“Deal.” Kel dropped the small white pill into Sila’s hand.
Sila smiled and slipped it into his own pocket, stepping to the side. “Care to make another?”
Kelevra canted his head, waiting.
“I’ll give you some advice, and you promise to do me a favor someday.”
“That’s fairly open-ended.” And dangerous. Kel grinned. “I like it. You just can’t use it to ask me to let him go. I won’t.”
Sila grunted. “I wouldn’t waste a favor with an Imperial on that. My brother can more than take care of himself. No. It’ll be something else. I just haven’t ironed out all the kinks yet, so to speak.”
“Deal.” Kelevra didn’t much care what he was going to ask him for, so long as it wasn’t about Rin.
Sila sidled a little closer. “Offer to pay our tuition fees.”
He frowned, a bit disappointed. “That’s all?”
“Father is threatening to cut us off thanks to that stunt you pulled with the imposed marriage,” Sila said. “My brother’s been stressing all day over how to keep him off our backs and keep us both here, on planet.”
“He isn’t going anywhere,” Kel growled.
“On that, we are in agreement.” Sila gave him one last knowing look and then headed away without another word. If he was concerned about leaving Rin alone with a man who’d already forced himself on him in the past, he didn’t seem it.
Maybe they weren’t as close as Kelevra had believed?
He waited for a moment to see if it was a trap of some sort, if perhaps Sila was merely messing with him and would storm back and rage about how he couldn’t believe Kel actually thought he’d abandon his brother. But nope.
Interesting.
Kelevra slipped into the locker room quietly, flicking the lock behind him so they wouldn’t be disturbed. The room was setup with the entranceway facing an alcove where they stored some gear—boxing gloves they seldom used, old sandbags, and stuff like that. The right opened up to the main area where a wall of red lockers was. Their names had been added, one for each of them, some bullshit thing Baikal’s future butcher, Berga, had done. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors made up the rest of the wall with the entrance.
The showers were attached to the side of that, but unlike back at the Academy, they had doors. There was also a sauna, which was where Kel typically spent his time unwinding.
Rin hadn’t bothered entering that section, however, standing instead at the end of the lockers, between the metal and a low, polished bench. He was rifling through an empty locker, having changed his pants already, though he was still shirtless.
His brother had helped him with his face, patching him up somewhat so there was a bandage across his eyebrow and the blood had been scrubbed from him.
Kelevra couldn’t believe he was getting jealous over the guy's brother, and yet here he was, annoyed at the thought of Sila touching Rin’s face, tipping his chin up to the light and blowing across his wounds like some—
“What the fuck are you wearing?” He’d made it halfway into the room before the new pants Rin was in finally registered. Rin hadn’t come here with anything but the clothes on his back, which meant… “Whose fucking clothes are those?”
Rin scowled at him but tugged loosely at the stretchy material of the dark gray sweatpants. “Think they’re Madden’s.” He hummed. “No, actually, Kazimir handed them to me. Maybe they’re his.”
God damn Kazimir.
Baikal’s cousin, and the bane of Kel’s existence. He hated that fucker with a passion. Even more, now that he’d had the audacity to slink in here and offer up clothing tohisflower.
“Take them off,” he growled.
“I just put them on,” Rin argued.
Kelevra stormed forward, intent on tearing the offending pants off himself. “You’re mine. I won’t have you walking around in some other man’s—” The soft tick of a blade springing free was the only warning he got before the sharp and cool edge of one was being pressed against his neck, right over his carotid artery.
The bench was still between them, and Rin didn’t seem too perturbed holding a weapon to his Imperial Prince’s throat.
“Threatening the life of your prince is grounds for execution,” Kelevra drawled, nice and low, ignoring the way a fire was licking at his insides. He didn’t have a death wish or anything, but something about the confidence on Rin’s face was sexy as all hell.
Rin lifted a shoulder. “I guess that’s one way for me to get out of this betrothal.”
