Eighteen
Rural Virginia
Klaudia couldn’t sleep. Her heart kept rattling in her chest. Once, twice, three times, she rose in the dark to check the
lock on her door. The shadows in her room seemed to wrap into odd shapes, almost like apparitions, distorted further by her
exhaustion.
Her pulse blared like an alarm. She lay in bed, perfectly still, and then suddenly a stinging heat would sear through her
body, from her clenched fingers through her thighs, over the breasts that she hated, finally concentrating at one particular
point in the center of her forehead.
She swore she felt Carter’s hand graze her throat. She sat up with a start and had to remind herself that she was alone.
Klaudia checked the latch again, but she didn’t even know if that would stop Carter. There were enough reformed thieves at
Valeran that Carter could convince one of them to pick the lock. He could burst into her room at any moment, and then she
wouldn’t even have Julian to—
To what? Protect her?
Carter was more cunning and crueler than she had given him credit for. He had crafted the perfect attack against her. He hadn’t
slapped her, hadn’t kicked her, hadn’t set fire to her bedclothes. How do you bring down a powerful woman? You remind her she’s a woman, of course.
The obviousness of the answer crackled through her like lightning.
She didn’t know how she had missed it, in all her compulsive accounting and artful maneuvering. Klaudia had believed she had successfully accounted for this one fundamental, irrevocable weakness. For as long as she could remember she had been vigilant about it. Her father had made sure of that.
They’ll never forgive your name, so you must be three times the Smith or Jones beside you. They’ll never forgive your blood,
so you must not let them see you bleed. They’ll never forgive what’s between your legs—pity you don’t even have a pretty face
as indemnity. They’ll never forget anything, so you must not forget, either.
As vicious as her father could be, it made his rare moments of praise all the more gratifying. Pride, hidden in a thin-lipped
smile or a subtle nod. Klaudia chased those moments; she lived for them. And she believed every word from his mouth—why wouldn’t
she? Ivan Shimonov had risen from the horde of huddled Soviet masses and made partner at one of the largest investment firms
in America. He was the perfect capitalist success story, the much-hoped-for profit of NATO treaties and visa programs.
But he was also the wolf with the bloodied muzzle, and no one wanted to shine a light on the things he had done to make it
to the top.
Her father was careful with how he hit her. A light slap on the cheek that wouldn’t risk a bruise. A hand jammed against her
throat, just hard enough to shock her, not long enough to hurt.
Carter had been careful, too. He hadn’t left any marks.
She couldn’t miss any classes without jeopardizing her ranking, and she couldn’t miss any meals without Jane taking notice.
And Julian. So she dressed, buttoning her blazer tightly over her blouse, and went to the dining hall beneath the soft hues
of the rising sun.
The noise and fluorescent light of the dining hall felt like the prick of needles.
She tried not to flinch visibly and closed her ears to the voices of the other students.
What if Carter had spread the word? What if he had told a version of the story without Julian’s intervention, the what-if story that Klaudia herself had been playing over and over again in her mind?
Her hands shook as she carried her coffee over to the table. Jane was there, and so was Julian, but Mikhail was notably absent.
“Hi,” Jane chirped as Klaudia settled into her seat. “Good morning.”
There was only the characteristically cheerful expression on her face. Klaudia relaxed slightly. “Good morning.”
Julian said nothing, but his gaze on her was intense. He wasn’t in his usual seat; he had moved to the other side of the table.
It took Klaudia a moment to realize that he was subtly positioning his body in between her and Carter, who was sitting a few
tables away. Julian glanced over his shoulder every so often to check Carter’s movements.
Klaudia wanted to cry. She almost wanted to laugh. What had she become, in his eyes? Some fragile thing in need of protection?
Coddled. Pitied. She could hardly think of anything worse. Klaudia stared down at the table and let her coffee grow cold in
front of her.
Jane tapped away on her tablet, a coding assignment open in front of her. Julian had not ceased staring at her. His eyes flickered
with obvious concern.
Desperate to divert his attention, Klaudia asked, “Where’s Mikhail?”
“I’m not sure,” Julian said. “He got a message on his tablet this morning and rushed out of the room without explaining himself.”
He turned to Jane. “Did he say anything to you?”
Jane looked up, frowning. “No. He just said he might be late. But it’s almost nine.” The bell for their first class would
ring in ten minutes.
It was at that very moment that Mikhail arrived, cheeks flushed, as if he had run all the way. He pulled out his chair and
immediately dropped into it.
“Are you okay?” Jane asked, her hand skimming concernedly over his. “What’s going on?”
“I was meeting with Dr. Iver,” Mikhail said.
Jane’s face fell. “Please don’t tell me you were hacking the servers again.”
“I wasn’t,” he assured her. “Dr. Iver heard about Thymos.”
Klaudia tensed. So did Julian.
“I thought I was in trouble, too,” Mikhail went on, “but he was . . . happy, I guess. If you could even imagine him happy.” Mikhail shook his head. “He said he was a big fan of the game. He’d been watching everyone play on their tablets. It was
impressive, he said. Not just the coding, but how I’d managed to ‘bring the school together.’ ”
Jane let out a breath. “Thank goodness.”
“That’s not all,” Mikhail said. “He wants to integrate Thymos officially into the curriculum. At the end of the week, he’s
going to host a tournament.”
“A tournament?” Julian echoed.
“Yeah. He’s already speaking to Professor Narendra about how to implement it. And he said that he was going to bump up my
ranking. Now I’m number three.” Mikhail grinned.
But Klaudia’s stomach dropped. That meant that Carter’s ranking had fallen further, down to number four. Surely he wouldn’t
let that lie.
“That’s amazing,” Jane said brightly. “You’re so brilliant.”
The flush crept up to the tips of Mikhail’s ears. “Stop it.”
“How is that going to work?” Julian had straightened in his seat. “Will it count as an extracurricular activity?”
“Nope. That’s the best part. It’s going to count toward our official rankings. Whoever wins”—Mikhail squeezed Jane’s hand
briefly—“will end up at number one.”
Klaudia stiffened with panic. She had played Jane twice, Mikhail three times, and Julian six, and she had won every game convincingly.
But that had just been for fun. Pride was the only thing on the line.
Now it was truly a zero-sum game, with stakes that, at Valeran, may as well have been life-and-death.
She took a long sip of her coffee and hoped that no one noticed how violently her hands were shaking. When she set the cup
back down on the table, Julian was watching her intently again. His expression had progressed from concern to something that
Klaudia found impossible to read.
This time, she met his gaze and held it. Gray eyes burning into green. The sounds and sights of the dining hall seemed to
dull around them, fading to irrelevance in the background. There was only Klaudia and Julian and the infinitesimal yet unbreachable
space between them. She had wondered what would have happened if she’d taken the hand he’d offered to her yesterday. Wondered
how the slide of his skin would have felt against hers. But now the walls were up again. The armor was on.
Another moment passed and Klaudia rose to her feet.
“Best of luck to you,” she said.