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“Do you like her or not?” I say coldly. “I can’t really tell.”
“Of course I like her. But you’re my nephew. I have a responsibility to you.”
“And you think you need to warn me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Of what exactly?”
“You think you’re invincible. You think you’re in control. But you’ve never been in love before—love makes fools of us all.”
“I thought love saved you!” I’m hot in the face. “Didn’t you say that? That all your happiness came from Ivan?”
“It did,” Sloane agrees. “It still does. But don’t think that’s the only way it can go.”
“I appreciate the concern,” I pick up the last glass. “But I can handle myself. And I can definitely handle Sabrina.”
Sloane gives her maddening smile, smoothing out the last wrinkle in the tight packet of the tablecloth.
“Sure, Adrik,” she says, light and calm. “Just remember … when a bomb explodes, it destroys whoever stands closest.”
* * *
15
SABRINA
I’m supposed to fly to Dubrovnik tomorrow. I have my suitcase with me, full of a fresh batch of uniforms, and I already said goodbye to my parents and Damien back in Chicago.
Nix can tell I’m in a funk about leaving. She’s so honest that she ignores social niceties and the bullshit people say, cutting right to the heart of what she sees: “You don’t want to go back to school.”
We’re laying on the back deck of the Petrovs’ house. The wooden beams are warped and graying from the constant salt spray tossed up from the beach below. In the large hammock we can lay side by side, head to foot. Nix’s red hair sprawls across my brown arm, my dark hair across her pale one. From above we must look like a yin-yang.
The breeze is strong enough to keep us rocking, though neither of us is pushing.
Adrik has gone on some errand with Kade and Rafe, and Rafe’s sister Freya, something to do with the dispensaries. I didn’t ask Adrik for details because there’ve been people all around us today, and the things we actually want to talk about can only be said in private.
“I like school,” I say to Nix.
That’s mostly true. I spent years yearning to go to Kingmakers. Once I arrived, the classes and training and ferocious competition were everything I’d dreamed.
It was a firehose of information straight to my brain. I guzzled it down, always with more and more and more coming, no end of everything to learn.
But the rules, the strictures, the monotony of it …
I don’t want to be on someone else’s schedule. I don’t want to be chastised. I don’t want to be a student.
I’ve always felt older than my years. I like Kade and Cara, and most of my classmates. But the one who feels like my equal is Adrik. I want to be eight years ahead. My mind is already there, I’m ready.
“That’s not what I said.” Nix pushes off the closest post with her bare foot, sending the hammock into a dramatic swoop. “I said you don’t want to go back.”
“No,” I admit, after a moment. “I don’t.”
“Because of Adrik?”
It’s the first time she’s said it out loud.
She knows that we’re involved. But Nix is never one to pry. She flows like water and allows everyone else the same luxury. She accepts us all as we are.
