Octavia
“You can’t avoid me forever, princess,” the psycho murmurs at my side.
“Do not call me that,” I reply crisply, keeping my voice low to avoid expulsion before breakfast.
Between this Russian lunatic and that Colombian menace, I am perilously close to losing my sanity.
“Why are you in such a foul temper?” he drawls. “Did you miss me? Because I bloody did. At times, it was difficult to breathe at all… but now that I see you, I find I finally can.”
I lift my gaze to him and narrow my eyes. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
He merely blows me a kiss.
I take him in discreetly, because I would rather die than let him catch me checking him out, which, just to be absolutely clear, I am not.
He is tall, irritatingly so, somewhere around six three to my five two.
His hair is a dark chocolate shade, wavy rather than straight, not long but falling just to his ears, and messy, but not in a way that looks dishevelled.
And then there are his eyes. Those icy blue eyes. It is genuinely a pity that such a beautiful colour was given to him. He doesn’t deserve it.
He is built, muscular, and his tattooed hands are veined and improperly large. I am almost certain one of his palms is the size of my entire head.
The ink is visible above the collar of his hoodie, creeping up his neck. The work itself is exceptional, which feels, again, like a terrible waste.
He keeps his eyes forward, but the longer I look at him discreetly, his knowing smirk deepens, and I turn my head away so fast it makes me light headed.
We reach the bottom of the stairs and he’s still walking right beside me, so I let out a breath and turn to face him.
“Disappear,” I say calmly. “I have more than one blade strapped to my body, Markev, and I am very close to using one. This time, straight through your heart.” I finish with what I hope looks like a mean smirk.
His smile only widens. He looks pleased, as though I have just whispered something sweet into his ear rather than threatened his life.
“Baby girl,” he says lightly. “Dying by your hand would have been a dream of mine.” He pauses, his eyes bright with something unsettling.
“But not anymore. I have decided I want to live… for you. And unfortunately for both of us, that means I can’t let you kill me.
” His smile deepens. “No one else gets what’s mine. ”
My jaw clenches. The nicknames change every time he opens his damn mouth, and each new one makes me consider slitting his throat, not to mention he just called me his.
No one owns me, least of all this bastardo.
I stalk away without another word, forcing my legs to move.
I feel him fall into step behind me.
Again.
I grit my teeth and continue towards my first class.
He stays right at my back, so close that I can almost feel the heat coming off him, when he suddenly asks, “Where’s my car?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply without looking at him.
I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“I bet you don’t.” He pauses, then adds, “That car,” he says lightly, “I shot Isaak for thinking he could drive it. Didn’t aim for the shoulder either. He spent weeks in hospital, and the Pakhan, to put it mildly, was furious.”
I don’t respond.
“But with you,” he continues, “I don’t know. I’d give you the moon if you asked for it. So I’ll send the papers over and have the car put in your name.”
Psycho.
Genuinely.
I have absolutely no words.
I stop abruptly and turn on him, not even acknowledging the nonsense he has just spilled.
“My blade,” I say.
His eyes glint. “I believe you mean my blade,” he corrects lightly.
“I want it back.”
“I imagine you do,” he replies.
“And by the way,” he adds, casually, “the blades you mentioned having strapped to your body, I’m tempted to provoke you into using one on me, just to see what colour they are.” His smile widens. “Please tell me it’s pink again.”
I gape at him.
Then again, I am not entirely sure what one is meant to expect from a clinically unstable man.
“Are you a certified lunatic, and did you escape from whatever facility was meant to keep you contained?”
He ignores me.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “I just want to know if they’re pink.”
He glances at me. “Since the party, pink is all I fucking see.”
He shrugs. “I had a bunch of things made in that colour, all custom made, because I needed the exact shade of your hair.” His mouth tilts. “Having your blade as a reference helped.”
“I expect that damn blade back. It’s my favourite,” I snap.
“No chance in hell,” he replies easily. “That knife is mine now. Think of it as a souvenir. The day we became lovers.”
“What?” I start, then stop myself. “You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Just stay the hell away from me.”
I turn abruptly, irritation and a familiar wave of self-loathing settling in for giving him even a moment of my time, for engaging in conversation at all, when the only exchange we should ever have is my gun at his head or my blade at his heart.
And I need a plan.
The reason he is here, at my academy, in my space, I do not know, but I don’t believe he has come to kill me. It doesn’t feel like that. Or perhaps he is simply a very good actor.
Either way, I will not waste time trying to work it out. I will have to act, to come up with something, and end his thoroughly pathetic life when the opportunity presents itself.
After all… he deserves it.
For what he did.
So I put my defences back in place.
Death is coming for you, and this time, she will not miss.