Page 100 of Gemini Kings
The way she fled from me last night.
“I already have a tutor assigned to me by Master Aries,” I say stiffly. I am very close to open rebellion over the tutor he has chosen, but Mistress Agrippina does not need to know this.
All the same, her tone turns tart. “I fear Mr. Romanov’s patience as an instructor of remedial magics leaves a great deal to be desired. You require instruction in the central dogma of genetics at the very least, Mr. Rasputin, before you can advance to more sophisticated studies in this class. I recommend you approach Mr. Mercury.”
I do not lie, but I can evade.
“Thank you for the suggestion,” I tell her, and slip out before she can suggest something worse.
Already the deep church bell that orders the hours in this place is tolling. This Academy is barely inhabited in any case, and the corridors in the cloister are now emptying of the schoolgirls in their tidy plaid skirts and the schoolboys with their neat ties and pressed blazers with the Academy crest. Quickly the last students vanish into the classrooms that surround the glassed-in conservatory garden.
The whole complex is arranged in a quadrangle, so at least I cannot get lost.
I consult the schedule folded in the pocket of my Academy blazer and plod reluctantly through the echoing open space of the student commons, which used to be the church nave. My dragon frets and complains over this unfamiliar uniform we are wearing. If he had his way, we would wear nothing.
In deference to his sensibilities, I loosen the tie that is strangling us, but I dare not remove it and add a deportment violation to my growing list of shortcomings.
Slowly I climb the spiral stairs that coil up and up to the choir loft.
In the loft, the organ and its bank of pipes have long been removed. These walls are lined instead with bookshelves stuffed to groaning with an inviting collection of arcane tomes and grimoires. A heavy table on a colorful Turkish rug dominates the space, surrounded by a comfortable cluster of wing chairs, a giant globe, the heavy disc of a bronze astrolabe, and a Roman coin collection among other fascinating curiosities. The appealing dry smell of ink and parchment permeates the still air. This loft now functions as the school library, and my dragon loves books and trinkets.
But I cannot muster my usual interest in these matters. It is here I am summoned for the daily independent study I have dreaded since the moment I saw the ordeal in my schedule.
At the massive central table under the row of stained-glass windows, lounging in an enormous wing chair that rears behind his slender frame like a bating dragon, my enemy is waiting.
And if I thought Ronin Pendragon appealing in his Academy uniform, then Vasili Romanov is lethal.
I do not understand why he does not wear faculty attire, but his status here is strange, neither teacher nor student, and Lucius has spilled the secret that Vasili is on probation, which means he may be terminated.
It must be odd for him, and uncomfortable, but Vasili is not one to invite this sort of intimate observation.
A spear of winter sunlight lances through a cobalt pane of glass. It gilds the mop of hair that grazes my enemy’s knife-sharp jawline and frames his cruel face like a helmet of ice. His dangerous hands, adorned with black nail polish, drape over the chair arms. Under his stylish blazer, his red tie is tugged loose at his throat, but even that is graceful. His legs are crossed and propped arrogantly on the table. He is wearing combat boots with cherry-red soles.
“You’reat leastfive minutes late,” Vasili announces with poisonous glee, glancing dramatically at his bare wrist with his smoky cat-eyes. (He wears cosmetics as skillfully as a runway model, but he is not wearing a watch.) “If you intend to make a tiresome habit of this sort of tardiness, Mr. Rasputin, I shall be forced to assign detention.”
At the thought of being subordinate to him in this or any other way, I suffer a spike of resentment.
But I am late, and he would be within his authority to discipline me, and I do not wish to be sent away.
Zara refused me last night, it is true. She took her pleasure writhing against my cock, and it is this knowledge alone—that I pleased her, that I provided the release she needed, that I made her climax—this knowledge that kept me sane while I spiraled and screamed through the heavens.
I pleased her once, and I swear I will do it again.
She is wary of me, and of her superheat, but I will prove that I am worthy.
“Well?” Vasili drums his fingers on the table in mounting impatience. “Aren’t you going to deploy some snarky attempt at dragon wit to slay me, Maximka?”
I twitch with another flash of irritation. I hate when he calls me that. It is a boy’s name, a child’s name, like when he calls memalchik, which meanslittle boyin our mother tongue. And he is doing it now to provoke me.
To provoke him in turn, I show restraint.
“Mistress Agrippina detained me after Genetics class.” Calmly I lower my backpack to the table and drop into a wing chair of my own. “Are you aware that you have a large wad of chewed gum sticking to the sole of your boot?”
In an eyeblink, his haughty mouth drops open in a gasp of absolute horror. With gratifying speed, his boots thunk down from the table, he shoots to his feet, and I earn a brief reprieve. While I snicker to myself, he produces an alarmingly sharp knife from beneath his blazer (note to self: he is armed) and rushes to the trash can to deal with this apparent disaster.
When he returns to the table, he is sulking.
By now I have produced my leather-bound notebook and a pencil, and I am resigned to receiving whatever dubious wisdom he is capable of imparting.
