Page 84 of A Dusk Of Stars

I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. “Fine, I’m up.” I open my mouth to ask if the Academy Guard came to see him as well.

But he beats me to it. “Perfect,” he says, and hangs up.

For a second, I just frown at my phone. Then I breathe an audible sigh of relief and decide I’ll be going straight down for breakfast.

Before I can even put my clothes on, my phone pings. Thinking it’s Bane again, I come to check it, only to see we’re being summoned for another meeting with the Order.

Whatever that means, it can’t be good. I rush to get dressed and storm out of my room.

It’s in record time that I’m entering the hallway with the secret order room, my eyes immediately landing on him. Bane, his back turned to me, strolling down the hallway as if nothing ever happened.

It makes me breathe a sigh of relief, because it must mean that nothing did.

I rush to catch up until I’m falling into step with him. He gives me an unsurprised side-long glance, then quirks an eyebrow when he sees me inspecting his forehead.

No visible damage. Phew.

“Morning to you too, Novak,” he drawls as he comes to a stop, putting a cup of coffee on the commode to his left. “Now hold out your hand.”

The request makes me frown, but I listen, if nothing, out of curiosity.

He turns to face me, reaching into his pocket to take something out as he explains, “This is your new alarm clock.”

He snaps a sleek black bracelet with his company’s logo around my wrist, looks at it for a second and then locks eyes with me with the slightest smile tugging at his lips. “From now on,you go to bed at midnight and wake up every morning at eight sharp.”

“You can’t be serious,” I protest with a frown.

“Dead serious.” He takes his phone out, pulls up an app and says, “And I’ve gotten a strong impression that waking the Chosen One is equal to waking the dead, so let’s just make sure this thing works.”

He presses a button, the bracelet almost instantly starting to buzz so obnoxiously, I start looking for the off button.

When I don’t find one, I look up to find him staring at me with a smirk on his face. “How do I shut it off?” I demand.

“You don’t,” comes the explanation for the smirk, “onlyIcan.”

My eyes narrow at him as the goddamn thing keeps buzzing like a demon from hell. “Yeah that’s not happening.” And I try to unclasp it.

When I fail, I close my eyes for a second, take a deep breath and then look up. “Let me guess, I can’t take it off either.”

Shaking his head, he clicks his tongue, the smirk only growing wider.

“Who makes bracelets you can’t take off?” I complain. “Don’t tell me you got this specially done just to be an asshole?”

“Why of course,” he says with feigned earnestness. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint, now would I?”

I throw daggers at him and hold my hand out again. “Take it off.”

He shakes his head. “I thought you wanted to train for real,” he says, getting in my face to throw me a little squint. “And there’s no real training without overall discipline.”

I lower my hand, but I do make a point of rolling my eyes with an exaggerated sigh.

He laughs. Then he gets the coffee off the commode and hands it to me, making my eyebrows shoot up.

“Now, so as not to be acompleteasshole,” he starts as I take a whiff, “I’ll be allowing you one a day, except on the days we have training sessions or Order meetings. On those days, it’ll be me bringing you the coffee.”

It smells amazing. I take a sip. Itisamazing, but it’s also not just coffee. When I look up at him, he says, “It’s just some special shift-inducing spices.”

He starts back down the hallway, making me rush to catch up with him, my mind going straight back to last night.

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