“Go ahead.” He kicked one of the couches aside and then picked it up, leaning it against the wall to cover the hole that he had made. “I know I’m doing a great job. I do a great job at everything.”
“Can we maybe do training somewhere other than here?” his student finally asked. Her voice was rough, short, and lacking refinement. Her eyes were also sharp, and she couldn’t seem to decide where to put her hands.
“What’s wrong with here?” Rome gestured at the space by spreading his hands out. “It’s lovely in here.”
I snorted. Yael was trying to hold back his laugh. Aros was shaking his head. Everyone seemed to have turned to watch Rome, except for Coen, who was possibly taking a nap, and Siret’s sol, who was still listening intently to a Siret that the rest of us couldn’t see.
“There aren’t that many things to demonstrate my Strength on,” the girl replied.
“Strength is more than the physical damage you can cause,” Yael spoke up, stepping toward the girl with a very familiar look on his face.
He was being ‘persuasive’.
“Oh?” She turned fully to face him, as did Rome.
“Yes.” Yael nodded wisely, coming to a stop in front of her. “Strength is of the mind, also. The best exercise to demonstrate strength of the mind is to stand without movement or sound, for extended periods of time.”
“Really?” She sounded half-convinced already.
In reply, Yael simply walked her to the wall, and then stood back, looking proud. “You’re doing so well already. Mind you don’t move a muscle or make a sound, though. Blink three times if you understand.”
I was impressed that Yael had managed to trick her so easily. She was trapped in the experiment now, as questioning it further would break the experiment that he had sneakily started right under her nose.
She blinked three times.
“Can we throw things at her?” Aros asked, suddenly interested in the experiment.
“Don’t see why not.” Rome glanced from the chunk of marble on the couch, to his student, and back again. “It would certainly build strength.”
“Oooo-kay,” I interjected, jumping forward and standing in front of the weapon that would probably do more decapitating than strength-building. “Why don’t we all just let the girl do her experiment without torturing her?” I tugged on the sleeve of Rome’s shirt, pulling his attention to me. “Two? Want to take a nap? Look how much fun One is having.”
Rome glanced over at Coen, who miraculously still had his eyes closed.
“It does look fun,” he admitted.
“Okay, that’s settled then. You’re going to nap and the sol will still have a head for you to throw things at tomorrow.”
His hands found my hips, lifting me up and away. He then tossed the marble off the couch, causing another horrible cracking sound as the chunk of stone hit the ground. He slumped heavily down onto the couch, but too much abuse in such a short period of time caused it to splinter and collapse beneath him. He jumped up, scowling at it, before stalking into Aros’s alcove.
“Switch,” he demanded, staring at the Seduction student and the Persuasion student, and pointing at the broken couch.
The Seduction student got up from her seat gracefully, flicking a silky mass of red-pink hair over her leather-clad shoulder, before brushing past Rome. I fought the urge to pluck each gorgeous red-pink strand of hair from her dumb, gorgeous head. I couldn’t watch her as she sauntered seductively over to the broken couch, so I turned my attention to the Persuasion student instead. She had soft blond hair, left in waves about her shoulders, and a childishly beautiful face. She didn’t exactly have commanding features like Yael’s, but I could see how her suggestions would be taken easily. There was something about her that I just wanted to trust even though I kept trying to tell myself that the only thing I could trust about her was how much I wanted to lock her in a closet so that I could have my Abcurses back.
Was that unreasonable?
“A little bit,” Yael answered my thoughts, “but we’re not complaining.”
Rome sank down onto the vacated couch, propping his feet onto the other couch in that alcove and tipping his head back just like Coen’s. I watched as he shifted around uncomfortably, constantly re-adjusting his position. How the hell was Coen remaining so still?
“What did we miss?” a familliar voice asked from behind us.
Rome jumped up again, his eyes shooting open. “I knew there was no way you could sleep comfortably on those things!” he announced, sounding victorious.
Coen and Siret were striding into the room, and the apparent illusions of them had flickered out of view. Coen was no longer sleeping on the couch, and Siret’s student was no longer fixated on the spot where he was supposed to be standing. She had jumped up in alarm and was now staring at the real him, stuttering in confusion.
“You are a sol of Trickery, aren’t you?” Siret bated her, stopping at Cyrus’s circular table and dropping an assortment of wooden food containers onto the surface.
Emmy must have followed Cyrus out of the room earlier, because I didn’t hear an outraged scream when her scrolls were crushed.
The Trickery student looked appropriately chastised, her purple eyes downcast, her hands shoved moodily into the pockets of her pants.
“Not to be a dick or anything—” Siret began, before Rome cut him off.
“He definitely means to be a dick.”
“But,” Siret continued, “you should really be able to tell when you’re being conned by an illusion. It’s part of the power, being able to see through other people’s tricks. I guess it was slim pickings for Trickery sols this life-cycle.” He shrugged, taking the lids off the food containers.
He definitely meant to be a dick.
The Abcurses all grinned then, amused by my thought.
The Trickery student snarled, stalking past me for the door. “I’m just going to go, since you five clearly aren’t going to teach us anything.”
“We’ll stay,” the Seduction student piped up in her honeyed voice.
“Oh joy.” I rolled my eyes. “Did you hear that, guys? The sexy one is staying. That’ll calm things down.”
“The sexy one isn’t allowed to go anywhere,” Coen muttered, pulling me against his chest. His hands slipped down over the curve of my back, finding their way into the folds of my cloak and down over the curve of my ass. He pulled me harder against him, making a deep, rumbly sound in the back of his throat. “You belong with us. Always.”
I was having trouble finding a response that didn’t involve me winding my legs around him and pushing my lips against his, so I only nodded and threw my arms around his neck. My face ended up pressed against his collarbone, so I dropped a soft kiss there. He shifted me up higher against the growing hardness that pushed into my belly. He was having that reaction over me. Me. Not some perfect, pink-haired, honey-voiced seduction sol. Just me. I pressed another kiss to his skin, and then another, and his hands tightened before reluctantly releasing me. His eyes found mine as my feet hit the floor, and I could see the promise in them. The heat of what might happen later.
Ten
I didn’t have the energy to do anything other than slump down at the circular table and start pulling food toward my face. Rome came along behind me soon after and looped an arm around my middle, lifting me up from the stool. In response, I just leaned further over the table so that I could continue shovelling noodles into my mouth.
Shifting his position slightly, he took my place on the stool and sat me down so that I was now on his right leg. Then, without a word, he began pointing to the various foods arrayed before us. With one hand, I fed myself, while my other followed his indication, picking up the foods he was interested in and handing them back to him. The others watched our process with slightly astonished looks on their faces.
“That’s actually impressive.” Siret saluted me with his bread roll.