Page 31 of The Duke and the Disciple

“Everyone is saying you...”

“Spelled him.” Her breath furled before her in a dense white cloud. “It’s not true.”

“I never thought it was. But you know our people. They smell a koldyna; they’re ready to ride.”

“Mm.”

“Are you going to tell me what you think going to the Barynovs will accomplish? He’s not going to wake up, Aes. Not anytime soon.”

She didn’t have a satisfying answer. All she knew was she needed to see Val. To lay hands on him and listen to the stories of his flesh. “Has there been more fighting?”

Nik shook his head. “Just your brother and Esker trading prickly letters that go nowhere.”

“I wonder why he has me locked away with the scholar then.”

“Indeed.” Niklaus chuckled without humor. “Was wondering the same.”

“It’s been nothing short of imprisonment, I assure you,” she said, eyeing him from the side.

“Oh, I’m sure.” He snorted. “And the cohort? What’s going to happen with that?”

“It’s just him and me now, until you can come back,” she said with a hard breath out. “But we won’t let the research suffer. We’ll... figure it out.”

“Figure it out?”

“It’s just this upcoming subject. It’s... never mind.”

Niklaus came to an abrupt stop. “What?”

Aesylt kept walking, but he hadn’t budged.

“Tell me.”

She slowed and turned. “Jasika’s cohort was supposed to be handling it, but Imryll wanted Rahn to take it instead because it requires participatory exercises rather than just documentation, and they’re all women now on her cohort, and...”

“Say it already.”

Her gaze lowered. “Coitus.”

Niklaus cocked his head all the way to the side. “Sex?”

Aesylt shrugged. “We’re working on a plan.”

“You’re working on aplan?”

“Can we keep moving?”

“Aesylt!”

Aesylt craned her neck to look up at him. “We’ll do what we have to do, all right? There are ways around the... ah, problem. But we can’t refuse. You know that. The Reliquary is looking for any reason to kick us out of our own study, and we won’t let it happen.”

“You absolutely can refuse!”

“Tak,” she said softly. “But then it all ends, doesn’t it?”

“So you’re going to...” Niklaus brought both hands to his nose. “Fuck the scholar?”

She shrugged, but her heart launched into a sudden race. Was she? Rahn was the one who needed convincing. “You’re making this out to be something personal when it’s not. It’s science.”

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