The Freshman (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  But the other part of me—the part of me that called Gemma a whore—the part of me that’s angry and vengeful and self-destructive—that part answers Leo, the words leaving my lips before they’ve even formed in my brain.

  “I was with Dean Yenin,” I say.

  Leo stares at me.

  I regret it already. I regret saying it, I regret doing it. I regret everything that’s happening.

  Too late.

  Comprehension sweeps over his face like a dark cloud passing over the sun.

  “Dean,” he says. His voice is a warning growl.

  That growl sounds too much like the noise he made last night, when he was with Gemma. When my head turned toward him in the dark, knowing the sound of Leo anywhere.

  Anger, fear, sadness, regret. They cycle through me over and over, until I have no idea what I want, or what I feel.

  Regret, sadness, fear . . . anger.

  Wildly, defiantly, I lift my chin. “That’s right.”

  “What do you mean you were with him?”

  “What do you think I mean?” I say. The words spill out of me. “I can do whatever I want. I’m a free agent, the same as you. Isn’t that right, Leo? After all, we’re just cousins.”

  I spit out that word like I hate it.

  Maybe I do.

  I wanted to take a little cut at Leo, in revenge for how he made me feel. But I seriously underestimated how furious this would make him. His eyes blaze like yellow fire and now he truly is pressing me up against the stone wall at the base of the staircase, his fists clenched at his sides and his long frame trembling from head to toe.

  “Are you insane?” he hisses at me. “You’re not dating Dean Yenin.”

  “It’s none of your business who I date,” I inform him. “You’re not the boss of me.”

  Leo is pressed closer against me than we’ve ever been in our lives. His chest crushes me, his thigh pins my hip to the wall. His hand twitches, and I think he’s almost angry enough to grab me by the throat. He’s desperate, he’s cracking, neither one of us is ourselves, let alone the person we usually are to each other.

  Leo’s shouting right at me, our faces inches apart.

  “He’s our ENEMY!” Leo roars. “And he’s just using you to try to get back at me!”

  I laugh in his face.

  “You really do think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you?” I say. “Is it really so impossible for you to believe that someone could like me?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Leo says “It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s Dean—he’s a slimy, manipulative, conniving—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I cut him off. “I’m sick of your stupid rivalry. And I’m sick of you thinking you can control me while you run around doing whatever you feel like.”

  I try to duck under Leo’s arm, and he tries to grab me, holding me back.

  This time I shove him, harder than I’ve ever shoved him before. This isn’t playfighting, this is me telling him that if he doesn’t keep his fucking hands to himself I’ll break his wrist.

  We’re both breathing hard, and Leo’s expression is like nothing I’ve seen before. He’s a stranger to me. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me.

  “Just STOP,” I hiss at him.

  He hesitates. For once in his life.

  In that moment he looks like a confused little boy.

  I walk away from him, and this time he doesn’t try to stop me.

  That Sunday afternoon is long and lonely. Usually Leo, Ares, and I would do schoolwork in the library or walk down to the village together. Or we might play cards with Miles and Ozzy, or steal fresh raspberries out of the greenhouse.

  Today I don’t feel like doing any of that. I can’t even practice dancing because I forgot my speaker in the dorm room, and Chay has been sleeping all damn day, after stumbling home at 5:00 in the morning. She had sand in her hair and her top was on backward, so I’m assuming Sam stopped playing football long enough to notice her, or Chay honed in someone else equally interesting.

  I make sure to visit the dining hall as soon as dinner service starts, before anyone else is there. I grab a fresh-baked roll and two apples so I can eat somewhere else. It’s not only Leo I’m avoiding—I can’t face the thought of seeing Dean, either.

  I don’t believe for a second what Leo said about Dean using me to get close to him. Dean hasn’t asked me about Leo one time, or about any family members we might have in common. If anything, he’s avoided the topic. And I’ve caught Dean looking at me enough times to know that he’s been interested in me for a while.

  No, if anything, it’s me who used him to feel better last night. And me who used him to make Leo jealous this morning. I feel guilty about that, and I don’t know how to tell Dean that it was only a moment of weakness, that he and I won’t be dating. If that’s even what he wants.

  I eat the roll and one of the apples while walking over to the library tower.

  I don’t even have to walk through the doors to know that the library will be empty. The weather outside is warm and balmy, and all the other students are taking the opportunity to play in the sunshine or recover from their hangover in the sea breeze.

  As I ascend the spiral stairs leading up the interior of the tower, I can almost feel the weight of ten thousand books creaking and groaning over my head on their ancient shelves. The air feels thick with the thoughts of so many people long dead, their words whispering out of the pages.

  I pad across the oriental rug, spotting Ms. Robin in her usual position behind the main desk, her head bent over a half-dozen unfurled architecture schematics, the ink so faded that it might as well have been written in spilled tea. She squints down at the yellowed paper, her nose barely an inch from the page, one long, slim finger trailing under a bit of script as she tries to read a minuscule annotation.

  I clear my throat so I won’t startle her.

  She jumps anyway, her thick glasses sliding down her nose.

  “Anna!” she squeaks. “I didn’t hear you coming up.”

  “What are you working on?” I ask her.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, rolling up the long scrolls. “Nothing interesting.”

  “You’re always working on something,” I say.

  “Well . . . Ms. Robin hesitates, as if embarrassed to say. “I’m doing a dissertation on the floor plans of ancient monasteries. I have a theory about the aqueduct systems built on the Roman model . . .”

  “Is that why you came to work at Kingmakers?” I ask her.

  “Yes,” she says. “The archives here contain maps and documents you can’t find anywhere else in the world. And they’re almost totally unstudied by mainstream academia. It’s quite tragic, actually. The wealth of knowledge here is secret, for obvious reasons. And what I’ll be allowed to publish is limited. But I’m extremely lucky to have been provided this access. It’s not easy to secure a position here. The previous librarian held this job for thirty-seven years! I don’t know if I’ll be here that long . . . but who knows. It is incredibly peaceful. I’ve never gotten so much work done.”

  She smiles, showing a row of very pretty white teeth. I haven’t been this close to Ms. Robin before, and I see that what I suspected is accurate. Beneath the straggly red hair and the thick glasses and the cardigan that looks as if it were knitted by a novice, she’s quite beautiful.

  “Is this your first year, then?” I ask her.

  “Yes. I started this fall, the same as you,” she says.

  “Is your family connected to Kingmakers?” I ask curiously.

  “My uncle knows Luther Hugo,” she says. “He’s the one that got me the job. Only, he didn’t exactly tell me what sort of school it was. I feel stupid now, not realizing. I guess I’m not very good at picking up on hints.”

  She pushes the heavy glasses up on the bridge of her nose, shaking her head at herself.

  “Don’t feel bad,” I tell her. “A lot of the kids here were raised without a real
idea of what their families did. Not me, but plenty of the others.”

  “You always knew?” she asks, peering at me with her head slightly tilted.

  “Yes. But my mother didn’t. She thought her father was a businessman and her brother was a politician, mostly.”

  “It’s the mostly that gets us,” Ms. Robin laughs.

  She has a soft, mellow laugh. Ms. Robin has a strange charisma—you don’t see it at first. But the closer you get to her, the more it pulls you in.

  “Anyway,” she says, “I’m sure you didn’t come here on a Sunday afternoon to hear all about me. What can I help you with?”

  I tell her the book I need for my Contracts and Negotiations class, and she helps me locate it, way at the top of the tower, in one of the shelves that requires a rolling ladder to reach.

  “I’m surprised you know where everything is already,” I say.

  “Well . . .” She smiles. “I literally live here. Up there.”

  She points upward to the ceiling. I see a trap-door in the roof that appears to lead to an attic space nestled under the pointed peak of the tower.

  “You sleep up there?”

  “Best view on the island,” she says.

  “Lonely, though,” I say, without thinking. I only meant that it was the most distant and isolated part of the castle. But I regret my thoughtless comment when I see the quick flash of pain on Ms. Robin’s face.

  “Yes,” she says quietly. “It can be.”

  I return to my dorm with my arms full of books, not bothering to be quiet since Chay must be awake by now. As I push my way through the door, I see the silhouette of someone standing by the window.

  I drop my books down on the bed, saying, “Thanks for remembering to bring my speaker back, despite being maybe twenty percent conscious.”

  “Chay’s not here.”

  I spin around at the masculine voice, finding Dean right behind me—freshly showered and shaved, wearing an immaculately-pressed dress shirt and trousers. He’s got his hands tucked in his pockets, and his pale blonde hair falls down over his left eye as he looks at me sheepishly.

  “It’s me,” he says unnecessarily.

  “Right,” I say, wishing I still had my books to hold as a barrier between us. “I can see that now.”

  “I was looking for you all day,” he says. “I figured you’d have to come back here eventually.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in the girl’s dorms,” I remind him. “You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

  “I think I’m already in trouble,” Dean says in his low voice.

  That voice sends a shiver up my spine—half intriguing, half terrifying.

  “Dean—“ I start.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” he interrupts me.

  “What am I going to say?”

  “You’re going to tell me that last night was a mistake. That it only happened because you were upset with Leo.”

  I look at him, lips parted, tongue still. I didn’t think he already knew that.

  “I don’t care,” he says. “I want you anyway.”

  I swallow hard. “Leo thinks you’re only interested in me because you want revenge on him.”

  “Leo’s a fucking idiot,” Dean says. “He had you right next to him all those years, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

  After the beating my ego took last night, Dean’s words mean something to me. But I can’t eat it up just because it feels good. I have to be honest with him.

  “Dean . . .” I say softly. “What I feel about Leo . . . it’s not a crush. It’s not something I can turn off. Even when I’m fucking pissed at him.”

  “I don’t care,” he says again. And now he crosses the space between us, covering the ground before I can blink, picking up my hand and holding it cradled in both of his, in front of his chest. I can feel the callouses on his palms from his endless hours of jump rope down in the gym. I see his knuckles, bruised and swollen from hitting the heavy bag with the cold, silent fire that lives inside of him.

  “Just give me a chance,” he says. “One date, that’s all I’m asking. If you don’t want to be with me, I can’t make you. But give me a chance, at least.”

  He looks at me with those eyes that are more purple than blue. His face is both stern and vulnerable. It’s a painful combination, one that’s hard to look at without dropping my gaze.

  “This thing with you and Leo . . .” I say.

  “I’m not going to pretend that I’m fine with what his parents did to my family,” Dean says. “But that’s got nothing to do with you and me.”

  “I don’t want any fighting,” I say.

  His lips press together in a thin line. He’s silent for a moment, thinking. Then at last he says, “Fine. As long as I’m with you, I won’t do anything to Leo.”

  “We’re not together, though,” I tell him. “It’s just one date.”

  Dean lifts my hand and presses it to his lips.

  He looks in my eyes, fierce and intent.

  “It will be more than one date,” he says.

  16

  Leo

  Imagine that you’re standing on a cliff, and you don’t realize it’s a cliff. You think you’re on solid ground. Until your feet slip out from under you. You begin to fall. After that first terrifying lurch, you pinwheel your arms, trying to catch your balance. But you keep falling and falling. You think to yourself, I’m gonna smash on the ground any second now. I’m not gonna survive this. Yet you fall and fall and fall. And eventually you realize there is no bottom—you’re plunging down into hell.

  That’s what it was like losing Anna.

  There is no bottom.

  I’m still falling.

  Every day that passes is worse than the day before.

  If only I hadn’t been so fucking stupid the day after the party. If only I’d begged and groveled and apologized.

  But I woke up with my head still fuzzy and throbbing. I rolled out of bed, not even sure how I got there in the first place. I had a vague memory of a girl looking up at me from her knees—a girl with dark eyes and hair, a girl who definitely wasn’t Anna.

  I knew I’d fucked up somehow. But I didn’t really feel like it was my fault. It all seemed like a dream, like it had happened to somebody else.

  So I waited outside her dorms to apologize, but it was only a half-apology. My head was throbbing, and my stomach was churning. I thought Anna would see as clearly as I did that the night before was just a stupid mess, that it didn’t mean anything. I thought she knew how I felt about her.

  I was wrong.

  I should have seen how much I’d hurt her.

  The pain was clear on her face. If my own head wasn’t pounding like a drum, I would have recognized it.

  Instead, I lost my temper.

  She told me she walked home with Dean, and I felt this overwhelming wave of jealousy and rage. I didn’t know if she had kissed him or fucked him or just walked next to him, and I didn’t care. I felt that she belonged to me, and that Dean had tried to steal my property.

  Looking back on it now, I could punch myself in the face.

  I hadn’t done anything to make sure that Anna was mine. I just assumed that I owned her and I always would. I thought I possessed her without actually earning it first.

  So I shouted at her. Insulted her. And drove her away, at the one and only moment where I might have been able to convince her to stay.

  And now she’s with Dean instead. And I fucking hate him.

  But not nearly as much as I hate myself.

  I lost the one person in the world who mattered most to me.

  And here’s the most ironic part of all. Yes, it makes me fucking burn with jealousy to see the two of them together. To see them walk hand in hand across the commons. To see him put his palm on the small of her back or trail the back of his fingers down her cheek. And when he kisses her . . . I’ve never been closer to murder.

  But the thing I miss most of all is my best f
riend.

  I never realized how much of every day centered around Anna. She was the first one I told my news to, the person I most wanted to impress. When I’d tell a joke, I’d look at her to see if she laughed. If I wanted to go for a run, or get something to eat, or go exploring, I always had her by my side. If I needed advice, or comfort, she was the only one I’d trust to give it. She knew me. She knew my whole history, and exactly who I was. She can’t be replaced.

  I spend most of my time with Ares now. And he’s a good friend, don’t get me wrong. But he’s not Anna.

  I never realized how lonely a day can be. I’m surrounded by friends and classmates, but that’s all they are. Nothing more.

  Anna sits by Dean now, or with the two other female Freshman Heirs, Chay and Zoe. She eats lunch with them, and dinner.

  We’re not enemies—she’s polite to Ares and me when she sees us. But polite is almost worse than hateful. Because there’s no passion in it. No sense of care. There’s a barrier between us now. I can see her, but not feel her. It hurts so fucking bad to be this close to her, and yet so far away.

  My parents can tell something’s wrong. When I call them on the weekend, they can hear that all the joy has gone out of my voice.

  This last Sunday, my dad left the call to answer the doorbell when it rang, and my mom said, “Leo, milyy, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Mom,” I said. “I’m doing well in school. My grades are picking up. I’ve gotten back to lifting most mornings. I’ve even been eating salads. You’d be proud of me.”

  “I am always proud of you, my love,” my mother said. “But I know you, Leo. I know when you’re hiding something from me.”

  “There’s nothing,” I lied. I couldn’t tell her what I’d done.

  My mom is clever, though. Maybe even more clever than my dad.

  “Has something happened with Anna?” she asked shrewdly.

  Even just hearing Anna’s name created a lump in my throat that almost suffocated me.

  “No,” I lied again. “I’ve got to go, Mom. There’s other people waiting for the phones.”