Chapter Twenty-Eight

This was becoming far too common, and if Yue didn't stop, she'd soon be as wide as she was tall.

Over the last three days, this confection had become part of her morning ritual; wake up, exercises, first patrol, eat a bowl of iced cream, then wake the "royal couple" from their nightly shenanigans so the rest of the academy could get on with the day… then probably return to another bowl just before officially having breakfast.

She had tried to dodge the addiction this morning, ordering Gwen to rouse Coran and Devona to inform them that the survey crews had reports to make… but merely thinking about the headmaster and his betrothed sent her down into the kitchens, and pulling out an entire vat of the frozen treat despite the kitchen krewe chief's rather rude objections.

"Whatcha eating?" Gwen interrupted, somewhat surprising Yue. That the assassin hadn't processed the young mesmer's approach was troubling… it did Yue no good to be so absorbed that she was abandoning the skills drilled into her since she could walk.

"Care to share?" Gwen continued brightly, either oblivious to or ignoring every cell of Yue's body relaying a "go away" message.

Yue finally bore her eyes on the waif of a girl that thought herself a woman. "I gave you an order to wake the headmaster."

"I'm a lieutenant now too, Yue." Gwen replied, unrepentantly cheerful, a true insult to the brooding depression Yue had quite successfully burrowed herself in. "You can't just order me around."

"I've been a lieutenant longer, mesmer. I still officially outrank you."

"At ease, Yue… it's been taken care of. I passed the coin to Vekk."

Yue blinked, processing the information, working through several scenarios, all of them appealing to the assassin's more macabre sense of humor. For the first time in what felt like forever, amusement crept into the fore of her mind.

Amusement answered half a minute later, when she heard the incredulous voice of Headmaster Coran's bellow echo through the halls of the academy.

"VEKK, GET OUT THIS INSTANT!"

A rare peal of laughter escaped Yue's lungs, and she then nodded to Gwen. "Grab a spoon."

* * * * *

Coran could really get used to this.

His left arm tightened around his companion's waist, slowly stirring her where a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder finished the job. "Good morning, beautiful." He said with a bright smile.

"How you can tell it is morning while roughly a half mile under the surface of the ground is beyond me." Devona muttered sleepily, "It could be the dead of night above our heads for all I know."

"Oh, come on now… we weren't up that late." The headmaster answered, poking his bedmate in her side and causing her to giggle.

With a quick turn, Devona was sprawled on top of the young man, propped on one elbow with the other poking at him. "Oh, no… not this time. We're going to do things my way, understand?"

With a mock salute, Coran answered, "Yes, ma'am."

Her right index finger dancing along his surprisingly well toned pectorals, Devona grinned in a manner that could only be described as predatory and stated, "First… I am going to…"

At that point, there was a clinking sound at the chamber door, then a sound of a lock springing, and finally, the wooden hatchway swung open, casting the artificial lighting from the hall into the darkened room. After panicking and swiftly covering each other in the blankets, their eyes slowly adjusted to determine the source of the intrusion.

"Vekk! That door was locked for a reason!" Coran scolded.

"No reason more important than the urgent news I was given to relay." Vekk responded, calmly unabashed. "So I unlocked it."

The headmaster had no idea how to respond to that, and every time he tried, nothing came out.

"The Survey Krewes have returned, and are ready to submit their findings. I figured it was a report you wished to be appraised of with all haste." The Asuran genius noted almost haughtily, as if he was the one put out by the exchange.

Coran blinked twice then replied, "Yes… you're right. Thank you, Vekk. I shall attend to that as promptly as possible. You are dismissed."

Vekk bowed in parting, turned, took three steps and stopped short before turning back around and appraising the scene in front of him a second time. "Oh… I hadn't realized… goodness me…"

He then dove into an inside pocket of his vest, and emerged with pad and stencil. "I've never really had the opportunity to observe and study human mating rituals. Do continue, I'll just be in the corner taking notes… act as if I'm not here."

The human pair boggled before Coran regained his indignant fury. With a bellow that rung Devona's ears, he commanded with an outstretched arm, "VEKK! GET OUT THIS INSTANT!"

Vekk started, then coldly thrust the pad back into its pocket. "Fine. You don't need to be rude about it. Humans, I tell you…"

* * * * *

"All right…" Coran declared as he stiffly strode to his chair at the head of the assembly hall, and sat down roughly. "I cannot say I'm in the best of moods, so I strongly request that you save whatever long and eloquent report you had prepared likely for the last day to present to me and get right to the point. What did you find?"

The Krewe Chief nervously glanced both ways at the two assistants flanking her, and the one on her left frantically shredded the small leaf of pages she was holding while the one on the right hastily scribbled for a few seconds on his notepad before handing it to the chief.

The chief looked at the jotted page, then handed it back to her assistant before saying as grandly as she could, "We don't know, sir."