No students today, though. So no gossip.
As blandly as possible I say, “It was good.”
Then, to distract her further, I thrust my gift into her hands.
My mother unwraps it, smiling slightly.
“I was hoping for a new Ruger, but it doesn’t feel heavy enough . . .” she teases me.
When she sees the framed photograph, her face goes still.
It’s a picture of my father and her, dancing at a wedding—I don’t know whose.
My father is spinning her around, her hand up-stretched and his arm the axis. My mother’s head is thrown back. She’s laughing, her skirt flared around her legs like a bloom around the stem of a flower. My father is staring at her like he’s never seen anything more captivating. He’s grinning like the luckiest man in the world.
“Freya said he kept it in his desk, face-up in the top drawer, so he’d see it whenever he—”
“Yes,” my mother says softly. “I remember.”
She can’t take her eyes off my father’s face.
I know she has pictures of him hidden upstairs. But she’s looking at this one like she’s seeing my father in the flesh, standing before her now.
“There’s no one else for me, and there never could be,” she says quietly.
“I know, Mom.”
She looks up, startled, like she forgot I was there.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll keep this safe for him. It’s his favorite.”
My stomach twists. Maybe Freya should have left the picture in the desk. Taking something out of my father’s office feels like a bad omen—like we don’t think he’ll return.
Reading my face, my mother says, “Don’t worry—I have good news for you.”
I swallow hard. “You do?”
“Yes,” she breathes, her excitement barely contained in the slight tremor of her shoulders. “I think I found him.”
“How?” I say.
“I had it narrowed down to six —”
“I remember,” I say, mentally running through the maps she showed me in the archive.
“When he spoke to Dominik last week, he said he saw snow. It only snowed in one place out of the six that day.”
Grabbing my arm, she pulls me toward her desk, shoving aside a pile of unsourced books and unfurling a long, crumbling scroll.
“Look!” she points to the blueprint, to the spider-fine script in the corner bearing the name.
Irkolasan Uranium Mine, it says.
The powder on the soldier’s boot—yellowcake. Uranium concentrate.
I have to lick my lips before I can speak.
“Where is it?” I murmur.
“Kazakhstan.”
My heart is thudding hard against my chest. I can hardly believe it’s true. After all this time . . . we could actually go to him.
“What do we do now?” I say.
“We scout the location and plan our attack,” my mother says. “We have to be meticulous. If we make a single mistake, if they know what we’re doing . . .”
She doesn’t have to finish that sentence. We have to break in unheard and unseen—or the first shot fired will be directly into my father’s skull.
I let out a shaky breath.
“We won’t need Nix, then,” I say.
My mother turns to look at me, her gaze sharp and unyielding.
“Nix is coming with us,” she says. “As insurance.”
Now my heart drops down to my toes.
What my mother means is, if Marko Moroz puts a bullet in my father’s head, she’ll do the same to his daughter.
I return to the Octagon Tower, the full weight of reality crashing down on my shoulders.
We got what we wanted: we finally found the map.
But that seems so unreal that I can’t really enjoy it.
The thing that seems intensely clear and present is the fact that Nix is about to find out that I lied to her—when I rip her out of her bed and fucking kidnap her.
It may be a week or it may be a month until it happens, but she’s going to know that I’ve been manipulating her. That everything I did was for the purpose of destroying the one person she loves.
My chest is so tight that I can hardly draw a breath.
I almost run into Hedeon in the common room on the fourth floor.
“Hey,” he grunts, his face unshaven and his stubble dark against his skin. “Did you make muffins for me?”
“I didn’t make them,” I say. “But I dropped them off. Felt bad about dragging you into that thing with Estas last night.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Hedeon shrugs.
I notice that he’s still wearing his rumpled dress shirt and trousers, like he hasn’t gone to bed yet.
“Did you sleep in here?” I say, nodding toward the battered sofa.
“Didn’t sleep at all,” Hedeon says.
The dark shadows under his eyes confirm it.
“What’s wrong,” I say, “Didn’t get enough dances with Cara?”
“Cara is perfection,” Hedeon says quietly. “Way too fucking good for me.”
He doesn’t say it like he’s trying to be convinced otherwise—he’s just stating a simple truth.
“I think she likes you,” I tell him.
Hedeon ignores this.
“Did you see Sabrina Gallo dancing with Ilsa Markov?” he says.
“Yeah.” I nod, my cock trying to stir at the memory of Nix sandwiched between the two girls, Ilsa Markov cupping her breasts from behind while she took Sabrina’s face in her hands and kissed her . . .
“Pretty hard to miss it,” I say.
Hedeon nods. “Everyone was watching. Including the Chancellor.”
My stomach does a long, slow flip.
“Well,” I say, with a fake chuckle. “He’s only human.”
“He was talking to Sabrina after the Quartum Bellum,” Hedeon says. “And he let her off easy the first day of school, after she clocked Estas.”
“He didn’t punish Nix, either,” I say, trying to hide my pounding pulse.
“I think he’s got a thing for her,” Hedeon insists.
I take three slow breaths, my brain racing behind my dull expression.
“So what if he does?”
“I think he has a type,” Hedeon says. “He likes them young. Dark-haired. And wild. Just like my mother.”
The silence stretches between us, Hedeon’s angry stare drilling into me, with all the heat of his long-suppressed rage.
“If he’s your father . . .” I say, “Then what are you going to do?”
With calm surety, Hedeon replies, “I’m going to kill him.”
25
Nix
My head is spinning from my hookup with Ares. I’ve never been so turned on in my life. I felt like I was high, every sense amplified.
And at the same time, I felt more myself than ever.
The whole reason I wanted to come to Kingmakers was to feel free and unrestricted. To find experiences and new relationships.
I’m definitely getting exactly what I wanted, more than I even imagined . . .
My only concern is that things might be awkward with Sabrina now. I value her as a friend, and I hope I didn’t fuck that up by satisfying my curiosity about those sultry lips of hers.