Page 6 of Hacker in Love
He snapped his mouth shut, but Tessa knew where that was going. Mother’s Cordelia’s voice rang in her head.
“I can never justdo as I’m told, right?” she said bitterly.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s what you were going to say.”
“It came out wrong.”
“I’m sure it did,” she murmured.
Several minutes of silence passed, Tessa continuing to pick at the doughnut. It wasn’t even chocolate. It was just a plain doughnut with a sprinkling of sugar that only made her fingers sticky. At least she’d eaten a few of the small sandwiches while she’d been with Lord Jove. While her time with him had indeed been nerve-racking like she’d told Dex, it had also been…interesting. She’d expected him to at least asksomethingabout Arius Kingdom, but every question had been about her, her studies, how she was feeling. He never asked if they figured out anything new about her heritage. He never asked how Theon was faring in his tasks. It had been like having tea with… Well, she imagined it was what having tea with an old mentor would be like if she’d ever had such a thing.
“How is Katya?” Dex asked.
“What?” she asked, pulled from her inner contemplation.
“Katya,” Dex repeated dryly. “How is she?”
“Fine, I guess,” Tessa answered with a shrug. “I don’t see her much.”
“How do you not see her? Doesn’t she stay at the townhouse?”
“Yes, but we’re never together during the day. And other than a dinner here and there, we don’t see much of each other in the evenings either. But she seems fine,” she added with another shrug. “Axel takes care of her.”
“I’m sure he does,” Dex said with a curl to his lip.
Tessa leveled him with a glare. “Would you rather she not be taken care of? He makes sure she has food and is protected.”
“I’m sure that’s all he does,” he retorted with a pointed look.
“Axel isn’t like that,” she snapped, and Dex’s brows rose.
“Now you’re defending them? Next you’re going to tell me the dragon cares about you too, when everyone knows everything he does is to make sure Arius Legacy maintain their power,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
Tessa bristled, attempting to brush the sugar off her hands a little aggressively. Of course she knew that. Luka’s loyalty was to Theon not just because of the Guardian bond, but because he was an Arius descendant. The Sargon line had long been loyal to Arius; it only made sense.
She stilled suddenly.
Butshewas Arius blood too.
More so than Theon and Axel and Valter.
She was Arius’s granddaughter if Scarlett was to be believed.
Tessa sank back against the bed, letting that revelation sink in. She didn’t know what it meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.
“She passed her exams today, if you wanted to know,” Dex said, his tone clipped now.
“Who did?”
“Katya,” he answered, not bothering to hide his annoyance now.
“That’s great,” Tessa said, genuinely happy for her. “But how do you know that?”
“I saw the report while you were with Lord Jove.”
She hummed an acknowledgment. It still made absolutely no sense to her that he was given such a high station in the Achaz Lord’s home. He’d only been Selected weeks ago, and he moved around this palace as if he had the freedom to do as he wished. And the information he was given access to? None of it seemed right.