Page 25 of Winterveil

“You mean not as brazen,” said Mikhail, dropping into the chair beside her. “You could have easily hacked B of A’s servers if you wanted. You’re just too good of a person.”

“Oh, stop it,” Jane said, blushing.

His head starting to throb again, Julian took the seat on Jane’s other side. Yet there was something oddly soothing about their artless flirtation, which he listened to with half attention. He could have been overhearing an almost identical conversation in Exeter’s dining hall. They sounded like ordinary teenagers. At least for the moment, Valeran felt startlingly, reassuringly mundane.

He didn’t hear the patter of footsteps behind him. He only looked up when Jane suddenly cocked her head and said cheerfully, “Oh, hi, Klaudia.”

No.

Not her.

Very slowly, Julian turned.

“You’re in my seat,” Klaudia said.

“I must have missed the seating chart,” Julian said, “given that this is a military academy, not an elementary school.”

He was treading dangerous ground. At any moment Klaudia could reveal him, bring up the incident he was trying so desperately to keep out of his mind. Why, out of all people, did it have to be her who had caught him crying? And why did it have to be her standing before him now, clearly friends with Jane and Mikhail, who were looking on with bewildered expressions? All she had to do was recount what she had seen and he would be a laughingstock at Valeran, before he even made it to his first class.

Julian could almost feel his father’s gaze, searing hot with disappointment. A Joyce-Young shouldn’t cry.

But Klaudia said nothing. She folded her arms across her chest.

Mikhail and Jane continued to watch their silent showdown anxiously. Julian glanced over at them, and then met Klaudia’s stare. Her gray eyes were pure ice. He wasn’t sure if he’d even seen her blink. His mind returned to some of the headlines he’d read—viperess, Medusa, cold-hearted she-devil. They all seemed at least half true. She was not someone to lose a war of attrition.

Finally, Julian got to his feet, pushing back the chair with more force than necessary. Klaudia took his abandoned seat without a word, and he collapsed into a chair on the other side of the table, face blazing.

Almost immediately Klaudia lapsed into conversation with Jane and Mikhail—bringing up shared memories and inside jokes, with the clear intent of cutting him out. But Julian noticed that Klaudia said little after the conversation began in earnest, and that her eyes kept darting back to her bag, where the corner of her tablet was peeking out. As if this were all a show to humiliate him and she would much rather be reading about NATO doctrines and proxy wars in the Pacific.

The hour wound down. Julian picked at his food. Klaudia was the first to stand when the bell rang, bidding brisk goodbyes before walking away. For a moment Julian stared determinedly down at the table, eyes tracing the pattern of the wood grain, considering his options. And then, with a surge of adrenaline, Julian bolted to his feet.

He caught up to Klaudia and managed to grab her by the wrist before she could exit through the dining hall’s double doors.

“Why didn’t you tell them?” he demanded.

Gingerly, she extricated herself from his grasp. “You didn’t force my hand. And I don’t have to play dirty to win.”

Julian snorted. “That’s rich coming from a girl who scammed her own father out of millions.”

“If I recall correctly, there wasn’t an angry mob outside city hall demanding my arrest,” she said coolly. “Just investment firms offering me salaries.”

It was true. BlackRock and Morgan Stanley had both publicly proclaimed that they would hire her on the spot—if she was acquitted. Julian hated how much the reminder of his scandal stung. The reminder that he was better off dead to the people of Boston, and maybe to his own father as well.

“You’re just going to hold this over my head as long as it’s useful, aren’t you?”

Klaudia lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

Julian’s fists clenched. “I should’ve known you’d be a callous bitch.”

She just shrugged again.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. If they had been somewhere else—anywhere else—he might have gotten away with it. But here, at Valeran, the order of the world was turned upside down. The name Joyce-Young meant nothing. For once, he would have to survive on skill alone. Until now he had rarely questioned his own competence, but the thought of having neither prestige nor wealth to fall back on if he failed was nauseating.

He didn’t know how he could compete with someone like Klaudia. It wasn’t just her obvious intelligence; it was her legendary coldness. She was inhuman, unfeeling. Julian searched her gaze for any trace of sentiment and found none. No chinks in the armor. It was humiliating to have been so nakedly emotional in comparison.

“If we’re done here . . .”

Her voice, too, was as flat and frigid as a field in winter.