21. Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
S he tasted like cinnamon and vanilla.
I had never been keen on sweet things. When I was a child, Mother would bake us a treat every Sunday. It was her way of being motherly, she’d say. Now that I’m grown I think maybe sometimes she regretted the non-traditional way we’d been raised. Our parents had been strict with us, Father more than her, but still. They weren’t the most demonstrative parents out there but there was no doubt in my mind that they loved us.
Still, when she baked for us, I was never the first in line, that was mostly Mikhail. That fucker had the mother of all sweet tooths. I always ate a piece, but only to make Mother happy. I didn’t care for how it tasted. I wasn’t addicted to those cakes, no matter how many times I would taste them.
Yet, for some fucking reason, one kiss with Elyssa-fucking-Ayaari and I simply couldn’t. Get. It. Out. Of. My head.
I had always thought getting so… intimate with someone would disgust me. I’d waited for it to hit me the moment I put my lips on her and still… nothing happened.
I loved every single second of that kiss, of tasting her lips, her tongue. For the first time since I was a teenager, I’d gotten uncontrollably hard and it had been a bitch to make it go down afterward. I was bursting at the seams to do it again; it was driving me mad.
Because not only did I want to kiss her again, but I didn’t want to stop at that.
“What’s up with you tonight?” Asher’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. I blinked at him before shaking my head.
We were all sitting outside the library after dinner, waiting for Royal to show up so we could head to the Church together. Asher was smoking a cigarette, away from me because I hated the scent and he didn’t want to lose a finger, and Mikhail was engrossed in his phone, unusually quiet.
“What, because I’m not yapping like you there’s something wrong with me?” I rolled my eyes, checking the time on my phone.
“I don’t know, you’ve just seemed weird since—” The door to the library opened and we both turned our heads towards it, thinking it might have been Royal, but it wasn’t. Nope, but it was his cousin. And he wasn’t alone.
A short brunette came out of the library, laughing alongside him. Rhodes was staring at her like she was the best thing he’d ever witnessed and I saw Asher’s shoulders tense up from the corner of my eye.
The girl had a similar look in her eyes when she looked at our friend, gazing up at him like he hung the moon and stars.
As soon as he noticed us, and Asher specifically, Rhodes’s smile was wiped off his face. He leveled Ace with a quick glare before making his way towards us.
I hadn’t asked if they’d had time to hash everything out but, from the looks of it, I would go with no. Rhodes still only hung out with us when he knew Ace wouldn’t be there and every time the latter tried talking to him, he was met with a punch in the face or downright ignored.
It was a damn mess. All that because they couldn’t keep it in their pants.
“Hey, guys. Waiting for Royal?” I nodded in response and he winced. “Yeah, he’s not coming.”
Mikhail finally looked up from his phone, frowning. “What do you mean he’s not coming? We’ve been waiting for that fucker for twenty minutes.”
Rhodes only shrugged. “He left thirty minutes ago to bring dinner to Sinem.”
“Who?”
“The new girl. Pink uniform, long black hair?”
Mikhail blinked, still looking confused, the fucker. I rolled my eyes and sighed. “She has thick thighs and always hikes up her skirt.”
And that was how he recognized her. “Oooh yes, I see. Well, I’m still socking him in the eye next time I see him. It’s freezing out here.”
“Yeah, feel free,” Rhodes laughed and Ace couldn’t take his eyes off him. “This is Glory, by the way.” He gestured to the girl next to him who blushed once all our eyes settled upon her. “I’m tutoring her in calculus this semester.”
“Hi.”
Her voice was soft and she couldn’t hold any of our gazes very long. She looked like she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her.
Glory Thompson was in our grade but had only joined the ranks of the Academy this year. Her father was some kind of rich oil mogul from Texas and deeply religious, from what I recalled. I only knew that because Dominik killed her uncle a few years back. We’d been paid by his wife—now a widow—when she learned he’d been sneaking into her eight-year-old daughter’s room at night. Needless to say, his death had been all over the news at the time.
Eventually, Glory cleared her throat, excused herself, and started walking back to the castle. Rhodes’s eyes never left her form until she disappeared past the gates.
“So… she’s hot.” Mikhail smirked and, to my surprise, Rhodes pinned him with a glare.
“Don’t look at her.”
“Why? I thought you shared.” Asher’s voice put a new layer of tension in the air, and for the first time since he joined us, Rhodes looked up at him.
His eyes were dark, not playful like before. All that was left in them was hatred. I saw Ace physically flinch at that, clearly not used to such treatment from his former best friend.
I knew Royal from before coming here because of our parents, but met Rhodes and Ace here at the Academy, whereas both of them had known each other since childhood. They’d gone to the same schools in Los Angeles and were best friends way before anything else. Ace’s father hated their friendship, but there wasn’t much he could do when faced with Rhodes’s family. They were richer, more affluent, and fucking crazy.
“Not her.” His tone was cutting and left no room for negotiations.
“Relax, man,” Mikhail chuckled, trying to diffuse the tension. “I’m not into virgins anyway.”
That was a blatant lie, he was into anything with a pulse.
Rhodes started to blush at that. “I—who said she was a—” he sputtered.
“Oh please, that’s Eddie Thompson’s daughter. The guy is a religious freak, it’s a miracle he let her attend here.”
Ace clenched his jaw, clearly hating the way this conversation was going, before forcefully relaxing his shoulders, giving himself a fake relaxed stature.
Then he smirked. “Does your little virgin prude know how much you liked sucking my cock?”
My eyes flew to Rhodes, expecting him to jump Ace and beat him to a pulp. Maybe that was what Ace wanted: for Rhodes to finally express something other than boredom and disinterest towards him. But to my surprise, he did none of that, choosing to retort instead.
“There’s a reason you used a past tense here. And she knows I’m bi. It doesn’t scare her the way it seemed to scare you. She’s not that insecure.” Then he walked off, checking Ace with his shoulder on his way to the trail leading up to the castle.
I sighed, feeling the headache coming. Ace’s smirk had been wiped clean off his face and he was left staring at the ground pensively.
“Well, fuck,” Mikhail breathed, looking between our friend and the castle where Rhodes had just disappeared.
I told myself I’d just check if she was in her dorm and then head back to mine. I wouldn’t try to interact with her, talk to her, or even look at her for longer than necessary.
And I would certainly not fucking enter her room.
So many rules… that I would end up breaking.
When I reached her dorm, I didn’t knock. Instead, I produced a key I stole a couple of years ago in admin that opened all the doors in this castle. It was dangerous having something so useful just lying around, because anyone who got their hands on it would end up with unlimited access to… well, everything.
It was past midnight, so Elyssa would probably be sleeping. I wasn’t concerned about waking her when I stealthily opened the door, slowly inching my way inside.
My eyes immediately found her bed, ready to see her there, soundly asleep, but she wasn’t. The bed was still made.
I frowned, looking at the small bathroom on the opposite wall where the door was open, giving me a full view of the dark room. Nobody was there either.
I closed my eyes and sighed in frustration. I swear to God, if she went to the kitchens again…
With a growl, I decided I would take this opportunity to rummage through her stuff. I told myself that I did it to get more leverage on her and uncover more secrets, but the truth was I wasn’t looking for anything specific. I just wanted something that felt like her.
When my gaze fell on her laptop, I stopped. It sat on her desk but wasn’t shut down completely and dim light shone from its screen.
She must have closed it hurriedly before going out but didn’t notice it didn’t lock automatically. With a smirk, I pulled it open, the brightness of the screen momentarily blinding me. I’d gotten used to the darkness of the room, only illuminated by the moon outside.
When I saw what Elyssa had written on the search bar, I paused.
What is Tyche?
The page she opened was from some obscure blog about Greek mythology. According to it, Tyche was an old, forgotten Greek goddess, the goddess of good fortune.
The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it until I checked another open tab with Order of the Sons of Tyche in the search bar. This one didn’t lead anywhere: there were no results to the search.
Still, it hit me then, and I knew where I’d seen that name before. It was written on the old journal Elyssa had found in the secret room.
Closing her laptop completely this time, I turned around and hightailed it out of her room.
I knew where she was.