Alexander took me in his arms when Luke was done, swung me around, and kissed my neck. We reluctantly said our goodbyes, and I was forced to push through the hedge, back to myself and back to my side of the campus.
CHAPTER12
“Harlow, wait up!”I called out to my friend, and she turned to let me catch up.
“What is it?” she asked, raising a single eyebrow while she looked me up and down. “You’re out of breath. Did you race across campus just to show me how sweaty running makes you?”
She laughed, and I joined her. I caught my breath and shook my head. “No, not even close. I ran all this way because I wanted you to know that I found a way to get you Upper status!”
“I don’t want Upper status,” she said, and her brows knit together. “What makes you think I want to be one of the oppressive class?”
I sighed, a little annoyed that she wasn’t as excited about this new development as I was. I had been spending every spare moment since Luke’s attack trying to find a way to keep him safe. In finding ways for me to help him, I found a way to help Harlow as well. But she wasn’t interested, and that was irritating as hell.
“I’m just trying my best to help you out here,” I replied with an edge to my voice. “I don’t know why you’re upset about it.”
“I’m not upset,” she said, and then she ran her hand through her hair, and her face relaxed. “Listen, I’m not mad at you. I’m upset about the day. It was an exhausting exam for Economics class.”
“They let you take Econ?” I asked. “I didn’t think women were allowed in those ones.”
“Oh, did you think I was allowed to take a man’s course,” she said and held her hand to her chest as if she was scandalized. Then she laughed and added, “I meant home economics, of course. The sort of thing they teach us when we need to learn about managing a household, you know, planning meals and operating the budget. That sort of shit. Can you believe it?”
“I can believe it because this place is so fucking backward,” I spat. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. It isn’t like this in other places.”
“What places? There’s only this world. Do you mean other countries? But most of them are barely habitable,” she replied, distress coloring her voice. “You remember the great war. It wiped out half the planet. So where are we supposed to go?”
She sounded genuinely stressed about it all, and I didn’t blame her.
“What was wrong with the test?” I asked, hoping to direct her frustration towards the school instead of the world at large. It felt like a much more manageable problem.
“It was weighted towards brainless fools,” she said. “I want to use my head and fill it with knowledge. I crave learning something useful. I want to take a course that will help explain some of the physics and advanced chemistry books I’ve stolen from the men’s library.”
I was still processing the idea that half the planet had been wiped out in a war I had no memory of. Yet another hole in this Swiss cheese brain of mine. I hadn’t forgotten such a huge lump of knowledge in quite a while, and it was disheartening that I wasn’t healing as much as I thought I was. My memories were slowly coming back to me, and this world was replacing the empty dreams in my head, but only for this limited campus. Anything outside of it was like a blank sheet, darkness at the edge of my vision. I couldn’t see into it. There was a thick veil covering it all from my view.
“I’m sorry they can’t see your genius,” I told Harlow. And I meant it, she was brilliant, and the world would be a better place if she was able to work her magic fully into it. “They’re idiots if they can’t understand why you’re amazing.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Okay, enough of my complaining. I don’t think I can do anything about it by being pissed off at the wrong people.”
“This is where being an Upper could maybe help you,” I replied. “And this is why I’m so excited about this possible loophole.”
“What is it?” she asked me. We kept walking along the path through the women’s side of the campus, enjoying the crisp winter air. It was almost winter break, and we were finishing up our final exams in all our courses. I had decided to forgo my sword fighting testing, though. It was getting to be too much for me. It wasn’t that my courses were that difficult. It was mostly that I ran out of time between playing the good Upper fiancée of Alexander Remington, getting good grades in every main course at Crimson Academy doing the various duties I had with Victoria for all the first-year girls, and then on top of all of that, I had my three men to keep me busy.
There weren’t enough minutes in any day to keep up with extracurricular activities other than my times with Alexander, Rome, and Luke.
In short, if I was being honest with myself, I was too horny and distracted to be any good at anything, really. I was a lover, not a fighter.
“Well, there’s this old law on the books that could allow any exemplary Lower student to make the crossover to Upper if you have a sponsor. And once I’m married to Alexander, I’ll be able to sponsor you!”
“So your marriage might be good for something,” she laughed. “I mean, other than you getting a deep dish dicking from one of three different dudes whenever you can.”
I flamed red, and it was as if she’d just been reading my mind. I would die if she actually knew the images that were flipping through my head like an old-fashioned silent film. Just still photos, frozen moments of me caught in the act of love with my men.
“It would seem that way,” I replied. “And yes, other than the whole deep dicking thing, he’s useful.”
“It’s weird that you have no power of your own,” she said. “Women are treated shitty no matter if they’re Upper or Lower, aren’t they?”
“I suppose that’s one way we all have something in common,” I said.
We kept walking, and for the hundredth time, I wondered where Luke’s sister Marianne was being kept. We’d gone back to the prison with Alexander’s security team a few days after Luke had been home safe, but we’d found nothing.