A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,45
the sofa in there.” I jerked my chin towards the reading room. “You’ve got power-sharers and probably—” I reached for the bottom of his shirt and lifted it up over the buckle of his belt, which—you guessed it—was absolutely a top-notch shield holder, like the ones Aadhya was making, only by comparison hers were the equivalent of a Blue Peter craft project done by a five-year-old.
He made a little hop with a squawk, grabbing for my hand like he thought I was making a move on him, but I was already dropping the shirt again. I snorted and flicked my fingers up towards his face to make him jump back again. “In your dreams, rich boy. I’m not one of your groupies.”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice,” he said, even though he was blushing at the same time.
I settled down to my history paper, and the translations I was going to do for Liu’s. I’m pretty locked-in when I work, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Orion once I got going. Especially since I couldn’t even cut down on the number of perimeter checks I normally do. He wasn’t doing any. I stopped after I finished my outline and the first translation and got up to stretch: letting yourself go stiff in a chair is another bad idea. That was when I noticed he was just sitting there staring at the same page of his lab assignment. “What?”
“You really think other kids get jumped a lot more?” he said abruptly, like he’d been stewing over it the whole time.
“You aren’t that bright, are you,” I said, speaking from downward-dog position. “Why do you think people want to be in enclaves in the first place?”
“That’s outside,” he said. “We’re all in here together. Everyone has the same chances—”
He turned around to look at me halfway through that sentence, at which point my upside-down stare knocked him off track and he listened to the regurgitated rubbish coming out of his own mouth. He stopped and looked unhappy again, as he deserved to. I gave him the snort he’d earned as I got up and started planking. “Right. So Luisa had the same chances as Chloe.”
“Luisa was screwed!” Orion said. “She didn’t know anything, she wasn’t prepared for any of it. That’s why I was looking out for her so much. It’s not the same thing.”
“Fine. You think I have the same chances as Chloe?”
He couldn’t sell that to himself, either, and it obviously pissed him off. He looked away and said, “You’re screwing up your chances all on your own.”
I stood up and said, “Fuck off, then, and get away from me,” my throat knotted-up around it.
He just gave a huff without even looking back at me, like he thought I was joking. “Yeah, see, like that. You’ll barely talk to me and I’ve saved your life five times.”
“Six times,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “Do you know that literally everybody I know has tried to tell me the last three days that I need to watch out for you because you’re a maleficer? You act like one.”
“I don’t!” I said. “Jack acted like a maleficer. Maleficers are nice to you.”
“Okay, no one’s going to accuse you of that.” He bent back over his books, still frowning; he hadn’t even realized I was about to punch him in the head. And I still wanted to punch him in the head, and I wanted to shout at him that I didn’t have to do anything to make people assume I was evil, I never had, except—he hadn’t assumed it. He’d only ever thought I was a maleficer when I’d given him a really good solid reason, and more to the point he was there sitting at my desk talking to me like I was a person, and I didn’t want that to stop. So instead of punching him in the head, I just finished my sun salutation and then I went back to the desk and got on with my paper.
When the warning bell went off for curfew and we finally packed up, he said tentatively, “Want to come back after breakfast tomorrow?”
“Some of us can’t afford to outsource our maintenance shifts,” I said, but the anger had gone. “Who’s doing yours?”
“I don’t have one,” he said, with perfect sincerity, and only looked puzzled when I gave him a look. We’ve all got maintenance shifts, one a week; not even being the future Domina’s son from New York gets you