The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(69)

Noam frowned. “Are you sick?”

“I’m fine. I’ll ask again. Why are you here?”

“Let’s not be rude,” Lehrer chided. He touched Noam’s arm instead, just below the elbow. “Please, Noam, make yourself at home. Can I get you something to drink?”

“I’ll take hot tea,” Dara said before Noam could answer.

Lehrer just kept looking at Noam, though, until at last Noam shrugged and said, “Sure. Thanks. Um. Tea for me too.”

Lehrer allowed them both a cursory smile, then disappeared through a door into a room where Noam sensed metal cutlery and saucepans. There weren’t, he noticed, any tiny hidden circuit boards. If Sacha had bugged Lehrer’s apartment, as Lehrer suspected, he did it without using technology.

“Are you sick?” he asked Dara, moving closer.

Dara shrugged one shoulder. “Not really. Just tired.” His fingers kept picking at the cuffs of his sweater sleeves, pulling at loose threads.

“Have you eaten anything today?” Noam asked suspiciously, but Dara made a face at him.

“Doesn’t matter. You haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m here about General Ames,” Noam said. “About what Ames told us about him. Or told me, rather, since you apparently already knew.” Knew and hadn’t told anyone. Noam tapped his fingers against the seat cushion. “Which, what the hell, Dara?”

Dara stepped closer—though when he spoke, his voice was so low that Noam still had to lean in to hear properly. He was near enough that Noam could smell Dara’s shampoo clinging to his hair. “There’s a reason I didn’t tell anyone, Noam. And you shouldn’t either. Okay?”

“No, not okay! He killed people, Dara, he would have killed Ames too if she hadn’t gotten lucky—”

“I mean it, Noam,” Dara hissed. He grabbed on to Noam’s wrist, fingers pressing in hard. “I know it’s difficult for you to let things go sometimes, but you need to let this go. I will tell the people who need to know, but I’ll tell them in the right way and at the right time. Please just let me handle it.”

“He needs to be punished.” Noam’s eyes prickled with a painful heat, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t just let it go. “He can’t just get away with this.”

“He won’t,” Dara promised.

Noam would kill General Ames himself if he had to. He’d never hated anyone this much. Never mind a fair trial; the general deserved to be in the ground.

“Trust me,” Dara said, and Noam didn’t get a chance to respond, because then Lehrer emerged from the kitchen with a tea tray balanced in hand. Dara took a quick step back, releasing Noam and staring at the floor instead.

“Everything all right in here?” Lehrer asked, glancing dubiously at Noam’s reddened wrist.

“We’re good,” Noam said. He blinked back those furious tears—if he cried in front of Lehrer, he’d fucking shoot himself. “Thanks for the tea.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Lehrer said. He set the tray down on the coffee table, gesturing for Noam and Dara to come sit.

They did, one on each side of the sofa with an ocean’s space between them. Lehrer took the armchair, surveying them both through the steam drifting up from his tea.

“Did you have something you wanted to tell me, Noam?” Lehrer said at last.

“Yeah, but it . . .” Noam glanced at Dara, who stared back with narrowed eyes. “I . . . should probably tell you some other time. In private.”

Let Lehrer think it had to do with the coup.

Lehrer frowned, tapping one finger against the curve of his mug. “Dara, would you . . . ?”

“No, no, it’s fine, it’s not urgent,” Noam said quickly. “We can talk later.”

“After we spar on Monday, perhaps?”

Noam nodded.

Still, he stayed for half an hour and drank the tea just to be polite, making small conversation about classwork and his part-time job until he could justify excusing himself.

Back in the barracks, he couldn’t meet Ames’s gaze. He stayed out in the common room with Bethany, sharing a bag of Taye’s cinnamon candies until Bethany trailed off to bed. That meant getting cornered by Ames after all, who’d unearthed another bottle of vodka and was making noises about going out to Raleigh.

She’d settled herself on Noam’s lap, legs slung over the arm of the chair and her head against his shoulder. Her breath was hot on the side of his neck. Her hand was on his thigh.

If Noam went with her, he knew what would happen: he’d get drunk, they’d dance, they’d fuck in a dirty bar bathroom.

That wasn’t unappealing, per se; it just . . .

He went to bed early.

Dara returned from his weekend with Lehrer around five Sunday night. He went straight back to the bedroom and didn’t come out for dinner. Noam gathered the whole parental bonding thing didn’t go well.

And then on Monday, Lehrer dismissed Dara from lessons early, leaving him and Noam alone in the study with the last few remnants of Noam’s constructed starlight glittering just below the ceiling. Lehrer reached up and trailed his fingers through them, navigating the constellations.

“How have you been feeling lately?” Lehrer asked, then clarified: “With your magic.”