His eyes darken. His hands flex in the fabric.
“Could you bring it up to me, please?” Claudia asks.
“I think I’ll keep this,” he says with a shrug.
She laughs in disbelief. This isn’t the reaction she expected, but she should know better than to think she can predict how Cassius will respond to anything she throws at him. Literally.
“You can’t keep it.”
“Why not? If you don’t have your scholar’s robe, you can’t attend class. If you can’t attend class, you can’t perform in the debate. And if you can’t perform in the debate, then I win by default.” He balls up the robe and holds it to his heart. “I think it’s in my best interest to keep it.”
“What happened to you wanting to win this debate fairly?”
He holds up her crumpled note and her robe. “Someonestarted pelting me with various objects. It’s made me far less honorable.”
“Cassius, please.”
“If you want it, come and get it.”
“But I’m not supposed to walk the halls without it.”
“Perhaps you should’ve thought of that before you stripped it off.” With that, he goes back into his room.
Claudia groans. Maybe she should’ve listened to Dorian and stayed away from Cassius. She rolls her eyes at the thought—as if that was ever a possibility. Cassius is inescapable. Neither of them can ever leave the other alone.
Back in her room, she makes eye contact with Bishop, who is curled up on the desk.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
He tilts his head.
“You think I’m being foolish, don’t you?”
He tilts his head again, now to the other side.
“Oh gods, you think I’m being a harlot.”
He coils tightly, tucking his head under his body.
She scoffs. “Real mature, Bishop,” she says, stomping toward her door. When she pokes her head out, the corridor is empty. Maybe, if she runs, she can get to Cassius’s door without being seen.
Rushing out of her room, she lets the door slam behind her while she darts through the hall, down the stairs, around the corner, and almost to Cassius’s door. She stops herself when a group of a dozen professors, led by High Sage Triche, walks right towardher. There’s a marble pillar to her left, and she hides behind it, waiting for them to pass.
“No one could ever take your place, Triche,” one of the Scientia professors says.
Triche laughs just as the group passes by. “Someone must. I won’t be here much longer.”
Their conversation fades when they turn the corner. Claudia waits a few seconds before slipping out from behind the pillar and running to Cassius’s door.
It’s locked.
When she knocks, he doesn’t answer.
Bastard.
She knocks. She kicks. She slams her shoulder into the door. “Cassius MacLeod, open this godsdamn door or I swear—”
“What do you say?” he calls from the other side.
