Kingmakers, Year One

15. Anna

15

ANNA

T he next morning I skip breakfast, because I don’t want to see anyone.

It doesn’t work. Leo immediately corners me outside of my dorm tower as if he’s been waiting down there for hours.

He looks awful. His hair is a mess, and he has dark circles under his eyes. As soon as he sees me, he runs over and practically pins me against the wall with his bulk so I can’t escape.

I try to slip past him, saying, “I can’t talk right now, I have to get to the library.” It’s a transparent ruse. Leo doesn’t buy it for a second.

“Anna please,” he begs. “I don’t know what happened last night.”

“I do.”

I didn’t want to have this conversation, but now that he’s forcing me into it, the memory of the night before comes flooding back into my brain, more painful than ever. I can see him leaned up against that tree, his head tilted back in pleasure, and I can hear—as if it’s right in my ears in this moment—Gemma’s slurping mouth.

Last night all I felt was hurt. But this morning that hurt is turning into bitterness.

I know that Leo and I aren’t dating. I know we didn’t say anything explicitly to each other. But just as clearly, I know there was something between us—an understanding, an intention. It wasn’t all in my head.

Leo didn’t give a fuck about that. The moment he had a chance to go off in the woods with Gemma, he took it. He didn’t think about me at all.

“I saw you,” I tell him, my eyes burning into his. “I saw you letting that little whore suck your cock.”

I don’t actually feel great about calling Gemma a whore. After all, it’s not like she knew the fantasy I had in my head about how my night was supposed to go. It’s not like she had some responsibility toward me—we’re not even friends.

It’s Leo who hurt me, not her. But in my fury, I use the most vicious words that come into my head and I apply them mentally to Leo as well as to her.

Leo is a whore. He loves attention wherever he can get it. He doesn’t understand the first thing about fidelity or love.

He’s stammering and stumbling, nowhere near his usual smooth self.

“I was really drunk,” he says. “I swear, I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t even know how it happened.”

I stare at him like I don’t even know him. “That’s a pathetic excuse.”

“I know!” he cries. “I know it is! I’ve never lost control like that, I don’t understand it.”

Leo’s attempt to explain himself is just making me angrier.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I seethe at him. “You can fuck whoever you want. Just leave me out of it.”

“Anna . . . I know . . . I wanted . . .”

He’s stammering at me helplessly, unable to say what he wants to say. I already know what he’s trying to tell me. He regrets being so careless—he didn’t realize how much it would hurt me.

But that’s Leo’s problem—he’s fucking thoughtless.

I try to push past him again, and in desperation he cries, “Where did you go last night?”

“I left.”

“You came back here all alone?”

I’m impatient with this line of questioning. I don’t appreciate Leo acting protective after he ripped my heart out.

Also, a small ugly part of me wants to hurt him back.

So I say, “No. I wasn’t alone.”

Leo can hear the menace in my voice. His eyebrows draw together.

“Who was with you?”

He doesn’t really want to know the answer.

I look at his handsome face. The face that I’ve loved all my life. The face that I’ve never tried to drag down from happiness to sorrow, not once.

I know that I should take a day or two to cool off. That’s why I didn’t go down to breakfast—I wanted to avoid this exact conversation until I was in a more rational state of mind.

But the other part of me—the part of me that called Gemma a whore—the part of me that’s angry and vengeful and self-destructive—that part answers Leo, the words leaving my lips before they’ve even formed in my brain.

“I was with Dean Yenin.”

Leo stares at me.

I regret it already. I regret saying it, I regret doing it. I regret everything that’s happening.

Too late.

Comprehension sweeps his face like a dark cloud passing over the sun.

“Dean…”

He says it low and guttural, a sound too much like the noise he made last night, when he was with Gemma. When my head turned toward him in the dark, knowing the sound of Leo anywhere.

Anger, fear, sadness, regret. They cycle through me over and over, until I have no idea what I want, or what I feel.

Regret, sadness, fear . . . anger.

Wildly, defiantly, I lift my chin. “That’s right.”

“What do you mean you were with him?”

“What do you think I mean?” The words spill out of me. “I can do whatever I want. I’m a free agent, the same as you. Isn’t that right, Leo? After all, we’re just cousins .”

I spit out that word like I hate it.

Maybe I do.

I wanted to take a little cut at Leo, in revenge for how he made me feel. But I seriously underestimated how furious this would make him. His eyes blaze like yellow fire and now he truly is pressing me up against the stone wall at the base of the staircase, his fists clenched at his sides and his long frame trembling from head to toe.

“Are you insane?” he hisses at me. “You’re not dating Dean Yenin.”

“It’s none of your business who I date,” I inform him. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Leo is pressed closer against me than we’ve ever been in our lives. His chest crushes me, his thigh pins my hip to the wall. His hand twitches, and I think he’s almost angry enough to grab me by the throat. He’s desperate, he’s cracking, neither one of us is ourselves, let alone the person we usually are to each other.

Leo’s shouting right at me, our faces inches apart.

“He’s our ENEMY! And he’s just using you to try to get back at me!”

I laugh in his face.

“You really do think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you? Is it so impossible for you to believe that someone could like me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Leo says “It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s Dean—he’s a slimy, manipulative, conniving?—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I cut him off. “I’m sick of your stupid rivalry. And I’m sick of you thinking you can control me while you run around doing whatever you feel like.”

I try to duck under Leo’s arm, and he tries to grab me, holding me back.

This time I shove him, harder than I’ve ever shoved him before. This isn’t playfighting, this is me telling him that if he doesn’t keep his fucking hands to himself I’ll break his wrist.

We’re both breathing hard, and Leo’s expression is like nothing I’ve seen before. He’s a stranger to me. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me.

“Just STOP,” I hiss at him.

He hesitates. For once in his life.

In that moment he looks like a confused little boy.

I walk away from him, and this time he doesn’t try to stop me.

That Sunday afternoon is long and lonely. Usually Leo, Ares, and I would do schoolwork in the library or walk down to the village together. Or we might play cards with Miles and Ozzy, or steal raspberries out of the greenhouse.

Today I don’t feel like doing any of that. I can’t even practice dancing because I forgot my speaker in the dorm room, and Chay has been sleeping all damn day, after stumbling home at 5:00 in the morning. She had sand in her hair and her top was on backward, so I’m assuming Sam stopped playing football long enough to notice her, or Chay honed in on someone else equally interesting.

I make sure to visit the dining hall as soon as dinner service starts, before anyone else is there. I grab a fresh-baked roll and two apples so I can eat somewhere else. It’s not only Leo I’m avoiding—I can’t face the thought of seeing Dean, either.

I don’t believe for a second what Leo said about Dean using me to get close to him. Dean hasn’t asked me about Leo one time, or about any family members we might have in common. If anything, he’s avoided the topic. And I’ve caught Dean looking at me enough times to know that he’s been interested in me for a while.

No, if anything, it’s me who used him to feel better last night. And me who used him to make Leo jealous this morning. I feel guilty about that, and I don’t know how to tell Dean that it was only a moment of weakness, that he and I won’t be dating. If that’s even what he wants.

I eat the roll and one of the apples while walking over to the library tower.

I don’t even have to walk through the doors to know that the library will be empty. The weather outside is warm and balmy, and all the other students are taking the opportunity to play in the sunshine or recover from their hangover in the sea breeze.

As I ascend the spiral stairs leading up the interior of the tower, I can almost feel the weight of ten thousand books creaking and groaning over my head on their ancient shelves. The air feels thick with the thoughts of so many people long dead, their words whispering out of the pages.

I pad across the oriental rug, spotting Ms. Robin in her usual position behind the main desk, her head bent over a half-dozen unfurled architecture schematics, the ink so faded that it might as well have been written in spilled tea.

She squints down at the yellowed paper, her nose barely an inch from the page, one long, slim finger trailing under a bit of script as she tries to read a minuscule annotation.

I clear my throat so I won’t startle her.

She jumps anyway, her thick glasses sliding down her nose.

“Anna!” she squeaks. “I didn’t hear you coming up.”

“What are you working on?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She rolls up the long scroll. “Nothing interesting.”

“You’re always working on something.”

“Well . . . Ms. Robin hesitates, as if embarrassed to say. “I’m doing a dissertation on the floor plans of ancient monasteries. I have a theory about the aqueduct systems built on the Roman model . . .”

“Is that why you came to work at Kingmakers?”

“Yes,” she says. “The archives here contain maps and documents you can’t find anywhere else in the world. And they’re almost totally unstudied by mainstream academia. It’s quite tragic, actually. The wealth of knowledge here is secret, for obvious reasons. And what I’ll be allowed to publish is limited. But I’m extremely lucky to have been provided this access. It’s not easy to secure a position here. The previous librarian held this job for thirty-seven years! I don’t know if I’ll be here that long . . . but who knows. It is incredibly peaceful. I’ve never gotten so much work done.”

She smiles, showing a row of very pretty white teeth. I haven’t been this close to Ms. Robin before, and I see that what I suspected is accurate. Beneath the straggly red hair and the thick glasses and the cardigan that looks as if it were knitted by a novice, she’s quite beautiful.

“Is this your first year here, then?” I ask her.

“Yes. I started this fall, the same as you.”

“Is your family connected to Kingmakers?”

“Luther Hugo is my uncle,” she says. “He’s the one that got me the job. Only, he didn’t exactly tell me what sort of school it was. I feel stupid now, not realizing. I guess I’m not very good at picking up on hints.”

She pushes the heavy glasses up on the bridge of her nose, shaking her head at herself.

“Don’t feel bad,” I tell her. “A lot of the kids here were raised without a real idea of what their families did. Not me, but plenty of the others.”

“You always knew?” She peers at me with her head slightly tilted.

“Yes. But my mother didn’t. She thought her father was a businessman and her brother was a politician, mostly.”

“It’s the mostly that gets us,” Ms. Robin laughs.

She has a soft, mellow laugh. Ms. Robin has a strange charisma—you don’t see it at first. But the closer you get to her, the more it pulls you in.

“Anyway,” she says, “I’m sure you didn’t come here on a Sunday afternoon to hear all about me. What can I help you with?”

I tell her the book I need for my Contracts and Negotiations class, and she helps me locate it, way at the top of the tower, in one of the shelves that requires a rolling ladder to reach.

I say, “I’m surprised you know where everything is already.”

“Well . . .” She smiles. “I literally live here. Up there.”

She points to the ceiling. I see a trap-door in the roof that appears to lead to an attic space nestled under the pointed peak of the tower.

“You sleep up there?”

“Best view on the island.”

“Lonely, though,” I say, without thinking. I only meant that it was the most distant and isolated part of the castle. But I regret my thoughtless comment when I see the flash of pain on Ms. Robin’s face.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “It can be.”

I return to my dorm with my arms full of books, not bothering to be quiet since Chay must be awake by now. As I push my way through the door, I see the silhouette of someone standing by the window.

I drop my books down on the bed, saying, “Thanks for remembering to bring my speaker back, despite being maybe twenty percent conscious.”

“Chay’s not here.”

I spin around at the masculine voice. Dean is right behind me—freshly showered and shaved, wearing an immaculately-pressed dress shirt and trousers. He’s got his hands tucked in his pockets, and his pale blonde hair falls down over his left eye as he looks at me sheepishly.

“It’s me,” he says unnecessarily.

“Right.” I wish I still had my books to hold as a barrier between us. “I can see that now.”

“I was looking for you all day,” he says. “I figured you’d have to come back here eventually.”

“You’re not supposed to be in the girl’s dorms,” I remind him. “You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

“I think I’m already in trouble,” Dean says in his low voice.

That voice sends a shiver up my spine—half intriguing, half terrifying.

“Dean—“ I start.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he interrupts me.

“What am I going to say?”

“You’re going to tell me that last night was a mistake. That it only happened because you were upset with Leo.”

I look at him, lips parted, tongue still. I didn’t think he already knew that.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I want you anyway.”

I swallow hard. “Leo thinks you’re only interested in me because you want revenge on him.”

Dean gives me an intense look. “Leo’s a fucking idiot. He had you right next to him all those years, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

After the beating my ego took last night, Dean’s words mean something to me. But I can’t eat it up just because it feels good. I have to be honest with him.

“Dean . . .” I say softly. “What I feel about Leo . . . it’s not a crush. It’s not something I can turn off. Even when I’m fucking pissed at him.”

“I don’t care,” he says again.

And now he crosses the space between us, covering the ground before I can blink, picking up my hand and holding it cradled in both of his, in front of his chest. I can feel the callouses on his palms from his endless hours of jump rope down in the gym. I see his knuckles, bruised and swollen from hitting the heavy bag with the cold, silent fire that lives inside of him.

“Just give me a chance,” he says. “One date, that’s all I’m asking. If you don’t want to be with me, I can’t make you. But give me a chance, at least.”

He looks at me with those eyes that are more purple than blue. His face is both stern and vulnerable. It’s a painful combination, one that’s hard to look at without dropping my gaze.

I say, “This thing with you and Leo . . .”

“I’m not going to pretend that I’m fine with what his parents did to my family,” Dean says. “But that’s got nothing to do with you and me.”

“I don’t want any fighting.”

His lips press together in a thin line. He’s silent for a moment, thinking. Then at last he says, “Fine. As long as I’m with you, I won’t do anything to Leo.”

“We’re not together, though,” I tell him. “It’s just one date.”

Dean lifts my hand and presses it to his lips.

He looks in my eyes, fierce and intent.

“It will be more than one date.”