Sure enough, he takes another couple steps toward me, closing the space between us. Instinctively, everyone else steps back. They all know the feeling of a fight about to happen. That anticipation in the air, the electricity between two people itching to do each other harm.
“Don’t call me that,” Dean says.
It’s funny how even the simplest words can cut if they’re said sharply enough.
Dean hasn’t raised his voice, but he makes it perfectly clear that he isn’t fucking around. His fists tighten at his sides, and his shoulders swell as his body shifts into a more aggressive stance. He’s got the look of a fighter, as if he’s most natural in that position. If I were anybody else, I’d probably take a step back, cringing like a little bitch.
But I’m not somebody else.
I’m me. And I don’t back away from anybody.
“Don’t call you what?” I say. “Cuz?”
Dean takes another step forward until we’re within arm’s reach of each other. I’m taller than him by two inches, but he’s got a decent amount of muscle packed on his frame. I’m watching him carefully, though I don’t let it show. I stand there as relaxed and casual as ever.
“We’re not family,” Dean hisses. “Because your whore of a mother betrayed her family. She’s not a Yenin anymore. She’s just a piece of treacherous trash.”
I want to hit him so bad my fists are throbbing. I can’t let that go unanswered.
“The Yenins broke a blood oath,” I spit back at him. “I don’t know how the fuck you’re even here. You should be excommunicated. Whose cock did your father have to suck to get you back in?”
We rush each other at the same moment. I throw the first punch, right at his stupid fucking face. But to my surprise, he slips the hit so my fist barely glances off his jaw. I’ve never missed like that before.
At the same time, he hits me with a left hook that fucking rocks me. Dean may not be quite as big as me, but he’s fast as fuck and strong, too. My head is ringing, and my hangover headache comes roaring back.
I swing back at him, and this time he can’t quite duck it—at 6’5 I’ve got a fuck of a longer reach than he’s used to. I pop him in the cheek, raising an instant red welt under his eye.
In retaliation he slugs me back in the gut, and that fucking hurts, too. Jesus he’s got a sledgehammer for an arm.
The howls of Bram and the other students draw the attention of the sailors. Two of the deckhands tear us apart before we can finish the fight. They’re big, burly men, and they fling us down on the deck, shouting for us to knock it off.
The bigger of the two, a man with a glass eye and two sensuously entwined mermaids on his forearm, points a sausage-like finger at me and growls, “Raise your fists again, and I’ll chuck you in the fuckin’ ocean. No fighting on board.”
He stands there, arms crossed over his broad chest, watching us both until Dean picks himself up off the deck and resumes his sullen position at the railing, and I head back toward the bow.
I climb up in the net once more, making Ares stir and mumble in the midst of his nap, and Anna glances up from her book.
“What the hell?” she says. “What happened to you?”
She’s staring at my face.
I swipe my hand under my nose, seeing blood smear across my knuckles.
“Little family reunion,” I say.
“Dean?” Anna asks, eyes wide.
“Who else?”
“Why’d you have to go and fight him?” Anna says.
“He started it. I was willing to be friendly.”
“For how long, two seconds?” Anna frowns.
“He called my mom a traitor!”
“Of course he did! You know what he’s probably been told. Did you even try to talk to him?”
“It’s not my job to talk to him!” I scoff. “His family are the fucking traitors, and if he says another word about my mom, I’ll break his fucking jaw for him.”
“You’d better not,” Anna says darkly. “You know the rules—”
“He’s the one—”
“They won’t care!” Anna cuts across me. “This is exactly what Aunt Yelena was worried about—”
“Oh, get off it,” I grumble at Anna. “I heard enough of that before I left.”
I hate when Anna acts like she’s on my parents’ side about me not going to Kingmakers. She should be happy that I came here with her instead of taking my full ride to the University of Kentucky. Does she want to be here alone? I thought she’d be thrilled that we were both experiencing this together.
The thought of going to some school without her, any school, made me sick to my stomach. She’s my best friend. We’ve always done everything together.
I know Anna cares about me. But sometimes I think she doesn’t need me the same way I need her. She’s got siblings and I don’t. I would never admit this in million years, but sometimes I’m jealous of Cara and Whelan. I hate that Anna loves them almost as much as she loves me. I don’t want her attention divided between me and them.
I know it’s ridiculous because they’re just kids. But I want to be first in her eyes, the way she is in mine. Closer than blood.
“Leo, you can’t act like that at Kingmakers,” she says, her blue eyes fixed determinedly on my face.
“Act like what?” I say stubbornly.
“You can’t act like you usually do.”
I hear the edge of fear in her voice, and that’s what makes me smother my flippant retort. Anna isn’t scared of anything usually.
“I know,” I admit. “I know it’s not high school anymore. I’ll be careful.”
“You promise?” Anna says.
“Yes. I promise.”
“Alright,” she says. She gives me a small smile, leaning back in the hammock and picking up her book once more.
She’s reading an ancient, battered copy of Lord of the Flies.
“Let me guess,” I say to her. “Your suitcase is full of books you’ve already read.”
Anna smiles just a little.
“Not full,” she says. “But yeah, about half of it.”
“They have a library at Kingmakers,” I inform her.
“I don’t care,” she says. “This belonged to the Other Anna.”
Anna is named after her aunt, who died a long time before she was born.
Anna has a strange reverence for this namesake she never met. She talks about the Other Anna like her guardian angel. Like a piece of her soul lives inside of Anna herself.
I’m jealous of the Other Anna, too. A girl who died thirty years ago.
That’s how stupid I can be.
I’ve never been able to be rational when it comes to Anna.
“How much longer till we get to the island?” Ares asks, from beneath his t-shirt.
“I dunno,” I say. “All I see is ocean.”
Just like Matteo warned, the water gets rougher and rougher as we draw closer to Kingmakers. Long before we spot the island, the ship is pitching and tossing, and I can tell the crew is approaching in a kind of zigzag, to avoid rocks or sandbars beneath the surface, or maybe just because of the way the currents run.