22. Eudoxia
EUDOXIA
“I’m here,” Eudoxia says with no inflection.
Kleitos smiles at her like he knows he’s won. Eudoxia can hardly blame him—he has won, hasn’t he?
“You said you wanted to talk.”
Kleitos nods.
The letter was not at all descriptive. In fact, he didn’t even sign his name, egotistical bastard. All it said was: 1:00 AM, Training Room, Alone, Let’s Talk.
If she wasn’t so terrified, she’d be annoyed at how lacking the letter was.
“So talk.”
“I saw a little brat running around,” Kleitos responds.
“Did you?”
“She looks just like you.”
Eudoxia glares. “Weird.”
“And that reminded me of something,” Kleitos continues. “In the first few days we lived together, I remember hearing an impossible noise come from your side of the room. You were asleep, but someone was humming. I shrugged it off as a trick of the night. But now I’m not so sure.”
“What do you want me to say? Wow? I’m sorry?”
“Don’t play dumb, Eudoxos. You know what I’m saying.”
“I really don’t.” She knows it’s a long shot; he’s not that stupid.
But maybe he is? He’s definitely not, like, smart…
“Your little sister.”
Shit.
“You’d get in trouble for having her around, wouldn’t you, Eudoxos? And you’ve been hiding her for what, years? Since your first day?”
“Kleitos—”
“She’s a cute kid. But she’d have to be a lot cuter for them to want to keep her alive. Or you, for that matter.”
And with that, Eudoxia has had enough.
“What do you want, Kleitos? You would have turned me in already if you weren’t going to ask for something.”
“It’s simple. You help me with something, and I keep this to myself.”
“Help with what, exactly?”
Kleitos smiles cordially. She wants to rip that smile right off his smug face. “Glad you asked, Xos. I don’t have many people on my side. Especially not in our cohort.”
“I’m not gonna disagree with you there.” Asshole, Eudoxia doesn’t add.
“But Lazarus is Forms-bent on bringing us all to the end. And once we make it? I want to be the one who finishes on top.”
Even in such a dire situation, Eudoxia struggles to hold back a laugh. Kleitos wants to be the Educator? Kleitos?
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You’re going to make sure I get there.”
“That’s not possible, Kleitos. I can’t watch out for you the whole time, and Lazarus is not going to let you win easily. You know how badly he wants this.”
“You could take the Ring of Invisibility,” Kleitos taunts.
The Ring of Invisibility: a small agate ring that sits in a tiny temple in the center of the Academy’s lawn, begging for someone to steal it.
It allows the wearer to commit illegal and treasonous acts without detection.
No one knows how it works, but everyone knows that just in stealing the ring, you’re failing the test it poses.
The whole point is that it’s in reach but not meant to be taken.
And no one would be desperate enough to steal that thing and risk getting branded or worse.
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Well, then I’m glad it’s not my problem anymore. It’s for you to figure out how I’ll win.”
“You’d be a shit Educator.”
“You should be more careful with your words, Xos. Maybe I’ll just forgo mercy and rat you out right now?”
“No,” she growls without thinking. The satisfied smirk Kleitos gives her makes her skin crawl. “I’ll try, okay? I’ll try. But I can’t guarantee anything.”
Kleitos pats her on the head. “Just believe in yourself, little guy. Or face the consequences.”
“Screw you.” She stomps toward the exit.
“Goodnight,” Kleitos sing-songs behind her.
Eudoxia sighs, finally looking up from her hands to Zeno and Ophelia. Her voice is ragged from recounting her meeting with Kleitos. She’s despondent, but that’s better than breaking down crying.
Zeno wraps his arm around her waist before she can say anything else. Somehow, even now, it gives her butterflies.
“What’s the plan from here, Xia?” he whispers into her hair. They’re in his room, trying to keep Arete in the dark.
Looking back, Eudoxia should have seen this coming; Arete was going crazy stuck in her room. But what is it they say? Hindsight’s 20/20.
“Make him win, I guess,” she says.
“That can’t be a sure thing,” Zeno remarks gently. “How will you watch out for him in the duo challenge? How will you explain defending him to Alexander? To Lazarus?”
Good questions. Eudoxia really doesn’t want to hear them right now.
She tugs out of Zeno’s arms with more force than she intends, and his face goes sheepish. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. What do you want me to say? I give up? It’s over? No! I have to make this work,” she yells.
“But, Xia,” Ophelia says, “what happens when you do it? Then Kleitos will pick the next thing for you to do ‘or else he’ll tell.’ It doesn’t matter how much you help him—there will always be more.”
Eudoxia jumps to sit on Zeno’s bed and lets her head fall into her hands.
“Then what? I can’t just send her away.”
“You could,” Zeno says, and Eudoxia has to throw him a betrayed look. Does he really know her so poorly as to think she’d abandon her sister after years of keeping her safe? “You could send her away,” Zeno repeats, “if you went with her.”
If she left?
It’s not like Eudoxia hasn’t thought about leaving. But she wouldn’t make it far even if she did manage to slip out undetected.
“Where would they even go?” Ophelia snaps.
“We would have to figure it out along the way, I guess,” Zeno says, determined.
Eudoxia’s jaw drops. “We?”
Zeno looks confused. “Yes, ‘we.’ You, Arete, and I.”
Her mind turns inside out with longing, but she can’t be that selfish. “Zeno, you have a life here. What you’re suggesting is insane in the first place, but you coming along? It would ruin all three of our lives.”
“Why wouldn’t it work?” Zeno asks.
“We have no money. We have no plan. We have nowhere to go.”
“I have money,” Ophelia chimes in.
“And that doesn’t begin to—wait, what? How do you have money?” Eudoxia asks.
Ophelia looks from Eudoxia to Zeno and back before responding, “I’ll tell you later. But, in short, I have money. A lot of it.”
“Would you be willing to give it to us?” Zeno asks.
Ophelia smiles and shakes her head. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll keep it with me when I join you.”
Eudoxia needs to stop this hovertrain before it leaves the station. “Whoa, whoa. We can’t seriously consider this. It’s crazy.”
“Well, what else are you gonna do? Zeno’s right—this is the only way,” Ophelia says.
“You can’t just throw everything away—either of you. Not for me.”
Zeno’s brows furrow, and he plants his feet, looking her in the eye. “‘You and me,’ Xia, remember?”
She recognizes those as the words he said to her in the training room weeks and weeks ago, when Alexander had just moved in.
Ophelia, standing next to Zeno with her arms crossed, gives her a stubborn nod.
“So we’re leaving the Academy, then?” Ophelia asks, almost like she’s excited to go.
“We’re leaving,” Zeno says, resolute.
She stares at them both in awe. This is too much. It’s too lucky. She’s blunt and brazen and doesn’t have the tact she should. How has she found people who are this loyal, this loving?
She doesn’t know what she could say to express how she feels, so she nods. Zeno beams at her when she does. She basks in the warmth it brings. It almost feels like everything is going to be okay, for this moment in the light.