Page 12 of Gemini Queen
Yeah, no. Like I’ll be trusting some Academy freak to save my hide? Even if my heart does give that stupid little flutter every time he says my name.
My name which I never actually told him.
I make up my mind and stride across that sea of broken glass. Straight toward him.
Danger hardens in his face and light pools in his eyes. Liquid fire springs up around his hands and drips from his fingers—confirming every single suspicion I’m harboring about his shady affiliation, thank you very much. Even before he cocks his arm.
Andthrows.
So much for settling our differences peacefully.
I duck the literal fucking fireball he’s just hurled at my chest. It scorches past overhead, dripping gobs of molten fire I somehow manage to avoid as I drop and spin. My booted leg sweeps around to knock his feet out from under him.
Except he isn’t there to take the hit. He coils and leaps with a jungle cat’s deadly grace that launches him straight over my head. Which means as I finish my spin and shoot to my feet, that bastard’s right behind me.
His freaky fireball must’ve hit the sink, judging by the hiss of steam and the jets of vapor. But I can’t exactly look because his arms clamp around my waist, pinning my elbows to my sides like he thinks that’ll contain me, locking my back tight against his deadly body.
“Bloody hell, will youlisten?” His edged voice lashes my ear like a whip. “We can sort out our little differences later.”
This whole hug-me hold he’s got me in? It’s unsettling enough to make me pause for a sec instead of executing my tried-and-true, bend-and-twist, put-you-on-your-ass maneuver. Thankfully, the fire’s stopped leaking from his fingers. Maybe he needs to, you know, recharge or something before he fires off an encore? Maybe it doesn’t work when we’re touching.
Or maybe this walking weapon of mass destruction is trying to show restraint.
Which seems unlikely, since he hasn’t exactly been Mr. Hold It Back so far.
For literally the first time ever, I’m actively regretting my choice of willful ignorance about that family heritage I renounced years ago. Even though I made that choice when Gemini witchcraft killed my mom.
“That fireball would have flambéed me, you asshole,” I snap.
“It’s a knockout spell, you nitwit,” he grates. “A simple common magic. Will you stop being such a fucking freshman for thirty seconds and think? If I wanted you dead, I’d have ripped out your throat while we fucked, wouldn’t I?” His voice thickens to a snarl. “And don’t think for a tick I wasn’t tempted. Nowmove.”
The coiled tension in his body tells me he’s more than ready to hurl me headlong into that mob scene in the corridor. Speaking for myself, considering he’s just called me the one thing I’llneverbe—a freaking freshman at the Icarus Academy—I’m about to reconsider my own remarkable restraint and apply my boot to his balls.
That’s when another, lesser explosion rips through the penthouse and makes us both stagger.
Just like last time, we grab hold of each other and barely manage to stay upright.
That’ll be the booby trap in Wang’s office, which my dad’s casino goons apparently weren’t smart enough to disarm. Over the rise and fall of the alarm and the rapidchuk-chuk-chukof gunfire, guys are barking orders in Cantonese. That’ll be Wang’s boys cleaning house.
I’m good at calculating the odds, and the math’s just shifted in a way that isn’t in my favor.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, tight with frustration. “You claim you’ve got some way to get us through this kill zone and clear of this mess in one piece?”
After all, I can always ditch him later.
Elation zings like an electric charge through his tensile body, all pressed tight to mine. We’re still so close I can feel it, like somehow he’s under my skin.
“Is the Pope blooming Catholic?” He finally lets me go (a big relief, of course) and prowls past me to the door. “Just try to keep pace and don’t dawdle.”
I palm my stiletto from my boot and give serious thought to sinking it in his back. Instead I let him slide through the doorway and keep close enough on his heels that he can feel me breathing down his sexy neck.
The hallway crowd’s petered out, smoke coiling thick in the air, the floor littered with crumpled bodies I carefully don’t examine, the strobe still flickering and the siren still wailing. And most of the action sounds like it’s coming from a good old-fashioned gunfight—between Wang’s army and my dad’s casino rats, apparently—going down in the rec room.
Ronin palms his knives from his boots and slinks down the hall, keeping close to the wall, silent as spilled ink in his silk and leather, leading me away from the kill zone toward the game room. The panicky bells and clatter of the video slot machines and some drag racing VR game clutter up the air.
He’s gliding into the game room when a lounge lizard with a Beretta—one of my dad’s hard-bitten casino rats, natch—bulldozes into view.
“Hey, Marilyn Manson, hold up—”
