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Jackpot. The only thing better would be tacos. But beggars can’t be choosers.
“Oh, wait.” Mack holds up something . . . a Charm lollipop. “There’s a whole box of these here too.”
My breath hitches. Rhaegar has no idea I love Charm lollipops, but the prince does. He stole them from me the night we met. The same night he took my fate and stomped it to smithereens.
The bite of cheeseburger turns to dirt in my mouth. I force it down, push my cheeseburger aside, and take a lollipop.
Whatever sick game the prince is playing, I want nothing to do with it.
24
“Again!” Eclipsa orders. I’m lying on a weight bench while she stands over me, arms crossed, a frown tugging her lips. She’s glaring at the two shaking weights in my hand. I’m supposed to be pressing them toward the ceiling, but my muscles refuse. Sweat drenches my temples, and a stripe of my blonde hair is pasted across my forehead.
I’m only on my second rep. Lord save me.
When I showed up this morning at 10:00 a.m. she was waiting for me in the weight room wearing cute silver leggings and a jet-black racerback tank that showed off her toned arms. Her silver hair was wreathed around her head in a complex set of french-braids, and silver half-moon barrettes held everything together.
“Hoping I didn’t show and you’d get stuck with Richter?” she had asked.
“No, of course not,” I said. “I just . . . it’s hard to get used to students as instructors.”
She’d grinned at that. “Summer, how old do you think I am?”
I stared at her poreless face, not a saggy bit of skin or wrinkle anywhere, and shrugged.
“Five hundred and seven.” She waited until the shock registered on my face and then added, “We mature slower than humans. And most Evermore don’t receive the full extent of their powers until around half a millennium, so that’s when we attend the academy. But I promise you, I’ve had hundreds of years to hone this beautiful body into a weapon of mass murder.”
“Huh.” It was the smartest thing I could think to say.
“Richter’s good . . . for a human,” she added. “But she’s like a blunt force instrument. All brute and no finesse. Wouldn’t you like to know the exact spot between the ribs to stick a dagger to stop someone’s heart before they can make a sound?”
My mouth fell open.
Taking that as a yes, she continued, “The Unseelie side values the Winter Prince. He harbors the most powers and promise of any Evermore student in over five thousand years, maybe even more than the Darken. Seeing as he insists on you being his shadow, I’m now tasked with making you competent.”
“And if I end up with Rhaegar?” I had asked.
She smiled that sanguine smile. “You won’t. Trust me. What the Winter Prince wants . . . he gets.”
Not if I can help it.
I barely had time to suppress an eye roll before she was putting me through round after round of weight lifting and stretches until my heartbeat felt like one giant throb pulsing pain to every bruise on my body.
Now, an hour of torture later, my body is in full-scale revolt, my lip has started bleeding again, my tights have wedged into every crack I possess, and the cut above my eye needs another butterfly bandage.
I’m falling apart at the seams.
But the prince was right. My humiliation from last night’s epic smackdown fuels my workout, and I’ve pushed way beyond what I ever thought I could do physically. It’s kind of exhilarating.
“Breathe through your nose and into your belly,” Eclipsa commands, ripping me from my daydream and back to the very painful present.
“I am,” I promise.
“No, you’re sucking mouthfuls of air through your lips like you’re drowning. It’s the most inefficient way to get oxygen to your body . . . and you look like a dying fish.”
Well, she doesn’t mince words.
Lifting the weights from me like they weigh nothing, she gives me a second to breathe.
