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Alexander
“She’s tricky. Did youhear her trying to pull that ‘I’m not a demigod’ bullshit? She hasn’t stopped trying to desert since she tipped that apple cart in the market square and sent Larisa flying over a table of silks.”
I paced the length of my bedroom, getting toasted on all sides by the roaring fire.
As dormitories went, this place didn’t hold a candle to the rooms in the Imperial Palace. One had to wonder then why the headmasters of old spent so much Imperial Palace money to make the outside grander than the shining city of Mount Olympus.
For our troubles, the Titans were granted a bed that would barely fit two people comfortably, a dressing table and vanity, fireplace, desk, shelving, and an attached bathroom. The only true perk to this wing was not having to share. Although that perk was doing fuck all for me.
Calix made himself comfortable on my bed, his erection at full tilt as he flipped through a collection of erotic drawings by a man, or woman, who went by the pseudonym Eros. Galen and Ajax reclined in my armchairs, warming their rank-ass feet by the fire.
“What the fuck are you three even doing in here?”
“Listening to you moan nonstop about some girl,” Ajax returned. “What’s the deal with her? And why should we care?”
“Care about whatever the hell you want.” I flung his boot at his head. “And put those back on before the smell sets in and I have to change rooms.”
The asshole and his twin brother smirked in my face as they rubbed their sweaty feet on my carpet. If they weren’t my brothers in every way that mattered, I’d have popped their empty heads.
“But who is she?” Calix spoke up. “Did she turn you down for a fuck? Bet it’s the first time that happened.”
“No, she didn’t. But she would,” I admitted. “She has told me loudly and often that she despises me, and will laugh herself sick when I’m struck down by the many ailments she’s wishing upon me.”
“Damn. She said that to your face?” He forced his attention off the book to flash me raised brows. “The girl’s fearless.”
“She’s mouthy,” I corrected, irritation blazing hotter than the fire. “And crude. Like she got a high-priced education just to learn filthier words. She has the nerve to judge me close-minded.”
“Ah, so she knows you well.”
I lifted the mattress and dumped Calix off. The fool howled on the carpet. Life was nothing but a joke to him and that would never change.
“Something about her doesn’t make sense, though. She pretends to know nothing of our world. She claimed not to know who I was until I told her.”
“That is strange,” Galen said. “Does there exist a place in Olympia that is beyond the council’s reach? Even the mountain people have to pay their taxes.”
“No such place exists. She’s lying but I can’t say why or for what purpose.”
“To get close to you,” Ajax offered.
I tossed that idea aside easily. “She would’ve been happier to have never met me. I don’t doubt that.”
“You don’t doubt it,” Calix said, making himself at home on my bed again. “But it damn sure makes you mad. This one’s gotten under your skin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Ajax sighed. “All I know is if you spend another second talking about this girl, Sirena will sense it and burst in here to take all our heads off. Cool your obsession around her.”
“I’m not obsessed. Aella Galanis is nothing. She is less than nothing. But I was forced to take responsibility for her since I commuted her sentence. If she runs off like she’s clearly still planning to do, it’s on me. Her sentence will be my sentence.”
I wished I could say I was exaggerating, but such was the law in Olympia. One time—just one—a tale of woe convinced a border watcher to free her charge and help her across the border. The council immediately passed a law stating that whoever was in charge of bringing a traitor in, would meet the same fate if that traitor got away.
In any other circumstances, this law, like the rest, wouldn’t apply to me. But my father sent word that morning that I shouldn’t look his way for any hope of leniency. He was less than pleased with me for reducing the sentence of a traitor who murdered a guard—on top of publicly firing one of his favorite spies. I wasn’t supposed to leave Trono City at all, let alone spend the summer causing trouble for him.
I asked myself what Aella would do if she knew she held my life in her hands.Redouble her efforts to escape.
Suddenly, the rest of what Ajax said penetrated. “Hold on, why would Sirena care about me and Aella?”
I gritted my teeth.Me and Aella. Why did I say it like that?
