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My smile dropped. How was I going to get through the whole day without food?
“Anyone supplying Marigold with food can go on a fast with her for as long as it takes,” Paxton added. “Understand?”
The entire class answered loudly, including the professor. “Understand!”
The clique giggled.
I didn’t think Nat and Yelena also echoed that, but they had to move their lips to pretend, or they’d get punished, too.
“Good.” Paxton said with satisfaction. “The Half-Blood Academy has decided to turn a ruffian like Marigold into a model soldier at all costs. She’s our project now.”
What the fuck?
“The Academy won’t allow a delinquent to go on strike,” he emphasized, watching my outraged expression like a fat cat regarding a cornered mouse.
Only I was no fucking mouse. He wanted a war, and he’d get one.
“Axel will never go along with that,” I ground out, my eyes burning. “He’s on my side.”
“Is he?” Paxton said, a sadistic smile stretching his curvy lips. “Wasn’t he the one who plucked you from the ghetto, dragging you from a bawdy street fight to the Academy, despite the way you begged and screamed for him to let you go? Wasn’t he the one who was willing to see you die just to test if you could actually live through the ritual?”
I clamped my mouth shut, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.
How naïve of me to even think that Axel and Zak might defend me just because they’d once shielded me from the burning fire.
They were all my enemies. They’d never been my allies.
Paxton had just reminded me of that.
A cruel light glinted in Paxton’s eyes at my devastated look. “Keep an eye on her,” he ordered to no one in particular. “If she refuses to behave, if she sneezes wrong, call me right away.”
Everyone nodded vehemently, especially the clique.
Paxton turned on his heel.
As soon as he showed his back, I flipped him the bird. I forced down my finger quickly, though, as I didn’t want to be caught.
I grinned at the class sweetly. “Aren’t you going to report it?”
The class gasped, but no one dared to call back the demigod. If they did, they’d have to repeat and mimic my vulgar gesture, and I didn’t think Paxton would take kindly to being flipped off, even in demonstration.
He might be rough with me, but I knew he wouldn’t kill me, not until he was utterly bored with me. And he wouldn’t be bored until he bent me, broke me, and turned me into one of his herd.
Paxton strode away, whistling the tune I had hummed in the bath chamber.
Thankfully, the bell rang the next minute, announcing the end of the class. After all that, at least I didn’t have to suffer through a lecture on the glory of the gods.
