward my shower. I’m practically jogging, rounding the corner of the nearest locker bay with my head down.

I thought I was alone in here, the loud spray of the shower echoing around in the space, drowning out any other sounds.

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