Page 10 of Rules of Stone
Ice grips me at the chill in his gaze. His utter indifference to my existence.
Dipping my eyes, I trail them along Coal’s body. With his shirt off and torso bare, I should be able to see the veil amulet if I know what I’m looking for, if I can conquer my body’s instinct to look away from the rune-carved disk. Starting at the center of the eight hard squares of Coal’s abdomen, I move my eyes along the grooved midline of his body. Up between his wide pectorals. Out along the sharp collarbones—bloody stars,I’ve strayed off course.
Forcing my eyes back to Coal’s midline, I trace the groove again, refusing to look away. My head pounds, the need to focus elsewhere so palpable that it makes breathing difficult. A ringing starts in my ears, the sound and pressure growing more painful with each fraction of an inch my gaze climbs.
I dig my nails into my palm.Look up, Lera. Up. A little more.
It takes me a moment to realize that I’ve reached my target because there, at the hollow of Coal’s sternum where the amulet should be, nothing hangs at all. Instead, my aching eyes trace the outlines of a circular tattoo with an ornate pointed pattern, the exact size and design the amulet would have been. As if Coal’s body somehow absorbed the magical artifact. My heart pounds, recalling the flat lay of Tye’s shirt.Stars.
“Am I inconveniencing your daydreaming?”Coal’s voice snaps like a whip, drawing my attention back to his face. Cold blue eyes weigh me—and find me wanting. Just like when he first saw me all those months ago in Zake’s barn. “What is your name?”
Arisha curses under her breath, quietly enough that a human wouldn’t have heard.
“Creative, though not physiologically possible, I believe,” Coal tells Arisha, his brow cocking toward her quickly paling face. No wonder these students are terrified of River and Coal—when you’re up against preternatural fae senses without knowing it, there’s nowhere to hide. “Feel free to improve on that model as you take two laps around the Academy.”
“That’s over f-five miles,” Arisha stutters.
“Fair point. Three laps.” Coal’s focus returns to me, his tone as hard as I’ve ever heard it. “I asked for your name, Cadet.”
9
Coal
“Leralynn,” the new student standing before Coal said, pronouncing the name as if it should mean something to him. In her early twenties, the young woman was stunning enough to stir Coal’s cock, her shining auburn hair and large brown eyes reflecting the misty dawn rays. Ethereal, that was the only word for her. Even beneath an ill-fitting uniform she must have borrowed from Arisha, the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips held the attention of every male in the training corral. Which had no right to bother Coal, though it did. Leralynn cleared her throat. “Or Lera. Or mortal.”
“Mortal?” Coal echoed, the word singing to him even as the two dozen cadets of his training cadre laughed at the joke.
Lera wasn’t laughing, though. She just stepped closer, the lilac scent of her making Coal’s head swim. “It’s a nickname a good friend once gave me.”
Coal pushed back from the fence, stepping far enough away to let the chill air clear his senses. “Your friend isn’t here. Neither are your parents, your servants, your nursemaid, or anyone else who cares.”
Hurt flashed across Lera’s chocolate eyes. The young woman had plainly been expecting a different reception. All the new students—with their high-class upbringing and powerful family names—did. River thought shattering that particular illusion as quickly as possible was the humane approach. Coal little cared whether it was humane—he cared that it was efficient. In the five months since his assignment to Great Falls, half the students assigned to Coal’s team had decided to pack up and go home within a week of arrival.
From her bewildered expression, Leralynn would be joining the departing ranks soon enough. With luck, she might complain about Coal before leaving. Make the headmaster finally decide that Coal was more trouble than he was worth. Then River wouldhaveto let him leave, go back to the far coast, where Coal could lick his wounds in private. If he was lucky, maybe find some new war to fight in—there was always one conflict or another with islanders. Coal had no business teaching—let alone teaching noble brats who were not much younger than his twenty-seven years, yet seemed to have lived not the quarter of the life he had.
Coal’s attention returned to his newest headache, whose mere presence was already making half the male cadets in the corral trip over their own feet. Yes, the boys had not yet learned the dangers of women.
“Well,mortal,do you see the three dozen stones in that corner?” Coal jerked his chin toward a pile of rough, watermelon-sized boulders arranged into a neat pile. The limestone from which they’d been cracked had a chalklike feel, the grit having an uncanny way of rubbing skin and getting under clothes. “Move them to the next corner over. And then the next.”
A muscle in Leralynn’s jaw ticked.
Arisha moved slowly away from them in the corner of his vision.
Coal moved closer, invading Lera’s space, seizing upon the embers of anger sparking in the girl’s eyes at what she no doubt saw as unjust punishment. Anger was good. It made Coal’s point for him. He wasn’t her friend. Didn’t want to be her friend. And given the painful effect Lera’s mere presence was having on his body, the sooner she walked out of his world, the better. Coal clicked his tongue. “And once you do that, move them to the next. Do you think you can remember all that without a clerk’s assistance?”
“I’ll endeavor to keep track of so complex a routine,” she said, her voice quiet but not weak. Despite barely reaching Coal’s shoulder, Lera held her ground when larger men would have retreated, the heat of her body an answering blow to Coal’s challenge. Small and fierce and somehow unafraid of him. “I’ll do it all twice if you leave off Arisha. She was only late on my account.”
Stars take him.“Make that offerafteryou finish the circuit,” Coal said, returning to the other students, who’d opportunistically stopped drilling and now watched the show with unabashed curiosity. Or, in the males’ case, watched Leralynn. A glare from Coal set that to rights before he tossed his voice over his shoulder. “If you finish in time to be of any use to your friend, that is.”
Instead of an answer, Coal heard the scrape of stone on stone as the small cadet heaved the first burden into her arms. And then the second. The fifth. The tenth. By the time she’d moved the load one corner over, Coal knew he’d made a strategic error: making Lera haul stones about was a punishment, but implying that her speed would determine another’s fate was a challenge. How the bloody hell was he to have guessed the small spitfire would rise to it?
Even with his back to her, pretending to watch the sparring pairs before him, Coal could hear Lera’s labored breathing, see the tracks in the sand where her balance faltered as she hurried faster than was wise.Stars,she was going to injure herself if she kept it up. And there wasn’t a bloody thing he could do about it now except to witness the gambit he himself had set into motion. This wasn’t about the punishment, or even Lera’s friend—not really. Coal had greeted Lera with an opening volley designed to drive her away, and the bloody woman was calling him on it. And winning. Two dozen students in the corral before him, and Coal couldn’t get his attention off the one walking the perimeter fence—and doing so faster than a girl her size had any right to be.
Arisha of Tallie—who belonged in a sparring ring about as much as a tabby cat belonged in a choir—was just finishing the first of her three laps when Lera planted herself in front of Coal, standing so close that he took an involuntary step back. The girl’s sweat carried a sweet lilac scent, tinged with a bit of a copper tang. Blood.
He tensed, the smell spurring his heart to a gallop that took all his self-control to rein in.
“I’m finished with the first circuit, sir.” Leralynn told him, her brown eyes aflame. “If you allow Arisha to return to the corral, I’ll get started with the second. And if you wish, the third after that.”
