Page 50 of Winterveil

Jane looked up, frowning. “No. He just said he might be late. But it’s almost nine.” The bell for their first class would ring in ten minutes.

It was at that very moment that Mikhail arrived, cheeks flushed, as if he had run all the way. He pulled out his chair and immediately dropped into it.

“Are you okay?” Jane asked, her hand skimming concernedly over his. “What’s going on?”

“I was meeting with Dr. Iver,” Mikhail said.

Jane’s face fell. “Please don’t tell me you were hacking the servers again.”

“I wasn’t,” he assured her. “Dr. Iver heard about Thymos.”

Klaudia tensed. So did Julian.

“I thought I was in trouble, too,” Mikhail went on, “but he was . . . happy, I guess. If you could even imagine him happy.” Mikhail shook his head. “He said he was a big fan of the game. He’d been watching everyone play on their tablets. It was impressive, he said. Not just the coding, but how I’d managed to ‘bring the school together.’ ”

Jane let out a breath. “Thank goodness.”

“That’s not all,” Mikhail said. “He wants to integrate Thymos officially into the curriculum. At the end of the week, he’s going to host a tournament.”

“A tournament?” Julian echoed.

“Yeah. He’s already speaking to Professor Narendra about how to implement it. And he said that he was going to bump up my ranking. Now I’m number three.” Mikhail grinned.

But Klaudia’s stomach dropped. That meant that Carter’s ranking had fallen further, down to number four. Surely he wouldn’t let that lie.

“That’s amazing,” Jane said brightly. “You’re so brilliant.”

The flush crept up to the tips of Mikhail’s ears. “Stop it.”

“How is that going to work?” Julian had straightened in his seat. “Will it count as an extracurricular activity?”

“Nope. That’s the best part. It’s going to count toward our official rankings. Whoever wins”—Mikhail squeezed Jane’s hand briefly—“will end up at number one.”

Klaudia stiffened with panic. She had played Jane twice, Mikhail three times, and Julian six, and she had won every game convincingly. But that had just been for fun. Pride was the only thing on the line. Now it was truly a zero-sum game, with stakes that, at Valeran, may as well have been life-and-death.

She took a long sip of her coffee and hoped that no one noticed how violently her hands were shaking. When she set the cup back down on the table, Julian was watching her intently again. His expression had progressed from concern to something that Klaudia found impossible to read.

This time, she met his gaze and held it. Gray eyes burning into green. The sounds and sights of the dining hall seemed to dull around them, fading to irrelevance in the background. There was only Klaudia and Julian and the infinitesimal yet unbreachable space between them. She had wondered what would have happened if she’d taken the hand he’d offered to her yesterday. Wondered how the slide of his skin would have felt against hers. But now the walls were up again. The armor was on.

Another moment passed and Klaudia rose to her feet.

“Best of luck to you,” she said.

Nineteen

Spring 2037

Rural Virginia

Giselle had woken exhausted, and she had to drag herself to Professor Blanchard’s classroom. The dream kept playing behind her eyes. Nadiya’s hair flowing in the wind, the sunlight coaxing the shades of gold from her skin. Her smile, subtle and rare but uninhibited. Giselle felt a certain breathlessness every time she recalled it.

But that made it all the more difficult to return to Professor Blanchard. She was both afraid that Nadiya would be there and afraid she would not. She didn’t want to put Nadiya through that again, and yet—

Giselle’s turmoil was short-lived. When she pushed open the door to the classroom, Professor Blanchard stood behind the teacher’s desk, alone.

That same gaunt smile stretched across his face. “Giselle,” he said. “How lovely to see you again.”

“It’s not like I have a choice,” she said, surprised by the bitterness in her tone.