Page 41 of Great Falls Rogue
“Coal. Leralynn.” River rises from behind his desk. The light in his study window gave away his location despite the late hour. “I’ve been expecting the two of you.”
I try to step back on instinct, but the feel of Coal’s insistent hand on the small of my back keeps me moving forward. My pulse races. This isn’t going to go well. There is no chance in all the bloody stars that it will. For either of us.
Striding up, River reaches over my shoulder to shut the door, his woodsy scent washing over me. “I understand you assaulted Han just outside the Academy,” he says to Coal. With the ice in his voice, the crackling fire in the study’s hearth gives no warmth to the room. “Is that accurate?”
“Yes,” says Coal.
River’s chin points to Coal’s bound arm. “And you lost?”
“Yes,” Coal repeats.
A muscle tics in River’s jaw, though his chiseled face gives away nothing more of his thoughts.
When his stony gray gaze shifts to me, the flutter of anxiety spilling into my blood makes me dizzy. No matter how hard I try to see past the stern commander to the male who danced and studied with me, all I see is the male who left welts on Tye’s back, who ordered me to a dungeon for disobedience, who sentCoalthere despite knowing the male’s past.
I see a male who would never accept a cadet as a peer.
“And what of you, Leralynn?” River asks. “How did you end up in the middle of that mess?”
“I…I saw Coal and Han fighting. From the top of the wall.” I swallow, hating the slight hitch in my voice. No chance of River failing to notice—the male never misses so much as a blink, though he is too well controlled to show it. “Someone needed to stop it, and I was available.”
River puts his hands behind his back, his shoulders spread wide as wings under his black silk shirt. The hard lines of his jaw and penetrating gaze make the air sing with tension. “And?” he asks.
“And?” I echo.
River’s gaze slides over my shoulder, no doubt to brush Coal’s face before returning. “You saw Coal fighting. For the second time in as many days. You had already been punished for joining in once. Why did you choose to do so again?”
My brows narrow, indignation kindling a slow flame inside me. “What do you mean why? Because it was the right thing to do, River.” I feel Coal shift behind me in warning, but I can’t make myself heed it. Of all the things that turn my knees soft beneath River’s powerful stare, this one I will fight for. “Because that is what you do when you see a friend in trouble.”
“I did not realize you considered Coal, yourinstructor, a friend,” said River.
I hadn’t either. NotthisCoal. And maybe he isn’t, but he is a part of my soul nonetheless. Raising my chin, I square off before River’s might, my pulse racing. I know that keeping my mouth shut and head bent is the safer course, but I can’t, so I won’t. For all our sakes.
“You think broken rules were the greatest problem here in the past two days?” My voice rises, and I take a step toward the male. “That locking Coal up would cureanything? I ran to interfere in a fight because I saw mortal danger that you were either too blind to mark or too proper to bother with.”
Silence settles over the room, punctuated by my too-fast breathing. I stepped over the line.Stars,I took a running leap over the line and peed on it in midflight. And I’ve no notion of what I’m going to do now.
River’s unreadable eyes weigh me. “That is not how I would have phrased things,” he says finally. “But you are not wrong.” Walking toward Coal, he plants himself in front of the warrior, hands behind his back. “Per our earlier conversation, I’ve given it some thought, and I reject your proposal. Any objection?”
“No, sir,” Coal says, offering no more explanation than that.
“Good.”
All right, then. I shift my weight, my thoughts firmly on the door. Somehow, incredibly, it seems there’s a chance that a dismissal rides in the wind. I’ll worry about the why of it later. For now, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“We aren’t done.” River tells me, as if having read my intention to flee. “Come up to my desk, please, Leralynn.”
I take one step before noticing the thin rattan rod River pulls from behind the heavy oak table. Not the leather belt as Zake favored, but similar enough in the ways that matter. At once, my whole body stiffens, my lungs too tight to draw breath. Curling my hands into fists, I let my nails pinch into my skin, focusing on the small sting to keep myself together.
“River,” Coal says. His voice is hard and distant.
“I’m aware,” River replies. Returning to my side of the desk, he removes the golden cuff link holding his silk shirt’s cuffs together and rolls up the material to just above his right elbow. “I won’t strike you, Leralynn,” he says, his attention focused on his work.
A momentary wave of relief touches and flees. “Coal isn’t—”
“Not Coal either.” Sleeve secured, River finally shifts the whole weight of his attention to me. “I never intended for you to have been left overlooked in a dungeon cell, much less restrained to a wall. It was my duty to know what was happening to you, and you had every right in the world to expect as much from me. It was my breach of responsibility that led to a great many wrongs done today. Mine, and no one else’s.”
My eyes widen as River hands me the rattan rod, bracing his hip against his desk as he holds his bared forearm between us, the point of the elbow tucked against his ribs for stabilization. Perfectly corded muscle that a sculptor would envy tightens beneath taut skin, the sensitive flesh between the wrist and bend of the elbow dancing with shadows.
