44. War Room

Academy Hill, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum

November 3, 2847

Outside of Montalban Hall, the grass at the edges of the paths was wet, and there was the feeling of steam in the air—like stepping into a bathroom where a hot shower had been running. Cassie paused for just a moment, at the top of the steps, to look around for Fletcher Radecki. If he was lingering about waiting for them, she decided that she couldn’t be blamed for breaking his nose.

Instead, she found Jessica Morrow leaning against the outside of the building, just to one side of the double doors. The moment Arc and Cassie started down the steps, the imperial guard slipped into place at their backs, perhaps half a dozen steps behind.

“I wish you’d been this close yesterday,” Cassie grumbled, not bothering to lower her voice.

“My job is to protect your life,” Jessica said, from behind them. “Not your boyfriend. If you’d been in any actual danger, I would have stepped in.”

As they moved down the path, Cassie felt the eyes of the passing students on them more heavily than she had at any point since her first days at the academy, after Van Camp had outed her publicly. Only, this time, she was fairly certain that their classmates were looking at Arc just as much as they were at her. She caught fragments of voices, of conversations, as they passed, and the word ‘duel’ more than once.

“It’s alright,” Arc said, and from the tone of his voice Cassie could tell that he was uncomfortable—which only made her feel worse. “I don’t expect Jessica to step in to help me.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, which Cassie found perversely satisfying. She wasn’t at all upset if her bodyguard had to stew in that feeling for a moment.

“It’s nothing personal,” Jessica said, coming up closer behind them. “You seem like a good kid, Sandhurst. But I don’t have a full detail, here, and it isn’t like the two of you are engaged. And remember, Your Imperial Highness, this is what you wanted. The minimum security the emperor would allow, as far out of sight as possible. If that isn’t what you want anymore –”

“I want to live my life!” Cassie exclaimed. “Without idiots like Radecki harassing my friends, if it’s at all possible. Apparently it isn’t.”

They were only halfway back to Tycho Hall, and just less than halfway dusted with lingering drops of rain shaken out of the leaves that rustled overhead, when Cassie caught sight of a small group of upperclassmen bearing down on them. Ireti Ọlatẹru led the way, with Vijay Iyer and, to Cassie’s dread, her cousin Bhaskar flanking her.

“Here it comes,” she whispered to Arc, and reached out to take his hand in hers. “I’m sorry.”

The two groups slowed and came to a halt facing each other, but Prince Bhaskar began talking before Cassie had even stopped moving. Whatever she’d been expecting her cousin to say, however, it wasn’t what she got.

“Name me as your champion,” Bhaskar Nova Xiao-Solaris demanded.

Cassie blinked. “What?”

“This is utterly unacceptable,” Bhaskar said, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “Upperclassmen shouldn’t be throwing their weight around on first years to begin with, but to pick a fight with the imperial family? I don’t care about this idiot’s senator father. He needs to be taught a sharp lesson.”

The prince turned to regard Arc. “We don’t know each other well,” he admitted. “Iyer tells me you did well on your first patrol, and I don’t want to take that away from you. But there’s no shame in this—he has two full years of experience on you. I’m surprised the commandant is allowing this at all, but since she is, let me step in. I’ll deal with the problem.”

Cassie snuck a glance at Arc, and noticed that he’d had his AI send a private message to her through Lyra.

This is not at all what I expected, Arc’s message went.

Me either, Cassie admitted.

She considered her words for a moment. Her mother would have told her to be polite, but at the moment Cassie simply didn’t have the patience for it. “I didn’t think you approved of Arc,” she said.

“I don’t,” Bhaskar confirmed, without even trying to soften the statement. “He’s beneath you, and I don’t think your father will ever approve a marriage. But that’s not what this is about. This is about the respect due our family. A jumped up senator’s son has the audacity to throw an insult like this in our faces? Fine. I’ll kill him myself.”

“Let’s slow down a moment,” Ireti Ọlatẹru said, placing a hand on Bhaskar’s shoulder as if to calm him. “First of all, Cassie, Cadet Sandhurst, are you both alright? Word’s gotten around campus pretty quickly since yesterday, and Fletcher Radecki was crowing to anyone who’d listen, after he left the commandant’s office, that he had no intention of accepting an apology.”

“Practically bragging about it,” Vijay Iyer said. “That she couldn’t stop him. Arc, you can’t fight him. Did you convince Marlowe to put a stop to it?”

“I’m fine,” Cassie assured Ọlatẹru. “Angry, but fine. Physically, we both are.”

“But the duel is going to go forward,” Arc said, at her side.

“One patrol doesn’t make you a pilot,” Vijay insisted. If Cassie hadn’t been able to tell at a glance how worried the older cadet was for Arc, his words might have come off as an insult.

At her side, Arc glanced around, and Cassie caught what he was looking at—clumps of students walking by along the paths, sometimes singly or in pairs. But they didn’t have anything like privacy, standing as they were right out in the open. “We can’t have this conversation out here,” he said. “We need someplace private.”

“There’s study rooms at Tycho Hall,” Cassie said. “I’m certain Karisa would open one up for us, if we told her what was happening.”

Arc nodded. “Alright. That’s good, because I need Pika, Rain and Vee with us. Actually, I want Natalie Ramírez, too.”

“You sound like you have a plan,” Ireti Ọlatẹru said.

Arc, however, simply shook his head. “Not here. Let’s get back to Tycho Hall and find Karisa.” He stepped forward, and Cassie followed, forcing Vijay and Ireti to step aside.

“I’m not accustomed to taking demands from underclassmen,” Bhaskar growled.

“It’s not a demand,” Arc called back. “You can stay or go. But if you want me to answer your questions, it won’t be here.”

Cassie glanced back, and to her surprise watched her cousin scowl and then step forward to follow them, along with the other two upperclassmen and, lurking just behind the entire group, Jessica. The fact that Bhaskar had effectively backed down to Arc was –

She tried to find the words for what she was feeling.

From the moment she’d realized, on the elevator, that Arc didn’t know who she was, somehow, Cassie had liked the fact that he wanted to be her friend anyway. And even after he found out, when she’d been afraid Van Camp’s big mouth would ruin everything, he hadn’t treated her any differently. He was nice, he could be funny, he clearly cared about her, he’d been willing to jump in and throw a punch when she needed him to back her up on the streets of San Teodoro. There was a sadness in him, from the loss of his sister, that made her want to wrap him up in her arms and kiss him to sleep at night and make him forget about his pain. And she did enjoy kissing him.

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But she’d never before seen Arc be quite this assertive. That ill-fated water run during Hard Burn, he’d been put in charge by Lieutenant Kekoa, and even then someone like John Rixey had pushed back on his orders. But now, the way he’d just put the choice out there, take it or leave it, to her older cousin—to an imperial prince! One that Arc knew didn’t approve of him—the sheer confidence it had taken to just do that, and walk away, sure that everyone else would follow—it was…

Cassie allowed herself a small, private smile, and felt a shiver run down her body.

This is odd, Lyra said, tucked safely away in the private recesses of her mind. I don’t see any reason that these particular hormones should be flooding your system right now. Is there something –

Shut up, Cassie told her. Let me enjoy this.