Page 32 of Destinies of Diamond
He got up and turned toward me. “Hello, Wesley Trevor. I hope you don’t mind me visiting. Not that I would care if you did.”
My breath caught at the twisted, savage expression on his face. “What… Who are you?”
“You already know the answer to that question,” came the reply. “Please don’t play games with me. Cyborg vision or not, you’ll find that I can still petrify you if I push hard enough.”
I swallowed around the knot in my throat. I didn’t doubt that. I’d been a chimera tamer and I was well aware of what they were capable of. “What do you want then, Medusa? Is this issue with the generators your doing?”
“Not at all.” He—she?—pursed her lips, visibly displeased. “But it is an issue that makes it clear we have to advance our plans. I want my child, Wesley Trevor, and I want him now.”
“I’m sorry? Your child?”
“Yes.” Medusa let out a sigh. “He’s upset with me right now. I suppose I could have dealt with this whole tamer business better, but it just escalated so quickly. And now, it’s been so long. I want my child back. I won’t accept anything else.”
“All right,” I said slowly. I assumed the child was a chimera, possibly a dormant one. Scanning my memory, I identified the only creature she could be talking about. “Pegasus has been dormant since the battle of the Apsid Quasar.”
“I know that, idiot.” She glowered at me, and my eyes started to burn. Had I not been a cyborg, I would have been turned into a statue. “But metallic shells are just that, shells. Your prince isn’t the only one who can hold the soul of a being like me.”
Oh. Oh.
Shit. Okay. So Medusa’s son, Pegasus, was running around somewhere, perhaps a student of this very academy. “I’ll see what I can do, but I’ll need some time to find him.”
“That’s not necessary. I know exactly where he is. You just have to obey orders and claim him, when the time comes.”
Half an hour later, after having received my instructions from my prince-turned-chimera, I left the office, feeling nauseated, but knowing I had to obey. I was struggling to come up with a tentative plan to mitigate the damage, but there seemed to be no hope for me.
I was heading toward my quarters when I ran straight into the last person I wanted to see.
Selene stumbled into me. She had been moving quickly, without paying attention to where she was going. Electricity rushed through me as our bodies made contact. She fell back, losing her balance because of her momentum and my far heavier body.
I caught her before she could hit the ground. “Are you all right, Acting Pilot Renard?” I asked as I helped her to her feet.
“Fine,” she said, sounding a little dazed. “My apologies, Sir. I was lost in thought.”
“Well, you do have a lot on your mind lately. It’s perfectly understandable.”
I offered her a smile and felt like a heel when she smiled back. From up close, she looked even more beautiful than before. I’d forgotten to turn on my biological eyes so I could take in every single inch of her in a way a simple human never could. I could zoom in on her pores, on her retinas, on her beautiful mouth, on her hair follicles, on the invisible gap between her front teeth. Her lips were slightly chapped and her hair had lost some of its usual luster, but she was warm and real, so solid.
I wanted her. Tartarus help me, I wanted her, and I couldn’t have her. She was my student. She was one third my age. She was pregnant with the baby of another man and engaged in a complicated relationship with three others. And if I had to obey the command I’d just been given, she would be my enemy.
But I wanted her.
I wondered how obvious that had been, if that was the real reason why Medusa had pulled me aside. I supposed it didn’t matter. Selene didn’t feel the same, and I could still avoid having a sexual relationship with her, especially now that she was pregnant.
“How did things go on Terra?”
“That would depend on your point of view. We didn’t find anything of real concern.”
I nodded. “It’s unsurprising. We’ve concluded it was a natural phenomenon. Unfortunately, it’s one that has affected Tartarus quite severely.”
As I spoke, the rest of the Grand Chimera Unit joined us. “We caught sight of some restlessness in Tartarus City as we were approaching and we’ve heard news of students being sent in for security purposes,” Brendan said. “Is it really that bad, Sir?”
He sounded as calm as always, but once again, there was a degree of tightness in his stance that hadn’t been there before. He and the others might not have convenient cybernetic implants, but their instincts made such crutches unnecessary.
I pretended to not notice Brendan’s well-justified suspicions. “I’ve just returned from the med bay where I accommodated several injured workers from Persephone’s Plaza. I think that should tell you how bad things are.”
My words turned their attention from my apparent interest in Selene to the serious problem we had. Knox growled under his breath, having obviously realized the condition I’d found those women in. Pollux cursed. August’s eyes flared with a heat that worried me.
Selene was the only one not fully aware of how things worked around here. “I take it they’re not supposed to be in the academy.”
