I blinked back sudden tears, and he loosened his grip a little.
“What are you doing here, barging into a girl’s room?” I demanded angrily.
“This isn’t a girl’s room. It’s a common dormitory. And as a student in my Academy, you don’t have the luxury of privacy. I’ve received word that you missed physical training and also half of history class.”
“Who ratted me out? Snitches get stitches!”
“You won’t get revenge on anyone. The Academy has rules. For example, no one skips a class—among many others. You don’t want to be late for class either.”
“Sowhatif I was late for a few classes?” I said. “I’m not a morning person. I like to sleep in. It’s been my lifestyle for twenty years, and I’m not going to change it overnight.”
“Youwillchange your bad habits and attitude overnight. In fact, you’ll change them now. You’ll follow the rules like everyone else, and you’ll learn discipline. If I have to beat it into you, I will. Try me and see who wins this game in the end. I look forward to our second round.”
He shoved me away. I stumbled and nearly slammed my face into the façade of a cabinet between the bunk beds. I threw a hand out, grabbed an open drawer, and thus avoided a broken nose.
I wheeled toward him and hissed. “You fucker!”
“You have no fear, no respect, and no sense of self-preservation,” he said, his face hard. “But I’ll pound all those things into your skull in no time.”
A sudden alarm buzzed in me. Axel had threatened that if I kept giving him headaches, he’d dole my punishments out to Jasper and Circe, knowing they were my weakness. What if Paxton had learned about my vulnerability? He wouldn’t hesitate at all to exploit it.
I didn’t wait for him to go there, just grabbed the sheet from Yelena’s bed and wrapped it around my chest.
“Get yourself cleaned up and attend class,” he said, steel in his voice. “You have three minutes.”
“Where’s Axel?”
“Miss him?”
“I’d take him over you any minute of the day,” I said.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. I’d hit a nerve. It seemed there was a rivalry among the demigods.
“He isn’t available,Princesa. You’re stuck with me today.”
“How tragic,” I sneered. “Axel likes me. He’d have been more pleasant.”
“He may be smitten with you for now. Even so, his father, thegod, is more important than a simple girl like you. Ares summoned him to the city.”
“Which city?”
“Paris, of course. Ares stays in Paris most of the time.”
The unexpected response distracted me from my irritation. “I don’t blame him,” I said with longing. “I always wanted to go to Paris. I heard their crème brulee is top notch.” I licked my lips. “I really want to try it someday.”
“Like that’s going to happen,” he snorted, but he was looking at my lips.
I wouldn’t put it past him to do his worst to take all the good fun out of my life.
“I heard Axel calling his father when the ritual went wrong with me,” I pried.
“He did,” Paxton said dismissively. “They have a mental link. But Ares was in the middle of a negotiation with Lucifer.”
I’d once speculated that the God of War might have a dirty deal with the devil, or else how could Earth have been split so evenly into two evenly realms, one belonging to Ares and the other to Lucifer?
Politics were all dirty anyway. There were never good guys, only the lesser evil. And I still wasn’t exactly sure which one was the lesser evil since I hadn’t met either the god or the devil.
I arched an eyebrow. “Negotiation for what?”