The Spy by Sophie Lark

10

Ares

I’m sick with guilt, hearing Hedeon’s recounting of how the Grays abused him.

I knew the story of his real parentage. But I never knew what had happened to him after he was dumped on the Grays’ doorstep.

Now I’m in a hell of a predicament.

I’m increasingly reluctant to keep hiding the information he needs. At the same time, his obvious intention to seek revenge on those who wronged him makes it all the more crucial that Hedeon learns nothing.

Hedeon’s revenge is in direct opposition to my own.

Even worse, Cat Romero heard the whole thing. I can tell from that glint in her eye that the wheels are turning in her head.

The more quiet Cat is, the more she’s thinking.

Never was someone put in a more appropriate division than when Cat was assigned to the Spies. Luther Hugo has no idea how inspired he was the day he signed those papers.

Cat is relentlessly curious and way too fucking good at putting together the pieces of a mystery that no one else would even notice.

I already know she’s suspicious of me, and Miss Robin too. My mother said she knew Cat would be trouble for us the moment she saw her hiding in the library stacks, spying on Rocco Prince.

Everyone is my enemy because I can trust no one.

I can’t risk it.

There’s too much riding on this last year at school.

I can barely focus on my classes. My grades are slipping, not that it matters. The studying was always just an excuse to see my mom, and a useful distraction from the pressure of my situation.

It’s not working anymore.

Every day feels like another cement block laid on my shoulders. I don’t know how much more I can take.

I’m not my mother, and I’m not my father, either. They’re both brilliant, ruthless, and highly skilled. They taught me and trained me, but deep down, I don’t know if I have the strength to take my father’s place, to do what he would do if he were here.

I’m walking down to the village every few days to see if there’s a letter from Freya. She’s on the outside, working with my uncle Dominik. Her job is to make everything seem normal. To help the real Ares keep the dispensaries running, to speak as my mother when calling our allies, even to occasionally post old pictures of me on social media, with sunglasses and tan on the deck of a yacht, as if I’m still engaged in the carefree leisure I enjoyed as a teen.

I can tell the pressure is wearing on Freya, too.

I have our mother here with me, while Freya has only been able to see her over the summers.

I came to school, albeit under another name, while Freya has had to put her life on hold. She has a brilliant head for numbers. She could have come to Kingmakers as an Accountant this year or accepted her scholarship to study Economics at Cambridge.

Instead, she’s been working and waiting, trapped in this awful limbo that holds us all imprisoned like insects in amber.

As distracted as I’ve been, there’s no way to skate through Combat class today. In our first two years, we focused on hand-to-hand combat before moving on to weapons training. This year, we’re learning to fight with a knife.

“Anything can be a weapon,” Professor Howell says, striding across the mats with his usual restless energy, as if his legs are spring-loaded. “You can kill a man with a belt, a fry pan, or even a pen, if that’s what you have around you.”

Marko Moroz killed his former mentor with a pen. Stabbed him right through the eye, or so I’ve heard.

Professor Howell continues: “The likeliest and most effective weapon to find at hand is a knife.”

Howell is short, compact, and deeply tanned, with close-cropped black hair and a silver whistle perpetually dangling around his neck. He rarely employs said whistle, because his voice dwarfs his size, powered by whatever limitless battery lives inside of him.

He’s trained the soldiers of several nation’s armies, his speed and accuracy more than making up for his wiry frame.

He hands out our training knives, which are blunt and flexible, but still hurt like hell if someone gets a good poke on you.

My torso is already dotted with ugly purple bruises from the last time I sparred with Leo. So is his, proving the old adage that “nobody wins in a knife fight.”

Leo grins at me, gripping the handle of his knife overhand like Professor Howell taught us.

“So glad we get to do this again,” he says. “I think it’s good for a friendship if both people know there’s a level of mutually assured destruction in trying to murder each other.”

“I think I could get you,” I say, grinning back at him. “I’d just wait for my opening, which would be you trying to make some dumb joke—”

Faster than I can blink, Leo swipes his knife toward my belly. I leap backward, the dulled blade still catching and tearing my gym shirt.

“You dick!” I say. “I’ve only got two shirts.”

“Only one shirt now,” Leo chortles, circling around me. “Don’t worry, you can borrow one of—”

I interrupt him with a quick slash toward his cheek, then a stab downward at his shoulder. Leo twists with eerie speed, narrowly avoiding my knife.

He really does have phenomenal reflexes. You wouldn’t think it on a guy his size, but Leo is the most athletic person I’ve ever met, and it absolutely translates to fighting.

I think I’ve gotten ten times faster just from training with him.

“Tricky, tricky.” Leo shakes a finger at me, laughing his irresistible laugh.

Thanks to Leo, I’m also immune to taunts. His shit-talking game was honed on the basketball courts, where making your opponent lose his cool is a near art form.

“Come on, you big baby,” I goad him, taking a couple feints in his direction. “You wanna dance, or you wanna fight?”

“Both.” Leo grins, charging me and slashing his knife every which way like a coked-up Michael Meyers.

I try to keep my free arm in a guard position in front of my chest and stomach like Professor Howell showed us. As Leo jabs at me, I chop his wrist with my forearm and counter with a stab to his side that makes contact. As I twist away, Leo slashes me down the back.

“Ow, you fucker!” Leo complains, rubbing his side.

“Same to you!” I say, feeling my back to see if the dull blade drew blood.

We’re both sweating in the stifling heat of the Armory.

It’s the warmest autumn I’ve seen at Kingmakers. The castle doesn’t have air conditioning, relying on the thick stone walls to keep us cool. Even Professor Howell looks dewy just from watching us spar.

“Come on, use your blocks!” he barks at us. “This isn’t boxing—you let your opponent make contact in a knife fight and you’ll find your guts in a pile on the floor.”

“He has such a way with words,” Leo says, slashing at me again.

“A modern poet,” I agree, successfully parrying.

When Professor Howell finally calls a stop, Leo and I race for the water fountain to drink a gallon or two each. We shove our heads under the faucet, then shake the water out of our hair, making a mess all over the mats.

“Clean that up!” Professor Howell yells at us.

“I was going to,” Leo says to Professor Howell, then to me, “I was not going to.”

“Here,” I say, chucking him a towel.

“Thanks, buddy,” Leo says, mopping up the mess.

Leo really is my best friend at Kingmakers. He might be my best friend anywhere, which is a funny thing to say about someone who doesn’t know your real name.

I’ve wanted to tell him the truth a million times.

Leo is a good man. I think I can trust him.

But I promised my mother I wouldn’t confide in anyone outside our own family.

It’s just too risky. The relief of sharing my secret would be nothing compared to the devastation if someone betrayed it.

Even though I can’t confide in him, Leo has been more of a comfort to me than he could ever understand. His relentless cheerfulness is the only thing that keeps me going sometimes. I’ve never seen him lose his optimism, except during our first year of school when he was on the outs with Anna.

Leo runs off a belief that things will turn out for the best.

My mom is powered by an absolute refusal to quit.

And what about me? What motivates me?

I suppose it’s a sense of duty. My family is everything to me. I can’t let them down.

“What are you thinking about?” Leo asks me, flopping down on the nearest stack of mats.

“Just thinking how slow you’ve gotten . . .” I tease him.

“Compared to you I’m the fucking Flash, old man!” he laughs, deliberately poking the biggest bruise on my arm.

Dean and Bram drop down on the mats next to Leo.

“Why is it hotter than the gates of hell in here?” Bram complains, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. His shirt is soaked through with sweat in the front and the back.

“Shakespeare called it Halloween Summer,” Dean says, proving yet again that he’s surprisingly well-read.

“Americans call it Indian Summer,” I say. “I dunno if that’s racist.”

“Probably,” says Bram. And then, turning his scowl on me, “How come you’re being all chummy with that Malina brat? I thought you knew what a fucking snake her father is?”

“I don’t care about her father,” I say.

The biggest lie yet.

“You should,” Bram says darkly.

I can feel Dean watching me.

There’s a strange dynamic between us these days. Dean’s a lot more chummy with Leo since he and Cat visited the Gallos in Chicago over the summer. I think the feud between their two branches of the family is finally at an end.

I wasn’t there to see it, ‘cause I have to lay low over the summers so that nobody who knows me as Ares sees me anywhere they shouldn’t. Or vice versa, for anyone who would recognize who I really am.

On top of that, I don’t think Cat trusts me, which means Dean doesn’t trust me either.

It’s nothing specific. Just too many little things that I’m sure Cat has noticed.

“I like Nix,” I say to Bram. “She didn’t do anything to you. So quit giving her shit.”

“It’s not me you have to worry about,” Bram says. “Her own cousins hate her fucking guts.”

“Oh man, I wonder what that feels like?” Leo says.

Dean laughs—still a relatively new sound, coming from him.

“What kind of a dick hates his own cousin?” he says.

I push up from the mats, feeling jealous even though I know how stupid that is.

Dean is a better friend to Leo than I am, because for all his flaws, at least he’s honest.

“Where are you going?” Leo asks.

“I’ve got a free period next,” I say. “I’m gonna study.”

The perfect excuse for any occasion.

In actuality, I think I’ll wander around for a while feeling like shit.

* * *

I leave the castle grounds,intending to go for a walk in the woods. Instead, I’m drawn toward the shooting range by the whoops and howls of students engaged in some apparently highly stimulating task.

Curiosity draws me on until I’m in the middle of the field that abuts the west wall where the targets are set up for long-range shooting.

Careful not to cross the line of fire, I tramp through the dry, golden grass, joining the raucous cluster of Freshmen.

I hadn’t heard any gunfire.

The silence is explained when I see Professor Knox and Nix Moroz facing off with bows instead of rifles.

Both Nix and the professor are firing at the same target set far down the range. The professor goes first, his bald head gleaming in the late-afternoon sunshine. He pulls his string back taut, the thick muscles of his right arm and shoulder straining against his black t-shirt.

He lets the arrow fly. It crosses the seemingly-impossible distance to the target, hitting it near-center.

“What are they doing?” I ask a kid with a thick mop of reddish hair and several Hibernian F.C. patches sewn onto his trousers.

“Trying to shoot through the professor’s wedding ring,” the kid says, in a thick Scottish brogue. “I can’t even see the damn thing from here.”

I squint my eyes, looking for the gleam of a tiny circlet pinned to the middle of the target. I can just make a glint that might only be a trick of the sun.

“How can they even see that?” I say.

“Fuck if I know.” The boy shrugs.

Nix takes her turn after the professor, holding her bow steady in front of her, coolly looking down the shaft of her arrow. Though she’s using the same seventy-pound-draw compound bow as Professor Knox, she’s able to pull the string back without a tremor.

She really is strong.

Confident, too.

I see no nervousness on her face. Just keen focus as she squints her sea-green eyes against the glare of the sun, slowly exhaling as she releases the arrow.

It flies straight and true to the heart of the target.

I don’t see the shaft pierce the ring, but it must, because Nix immediately whoops in triumph, and Professor Knox tosses down his bow, saying, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

The Freshmen were too invested in the competition, and are too elated to see a professor bested, to maintain their grudge against Nix. Whoops and shouts break out all over again. Several students slap her on the back.

Nix grins, her teeth blinding in the sunlight.

She catches me watching her.

Giving a little chuck of her chin, she tosses back the errant strand of kinky red hair that’s fallen over her eye.

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Just passing by. I heard the shouting.”

“I’m going to get my ring,” Professor Knox grouses. “Don’t any of you fucking shoot me.”

He stomps off down the range, highly incensed at his loss.

“Why are you shooting bows?” I ask Nix.

We usually only practice with handguns, ARs, and sniper rifles.

“I said a bow could be better than a sniper rifle for a stealth job,” Nix says. “The professor said they’re no good over a hundred yards, especially for small targets. So I challenged him.”

“You challenged him?” I say. “In the first month of school?”

“Yeah.” Nix shrugs. “I knew I could hit it.”

“What was the bet?”

“An A in his class,” Nix says.

“What if you missed?”

“An F,” she laughs.

“Why would you make that bet? You’ll get an A anyway if you know how to shoot.”

Nix shrugs. “It’s more fun this way.”

Nix’s joy in her win is irresistible. I find myself smiling back at her without meaning to.

Her hair is flaming corona around her head. She’s wearing the usual gray gym shorts, but her ass and thighs fill out the material in a way that’s not at all typical.

On impulse, I ask her, “You want to come for a walk with me?”

“Might as well,” Nix says. “He can’t fail me for skipping class anymore.”

She leaves the bow with the Scottish kid, and we tramp off across the field before Professor Knox can come back and stop us.

“I’m sweaty as hell,” Nix says.

The tiny curls around her hairline are sticking to her forehead, and her skin looks less bluish, more golden in this light. The sun brings out little glints of gold in her green eyes and in the red of her lashes.

Nix has a complete lack of self-consciousness that I find strangely restful. Since I’m constantly monitoring what I say, what I do, and how I’m coming off to people, it’s refreshing to be with someone who seems utterly themself, for better or for worse.

Proving my point, Nix asks bluntly, “Why’d you come looking for me?”

“I wasn’t,” I say. “I just heard everyone shouting.”

Snatching up a long strand of dry grass, Nix twirls it between her fingers, tilting her head and watching me closely with those narrow eyes that seem more animal than human.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re sitting by me on purpose. Walking with me on purpose,” she says.

I’m transparent as glass. She can see right through me.

My face is getting hot, and I tell myself to pull it the fuck together. I’m a shit spy if I crack under two seconds of interrogation.

“Do you not want me to?” I say, trying to keep my tone casual.

“No.” Nix shrugs, tossing the grass aside. “I like it. God knows, I can use all the friends I can get.”

“Me too,” I say.

Nix laughs. “You don’t like being a third wheel to Leo and Anna?”

Fuck, she really is perceptive.

“How do you already know everything about everybody?” I demand, trying to turn the tables on her.

“Not everything,” Nix sighs. “That thing with Hedeon was a mind-fuck. How could parents act that way toward their kids? Whether they’re blood or not.”

Nix is striding along beside me at a rapid pace, her long legs easily matching mine. Her cheeks flush with outrage. I saw her face when Hedeon was talking — despite only knowing Hedeon a short time, her sympathy overpowers her.

“Was . . . was your father not harsh with you?” I ask her.

I can’t imagine Marko Moroz as supportive and affectionate, even though I know, theoretically, his daughter is the center of his world.

I expect Nix to be offended by this question. She’s been forced to defend her father every day since she came here. I ask anyway because I really want to know.

Nix answers as honestly as ever.

“My father isn’t perfect,” she says. “He has an ego. And a temper. He hates to be challenged. We get in fights—screaming, shouting, throwing things. He demands nothing less than total loyalty, from me and his men.”

I can feel my lip curling—I’m well aware of that particular characteristic of Moroz. I have to force my face smooth, as if this is new information, impersonal to me.

“You’ve never seen a more devoted father, though,” Nix says. “He spent every minute with me after my mother died. I was only three years old. I don’t actually remember her. I tell him that I do, but the image I have of her face . . . it’s just what I’ve seen in photographs. I don’t remember her voice, or what she was like. I rely on him to tell me.”

I swallow hard. I know for myself how quickly those details fade, even when you’re much older, even when you think you could never forget . . .

“He took me everywhere with him,” Nix says. “He showed me how to run, climb, shoot, fight. He never treated me as inferior because I was a girl. I was always his heir, always expected to grow to be just like him. And that . . .” she sighs. “Is a blessing and a curse. Because of course I’m not exactly like him. One person can never be just like another.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding, shaken and confused.

Every time I talk to Nix, I feel like she’s relating the exact thoughts swirling around in my brain. She’s voicing my own deepest fears and insecurities, reflected back through the open mirror of her face.

I, too, am supposed to be just like my father.

And I want to be. I want it desperately.

I just don’t know if I am.

“You don’t think we’re destined to be like our parents?” I ask her. “Almost every culture has an idiom that says it’s inevitable. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’; ‘a fish’s child knows how to swim’; ‘like river, like water . . .’ ”

“Who says that last one?” Nix asks me.

“It’s Catalan. Zoe told me—Cat’s sister.”

“I like it.” Nix smiles. “But no river is the same, and no body of water.”

We’ve reached the edge of the forest that separates the fields and vineyards on the north end of the island from the village on the south. You can follow the road through, or you can diverge onto the many paths that lead through the trees, down into the river bottoms.

“Do you want to run for a while?” Nix asks me.

“Okay,” I say.

I’m still wearing my gym clothes and a beat-to-shit pair of Ares’ old sneakers. I could get new shoes, but it’s been helpful these four years to wear his clothes whenever possible, to read his books, and carry his school bag. A continual reminder of the role I’m supposed to play, so I don’t accidentally slip into being myself.

Nix likewise sports the plain white t-shirt and gray sweatshorts the school provides, the white knee socks only coming halfway up her long shins.

“Come on then,” she says, throwing a teasing smile back over her shoulder. “Try and keep up.”

Runaway — AURORA

Spotify → geni.us/spy-spotify

Apple Music → geni.us/spy-apple

She sprints off along a side trail, her thighs flashing under the hem of her shorts, her coarse, wild hair streaming behind her.

It’s cooler in the shade of the trees, and darker. Nix is fleet as a deer. I can only keep sight of her from the brilliant red of her hair and the white flag of her shirt.

I can’t tell if we’re running or racing—if she wants me to catch her, or she’s trying to get away.

I sprint full-out, wondering if this is a test. Wondering if her heart is hammering as hard as mine as my pounding feet chase after her.

My sneakers churn up the scent of pine needles and dark earth. As I follow her trail, I can smell Nix as well. A perfume of salt water, clean sweat, and the warm red scent of her hair—like fox fur, wild strawberries, sandstone . . .

Nix leaps over fallen logs, darts around the pine trees. Her laughter echoes through the woods.

She’s a white stag. Catching her will win me some prize: a wish granted, a door to another world . . .

I hear a rushing sound—we’re coming to the river.

I run faster, sure that Nix will stop up ahead. I don’t want her to stop, I want to overtake her.

I sprint forward, the taste of iron in my mouth, almost close enough to grab a handful of her hair . . .

She halts so abruptly that I almost skid into her.

“We’re here!” she pants.

Her face is red, her shirt drenched in sweat, as is mine.

We’ve come to a waterfall.

The ground drops away ahead of us, the river plunging ten or twelve feet down a broken rock face to a cool, green pool below.

“How did you know this was here?” I ask her, my breath wheezing in my lungs. I don’t think I’ve ever sprinted so far.

“I found it the first week,” Nix says. “Haven’t you been here?”

I shake my head. I’m embarrassed to admit that Nix may have explored more of the island in her first month than I have in three years.

“Come on!” she says. “We can wash off.”

Without waiting for a response, she pulls her shirt over her head.

The bra beneath is transparent with sweat. I can clearly see her nipples, stiff with exercise, and the full outline of her breasts. Her stomach is flat and hard. When she strips off her shorts with equal nonchalance, I see that her panties have ridden up in the cleft of her pussy lips. She turns, revealing a firm, round ass the color of milk.

It takes me way too long to look away.

My heart is still thundering like we’re in full sprint.

My cock swells inside my shorts. I mentally order it to stop, because Nix will see, and also there is no fucking WAY I’m going to get a hard-on for anybody with the last name Moroz.

This unexpected surge of arousal reminds me exactly who she is, and what I’m supposed to be doing.

I can’t be attracted to her. That’s fucking insane.

I haven’t been attracted to anyone for a long time. Every time I saw a beautiful girl at Kingmakers, I stuffed that emotion deep down inside me. Lying to my friends is hard enough. I knew I couldn’t possibly keep up the facade in a romantic relationship.

It’s been so long since I allowed myself to feel arousal that I almost thought I’d extinguished it. I thought I might be as asexual as everyone believes me to be.

And now, in an instant, lust comes roaring back.

Nix is a wild thing, a force of nature.

I feel like an animal that wants to bite and claw and fuck. I want to chase her down, throw her against those rocks, and mount her.

Nix is already scrambling down the rocks. Every move she makes is incredibly erotic, stripped of her clothes. Those mile-long legs, that firm, dewy flesh, the hint of ribs when she turns and the flex of her ass when she drops down to the pool . . .

She pops up out of the water again, droplets sparkling in the thick twists of her hair.

“Come on!” she shouts up to me. “It’s not even cold!”

I take several deep breaths, trying to get control of myself.

Then I strip off my clothes, leaving them next to Nix’s.

The rocks are slippery with moss. I half-climb, half-slide down, dropping into the pool before Nix can notice the bulge in my boxer shorts.

As soon as I’m in, Nix leaps on me, dunking my head.

We wrestle under the water, my thighs slipping between hers.

I can’t believe how erotic it is to tussle with a girl who can fight back. I have to work to overpower her, I have to exercise a level of aggression I never thought I’d use on a woman.

My cock is iron, red-hot even in the cold water. It throbs when her leg presses against it.

Nix dunks me and then I dunk her, until we’re both choking and sputtering and laughing.

She dips her chin under, deliberately swallowing a mouthful of water.

“Are you drinking that?”

“I’m thirsty! Anyway, running water’s clean,” she says.

I’m thirsty as hell myself. Trying not to think about dirt or bugs, I swallow a mouthful. It’s cold and clean, with a faint mineral taste.

Nix dives and swims across the pool, her pale figure undulating beneath the dark water, her bright hair floating in a cloud around her.

Russian mermaids are called rusalki. They’re the malevolent spirits of girls who die near water. Perhaps they leapt in a river to escape an unhappy marriage, or they might have been forcibly drowned by a father who discovered his daughter pregnant with an unwanted child. They haunt waterways, luring young men into the deep where they entangle their prey in their long red hair and drag them down.

It’s said that the rusalki can alter their appearance to match the tastes of the men they intend to seduce.

I never believed in such a thing . . . until this moment.

Nix hauls herself up on the rocks, her back arched, her long legs outstretched, her skin slick and glistening.

If ever a figure had been formed to suit my preferences, it would be hers . . .

My cock is raging hard below the water. I press on it with my palm, trying to stifle its stiffness, only succeeding in sending a sickening jolt down my legs.

Nix stretches luxuriously on the moss, pointing her feet all the way down to the tips of her toes, hands clasped over her head. Her nipples jut upward, hard enough to cut glass.

My mouth is watering, my heart pounding.

Tearing my eyes away, I mutter, “Don’t you want to swim anymore?”

“Of course I do!” Nix says, rolling back into the water.

Thank god.

She paddles around, agile as an otter. At home in the water.

I feel a stab of longing, remembering endless summer days in the warm turquoise ocean around Syros. Easier times. Better times.

“I wish all our classes were outside like Marksmanship,” Nix says. “I hate being cooped up indoors.”

“Right now I agree with you,” I say, looking around at the sun-dappled ground and the thick pads of green moss blanketing the rocky pool. “You may change your mind come winter.”

“I grew up in Kiev,” Nix laughs. “I doubt it will bother me. A walk-in freezer seems balmy by comparison.”

I open my mouth to say that St. Petersburg is nearly as bad, and then I snap it shut again, realizing my idiocy. I haven’t had a near-slip like that in a long time—not since I fought Dean and lost control of myself.

Keeping up the front with Nix is even harder than with my friends.

She’s too blunt, and the flow of the conversation is too rapid. I can’t predict what she’ll say next, so I can’t plan my responses.

I was wrong about her, I can see that already — her candor is no act. She’s not trying to manipulate me, not trying to appear as anything but herself. She embraces what she is, even when it doesn’t align with what her father wants.

She’s more honest than I’ve ever been, even before I had to take on this identity.

“We should head back,” I say. “It’s gonna get dark. I don’t want to have to run all the way back.”

“Sure.” Nix shrugs easily.

She climbs out of the pool, water streaming down her body, flesh paler than ever from the chill. Her soaking wet underwear might as well be painted on—I can see everything. I’m hit with another hot, raw flush of lust, and I grit my teeth, turning away.

Nix dresses quickly, pulling her clothes on without bothering to even shake dry. Her curls are already springing up again in wild, tight corkscrews that point in every direction.

We’re quiet as we walk back through the woods in the direction of the school. I don’t think Nix is tired—I’m not sure what could possibly tire her. But she seems calm. Peaceful. Her red hair flares brightly every time we pass under a patch of late-afternoon sunlight. She tilts her face up into the sun, absorbing every last bit of it.

I can’t stop watching her.

* * *