King of Cups (Stormcloud Academy 2)

“Williams,” Sol replied, “You look relaxed.”

“I spent three months drinking, eating lobster, and crushing Tattinger by the Mediterranean. I’m relaxed as a motherfucker. How’d you spend your summer?”

Sol shrugged, not answering.

Zephyr’s eyes narrowed, but before he could ask again, Sol said he’d see us later and walked away. Zeph liked to keep tabs on the other Kings, but Sol denied him that.

I was happy to see Sol despite his reticence to open up. He was the first guy I’d met at Stormcloud Academy, the one who dutifully hoisted my bags for me. He was the King who’d looked after me in those first months, albeit under Zephyr’s orders.

Later that same night, I excused myself and found my way to his room. He answered before I even knocked.

“I didn’t say hi.”

“You didn’t?” he replied.

“I’m glad you’re here, Sol. I missed you.”

He looked charmingly befuddled and had no idea how to respond. I leaned forward and wrapped him in a hug. He pressed my waist with his hands, just enough to qualify as reciprocating. It was an awkward response, especially for a guy who had shared me with the other Kings not so long ago. Regardless, I savored the moment. His warm hands on me felt nicer than I wanted to admit.

Arvo showed up the day before classes started. If there was an entrance that could be classified as the diametric opposite of Sol’s, it was Arvo’s. He peeled in at midday in his vintage soft-top BMW Z3—straight into the gravel roundabout in front of the school, blasting Kendrick Lamar. He hopped out in a skintight polo and khaki shorts. Even though his eyes were covered by a pair of aviators, I could envision his glassy blue irises. He’d been in Dubai most of the summer, training in a vast facility his father’s business associate built so that the Arvo Hurley could make it to the Olympic pedestal one day.

Just as I cared deeply for Sol despite his remoteness, my intense distaste for Arvo’s rich douche persona could not overcome my infatuation with him. If I could wave a wand and never have to hear his bro-y nasal voice again, that would be perfect. I could just drink in his tall, sinewy, broad-shouldered bod.

My mouth watered as I watched Arvo’s vulgar arrival from an upper window that morning. I should be embarrassed to be turned on by such an unctuous jerk, but who cares? I’d come to Stormcloud Academy a bright-eyed innocent. I’d taken it on the chin for weeks, to the point that I’d pretty much stopped feeling pain or despair or anything but the determined focus to set one foot in front of the other—to get through the day, no matter how awful the torment got. And when my salvation had arrived, it came not in the form of kind, dreamy Theo Brant.

Nope—it was Mephistopheles himself. The King of Crowns, conductor of my torture, and cruel tyrant of the school: Zephyr. I’d loathed him the first time I had laid eyes on him, but now there was no one closer to my soul.

So why should I have felt ambivalent about my girlish crush on Arvo Hurley? He wore too much Dolce & Gabbana cologne and waxed every hair from his body like a European gigolo, but he was cute. No doubt about that. All the guys loudly drooled over my body, so why shouldn’t I feast my eyes on our resident himbo?

Freshmen were the last to arrive on campus, on the same day as Arvo. They came on chartered buses, staggered throughout the day, all met by Miss Amelia on the front steps of the grand atrium.

Her words were always the same and utterly familiar to me: “Young men are housed on the third floor,” she shouted to each group, just as she did to my much-smaller crew on the frosty January night I’d arrived. “Ladies, on the second. Classes are held in the buildings set to the east from the back of the building. . . .”

And so on and so on. I reckon Amelia had repeated her orientation speech three hundred times over the years. She probably muttered it in her sleep.

I wanted to cry for those poor babies. Some were gimlet-eyed, some shivering with nerves. Quite a few rolled their eyes and smirked, confident they would conquer the school’s social hierarchy in a week. Not one of them was prepared.

“Bringing back fond memories?” Zeph chuckled, stepping close behind me as I watched a group of twenty lugging their bags in.

“Yeah, like a Vietnam vet watching Apocalypse Now.”

I turned to look at Zephyr. His expression was implacable. He’d transformed the moment the other Kings arrived at Stormcloud. It was remarkable, like watching an actor step from the wings into the stage lights. One moment, Zephyr was a cheery, attentive lover, then the footlights flicked on, and he was a general going into battle. It was all business with him once his co-monarchs were at school. Every night was another Kings’ summit.

As a mere significant other, I wasn’t privy to these meetings, but I caught a stray bit of conspiring here and there.

I walked in later that night on Zeph dressing Arvo down over some screwup.

“We gotta tighten this operation,” he hissed. “Some masked prick tried to kill my girl three months ago. That shit won’t happen this year. We will assert control from day one.”

Seeing that I’d entered the room, he snapped his teeth shut and dismissed Arvo. He was clearly on edge.

It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t agreed to move in with him yet. He had only offered the one time, and I’d skirted the issue since. Zephyr was not about to make himself vulnerable more than once, even to a girl he liked.

So we’d found ourselves in a peculiar position. Amelia had arranged a decent single room for me in a quiet corner of the westernmost hall. In the dark days of the last term, when I’d been relegated to a broom closet without plumbing or furniture, I would have given my left tit for such a room.

But this year, I didn’t expect to sleep there a single night. It was a fig leaf, that room, a sham show of independence from Zeph. I moved some cold-weather clothes and a few odd effects into my dorm room but left all my toiletries and favorite outfits in Zephyr’s suite, where I intended to sleep every night. This satisfied me that I was not Zephyr William’s possession—even though I shared his bed each night and was joined at his hip throughout the day.

We entered the dining hall fashionably late on the first day of classes. Sol and Arvo already had a nice coterie of freshmen bustling around, fetching our food for us, though Sol solicitously pulled my chair out for me as we reached the table.