Page 92 of Nova Academy

The sounds of shuffling drifted through both closed doors. Urman and Dorian were the ones occupying the spare room, but I only heard one person in the main bedroom which meant the captain hadn’t yet returned from his excursion. Good. I didn’t want to face him just yet.

I didn’t particularly want to face Adara, either, or the others if they were also watching me, but I reminded myself I needed to act like nothing had changed. I couldn’t run.

The mere idea of leaving this room and facing the rest of the crew, because let’s face it, if the captain was aware of who I was then I didn’t doubt there were many others, made me want to crawl into a hole and hide. I had spent far too long hiding and I hated it, but that didn’t mean it was over yet. And sometimes, the best hiding place was in plain sight. What they didn’t know I could use to my benefit, and I intended to keep them in the dark for as long as possible.

Adara emerged first, shooting me a smile in greeting when she saw me sitting on the couch. She dragged her feet as she made her way into the kitchen and started rifling through the cabinets for something to eat, and then paused. She looked back at me as if she were shocked to see me.

‘Uh, hey. How did you get in here, Arty?’ she asked.

I wanted to kick myself. I had used my abilities withoutthinking to pick the electronic lock and let myself in, but I didn’t want her to know what I was capable of, so I lied. ‘Dorian let me in last night. I couldn’t sleep with Foryk’s snoring so I slept on the couch.’

I hoped she bought it.

My answer appeased her, however, and my only wish was that no one would say anything to counteract my lie and cause her to ask questions. I really needed to be more careful. I hadn’t been thinking earlier, allowing my emotions to cloud my logic. That was not something I could let happen again.

‘Poor thing,’ she said in response. ‘Want some breakfast?’

‘Sure,’ I said. I almost said no, but that would have been out of character for our relationship.

She made up a quick plate of toast and eggs, demolishing hers in seconds because she was running behind schedule. She was usually up and hard at work before the buzzer, and I wondered if her later rising this morning was due to the captain’s absence.

I took her plate and mine to the kitchen and started washing them up, which was where Dorian and Urman found me when they emerged from the spare room, fully dressed and ready for the day.

‘Hey, wasn’t expecting you here this morning. Did you already eat?’ asked Dorian while Urman yawned and scratched at his head. He pulled a few pale strands out from his braid but ignored them after tucking them back behind his ear.

‘Yeah, Adara and I had breakfast. She just left.’

‘The captain still here?’ asked Urman.

‘No.’ I didn’t want to tell them he hadn’t come back last night. I wasn’t sure why I was keeping it a secret beyond not wanting to discuss the captain. I didn’t particularly want to be discussing anything with these two, but here I was.

They both hummed in response and the room devolved into an awkward silence. There was a tension in the atmosphere that hadn’t existed between us for a while, and as hard as I tried not tocare I quietly mourned the loss of what had been. And what could have been.

‘We’re heading across the hall for breakfast. You coming?’ asked Dorian, his hesitation knocking me out of my head enough to realise I was already failing at pretending everything was okay.

Come on, A. You’re better than this.

‘No, I’m just gonna hang here for a bit,’ I said, surprising myself for wishing Bromm would spill what had happened between us last night. They had already witnessed the way I pulled back after the first time we had been intimate, so I hoped they would assume any weird behaviour from me was caused by that.

Or they could just assume I was a weird guy and that was that, but after what I’d discovered last night there was no way I was going to believe they wouldn’t get suspicious.

‘Oh, okay. Sure…’ They left the conversation at that, accepting my answer with mirroring expressions of confusion and concern, then they left me behind. I wondered how deep that concern went, and if it was nothing more than a shallow attempt to prove they were trustworthy when they were anything but.

I was well aware my paranoia was now out in full force, but there was no shoving it back down now. It no longer mattered who was involved and who wasn’t. Everyone was now a suspect. No one could be trusted. I was on my own, yet again.

???

The rest of the morning went eerily similar to the last time Bromm and I had gotten hot and heavy. He kept his distance in what seemed to be respect for my boundaries, and everyone glanced between us if they knew something they weren’t supposed to know, even if it was more like an open secret.

I kept my distance from everyone, afraid to let them get close. This time it wasn’t because I was afraid they would discover mysecrets but because I feared they already had.

Combat training was great for my antisocial behaviour, my team choosing Corporal Hum’Rit and his stamina training. They chose a different type of exercise that involved a lot of bending and core strength, which Bromm particularly struggled with. I watched from the corner of my eye as I ran around the track, my instincts screaming at me to support him somehow. Whether that was moral support or help with his movements just like with the punching bag, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t let myself fall any deeper with him.

The idea of being betrayed by him hurt worse than the others, only rivalled by Reece and Adara. I wanted to open my heart to him fully, to show him who and what I was and pray to whatever deity would listen that he would accept me in all my abominable glory. These thoughts and feelings were compounded by the way he also kept stealing glances at me whenever I ran past, as if he were sad I was keeping my distance after what we’d shared.

But I didn’t know if it was real or not. Was he faking it to get close to me; to try and coax me into revealing all my secrets? I didn’t think I could handle it if he were.

So I kept running until it was time for lunch, ignoring the way my heart was already cracking inside my chest.

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