Kingston.
Kingston.
His face blank. Stunned. Holding a brown paper lunch bag that flutters to the ground.
Nobody moves. Me least of all.Naked and coated in my own cum with my dick still in Lanz’s hand.
Then Kingston takes a step back. He looks up at the ceiling, blinking.
“Gwenna?” he says at last, his gaze fixed high above any of us.
“With Kai,” Lanz chokes out. “I—we swapped.” He lets me go, moves for Kingston—who’s leaving, I realize. “Wait. King,wait, I can explain?—”
“Can you?” Kingston takes another step back, then another, then turns his back, and sweeps out of Camlann House entirely.
TWENTY-FIVE
GWENNA
On Kai’s shift,we go to the salle again. Once more, I post up on a bench with my reading, and Kai dresses in his whites and proceeds to drill: warm-ups, footwork, bladework.
But now it feels different.
I’m not watching him. But I am…awareof him. Maybe in a way that I wasn’t before. I saw a glimpse of his back again—the welts still there, a little healed, maybe, but not gone. Morgan’s nine-herbs salve is in my bag. The right thing to do is to give it to him. When someone’s hurting, you help them. Right?
I stare at the words in my book, not seeing anything.
Kai doesn’t want my help. Why would he? What am I to him? To any of them, honestly?
Or vice versa?
Clang.Kai’s blade glances off the wall, missing the target, and I jump. He glances at me, flashes a look that seems to saysorryand I return it with ano big dealkind of expression.
But my heart’s hammering.
I told Kingston I trusted him. Trusted them, by association. And I do. In the sense that I trust that they will do what they saidthey’ll do, because I see how dedicated they are to this whole…thing.
You don’t make vows like that if you’re not deadly serious, after all.
But beyond that…
“I’m distracting you.”
Again, I jump. Kai’s right in front of me, on the edge of the far strip, swiping his hair out of his face.
“What?” I shake my head. “No, you’re not. It’s just…boring reading.” That’s notuntrue. If I weren’t so full of inexplicable nervous energy right now, it’d put me to sleep.
Kai smirks, grabs his water bottle, plops onto the bench a foot or two away from me. “And yet you persist.” He puts the water to his lips, takes a drink. Then shakes his head. “You and King. Always with the reading. I don’t get it.”
I tip my head. “You’re a TA.”
“Yeah, in art history,” he says. “Pretty pictures. Naked ladies. What’s not to like?” He shrugs, grinning, almost like he’s trying to…provoke me somehow. Not in a cruel way, though.
Still, I feel the need to defend myself. “Well, this reading is fairly important. You know, given the nature of thequest you’ve devoted your life to, and everything? So maybe you should thank me for taking on so much of the boring part.”
Kai laughs. “Yeah, okay.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
