Chapter 367: Chapter 367: Better Than He Knows Himself
Roxana shoved his hand off her mouth and scowled at him. “What? I was just getting to the point. She ought to know exactly who it is she hates so much.”
She swung back around to Astrid. “Listen here, you psychotic little brat. I know you hate him. I know you hate him so much you won’t let a single soul get close to him.”
She jabbed a wobbling finger through the air. “It’s a real psychotic thing to do, honestly. Like a lion shoving off every other predator that es sniffing after a deer. Not because he loves the deer. Because it’s his prey, his kill, and he’s only letting it walk around alive a little longer since his belly happens to be full right now.”
“Same deal with you,” she went on. “You won’t let anybody else lay a hand on him, because if somebody’s going to make his life a living hell, it’s going to be you. You’ve got something nasty cooking, some grand little plan to make him pay for whatever he did to you, and you’ve decided I’m a threat to it. Which, by the way, makes zero sense.”
She let that hang, then leaned in like she was passing along a secret. “But here’s the thing, birthday girl. From what I’ve seen, he isn’t all bad. At least not to you. Because if he were, knowing that man, he’d have buried every last seed of danger around you long before it ever had the chance to sprout.”
Roxana flapped a hand. “Oh, don’t get me wrong.” Her voice sharpened, anger flushing hot into those rosy drunken cheeks. “He’s scum. A smug, scheming, two-faced menace with the moral pass of a back-alley card shark. He lies before breakfast. He’d con a priest clean out of his shoes and call it doing him a favor.” She poked the air once more. “But.”
The word just sat there. When she spoke again her voice had gone soft, caught somewhere between honest and lost. “But he cares. He just buries it so deep he’s convinced nobody’s ever going to dig it up. His kind words e out sounding like threats. His help shows up wrapped in an insult, so you’ll get angry instead of grateful. He’d rather you hate him a little than ever find out he was worried.”
She nodded to herself. “And every bit of that got proven to me today. It happened to me. And, hic… it happened to you too. You just don’t know it yet.”
Astrid said nothing. She crossed her arms and let the woman pour it all out.
“This bastard never once held a grudge against you,” Roxana said. “You insulted him, over and over, and he never handed you back a single drop of hate. That’s because he cared. You want proof? Then cast your mind back to the inter-academy tournament.”
She steadied herself with a hand on Jax’s shoulder. “After your match ended, I could tell something was wrong with you. And that’s the exact moment he stepped in. He said something to you. Obviously the very thing that made the great troublesome heiress break down and cry like a little kid.”
“I watched the whole thing from a distance,” she said. “All that anger you were carrying for him. The punch you threw at his face. And his face? It wasn’t wearing what it usually wears in a moment like that. No anger on it anywhere. Just concern. Concern for you, for the state you’d gotten yourself into.”
She wagged the finger again. “Anybody else swings at him like that, I promise you they limp out of the tournament with a broken nose for a souvenir. But you? He sent you off with a smile, your face suddenly nothing like the mess it had been a minute before. So tell me, who in their right mind does that for an enemy?”
“And don’t even get me started,” Roxana barreled on, pletely blind to the storm she was busy feeding, “on how alive that man gets the second you walk up to him. The way his whole face lights up just to tease you. The way he goes out hunting for trouble for no reason at all, only to get a rise out of you.”
She let out an embarrassed little huff of a laugh and stared off into the middle distance. “You’ll say I’m crazy for this, but every single time I caught one of those little scenes between the two of you, you know what it did to me? It made me jealous.” She frowned at her own words, like they’d gone and betrayed her. “Weird, right? Jealous. Of that.”
Astrid had been growing bored, listening to a tape she felt she’d already heard a hundred times over. But that last confession caught her flat. To her ears it landed all wrong, a woman swearing up and down “no, I don’t like him” while every word out of her mouth screamed the exact opposite.
So she answered in that flat, unbothered tone of hers. “Wow. You’ve truly enlightened me. I never once stopped to think about a single bit of that.” She tilted her head. “You certainly seem to know an awful lot about him, don’t you?”
“Know him?” Roxana laughed, proud as a peacock. “Girl. I know that bastard better than anyone alive. Better than he knows his own self.”
Astrid’s eyes flicked to Jax. He just shook his head. That’s a lie.
Roxana didn’t catch it. She was already counting off on her fingers like she was reciting holy scripture. “I know the exact face he makes right before he ruins somebody’s entire month. I can tell the precise second a grin is ing, just from the little twitch in the muscles around his mouth. Which is always, always followed by some insufferably cute little ment, and the instant, burning need in whoever’s listening to launch a chair straight at his head.”
She kept ticking them off. “His favorite food. His favorite way of his revenge. I know how that devious little mind of his turns. Every single gear of it.”
Then she stopped. The drunken glee slid slowly off her face, and what was left underneath was quieter. “And I know that same mind. The one that’s always trying to hide things. The heavy things. The battles he’s fighting that he never once breathes a word about.”
Her brow knit. “I don’t know what kind of duty makes him skip night after night of sleep just to finish some ancient books scribbled by long-dead weirdos. I don’t know if it’s his ego, or some burden nobody else can see, that keeps throwing him into fights he never needed and punishing his own body for it.”
She looked down at her hands. “But this much I do know. He smiles the widest right when something’s eating him alive. He gets the loudest, the most unbearable, at the exact moment he’s hauling around something far too heavy to ever set down.”
By now Astrid could feel a hundred eyes drifting her way across the hall. She lifted her chin. “I’ve heard more than enough. Though it wasn’t anywhere close to enough to change my mind. This professor scrapes on my nerves every single day. I turn my back for one minute and he es strolling right back with a brand-new bitch….”
She caught herself half a beat too late. “I mean. A brand-new ally. Dressed up as just another one of his handy little tools.”
Her stare sharpened to a blade. “So I’ll warn you one final time. Put as much distance between yourself and him as you possibly can, and stop wedging your way into the middle of us. Unless, of course, you’ve simply grown tired of breathing.”
Roxana laughed straight into her face. “Puahaha. Are you actually trying to threaten me? Oh, you poor dear. You still don’t get it, do you?”
She wiped at a tear of pure mirth. “I didn’t tell you all of this just for you to change your mind. I also told you because no matter how much I hate that man, I know the real him. And as his housemate, you will always, always find me standing smack in the middle of your little plans.”
She leaned in, grinning wide. “And you’re sorely mistaken if you think that pretty little title of yours puts one ounce of fear in me. I don’t give a single damn about some spoiled brat. In fact, right this very second, your face is practically begging me to bite your whole head clean off. Because it’s reminding me of a bottle cap. And I am very, very thirsty.”
Astrid clenched her fist so hard her knuckles went pale, then turned on her heel. “I’ll repay this insult soon enough.”
Roxana grinned through her drunken haze. “I’ll be waiting. With my sharp little teeth.”
Astrid stalked off, hissing under her breath, leaving Roxana and Jax behind for the moment. And that was the exact instant a young man slid into her path, all but glowing with noble pride. He bent at the waist, lifted one hand toward her, and spoke.
“My lady. This entire evening has lingered in wait of you alone. Would you grant a devoted admirer the first honor of a dance, and let the loveliest woman in this hall at last grace the floor?”
With every eye in the room fixed on her, Astrid unloaded the full weight of her fury on the poor, unsuspecting fool.
A punch came flying straight for his face.
linxcvvcx and DaoistMktAy4 with the golden tickets, thank you guys
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