Spycraft Academy by B. Miles (little readers .txt) 📕

"Rosin and I kissed last night," he said, watching Mattie's expression. It didn't shift away from mild amusement.

"Oh?"

"She said you put her up to it."

Mattie cocked her head and studied his face. Sam held his breath. After a moment, she shrugged and went back to eating. "Yeah. She likes you."

Sam chewed over his next words, not wanting to say something as stupid as, 'why does it matter' or something equally as damning.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Sam." Mattie huffed, glancing up. "You know better than anyone how easy it is to die. Personally, I've lived in this world for far too long without the sort of love that everybody takes for granted. If I feel attracted to more than one person, then damnit, I'm going to act on it. And I love you, Sam. I want to feel that with you. To share it."

"Very sweet, Mattie." Drina grasped Rosin's chair and pulled it close, making the blonde squeak. "I like sharing."

Without warning, Drina leaned in and captured Rosin's lips. The blonde stiffened for a moment before her body went lax and she returned the kiss, though it was quick and she was blushing madly. Sam could only sit back in astonishment. He really had no reply except shocked silence. How was it that he, a gutter rat and a thief, had somehow roped a girlfriend who wanted him to be with more people than just herself? He'd done nothing to earn this sort of consideration, and yet these three beautiful, incredible women—who could have taken any man to bed—wanted to be with him. And none of them minded sharing him, or each other.

The rest of breakfast was relatively quiet because, for once, Sam had nothing to say outside of 'spirits, thank you, but why?' He was just Sam. Nothing special or extraordinary, just...him.

Throughout the day, Sam's focus was split between the three girls. It was never said aloud, exactly, but Mattie all but declared the four of them were in an arrangement of some sort. It didn't have a name, maybe it wasn't even an 'it,' so much as it was simply them. He could feel their eyes on him in outdoors training, during combat class, and even during meditation. Whenever he looked up, they would hurriedly look away and giggle. Well, Drina and Mattie would giggle, and Rosin would blush. The two bolder girls kept taking Rosin aside throughout the day, whispering to her under their breath so he couldn't hear.

They must have been encouraging her to be more assertive, because around mid-morning, she was able to look at him without turning red. By lunch, she was speaking to him as if everything was back to normal.

The four of them, along with Fletch, were on their way to the mess hall for lunch when they passed Apelles. He appeared to be in a hurry, not sparing them a single glance as he strode down the corridors with long, brisk strides.

Sam hadn't forgotten seeing the spymaster walking to his home in the dead of the night, he'd just been a bit sidetracked by the girls, playing breakfast over and over in his head because he still wasn't entirely convinced any of it was real.

Once the spymaster had disappeared around the corner, Sam's thoughts sharpened and settled on the actual danger afoot.

"We're going to be a little late to lunch," he said, taking a sharp left down a different corridor without waiting for an answer.

"Have fun!" Fletch chirped at his back.

Drina groaned but the three girls followed without questioning why. Sam wasn't going to risk talking about this in the open, so he led them all the way back to the dormitories and into his room.

When they got there, he bolted the door and spoke in hushed tones. "Watching Apelles like we've been doing isn't going to work anymore," Sam said. "He snuck out on me last night. I didn't realize until I saw him go home. We need to catch him in the act and restrain him. Thing is, I'm pretty sure he knows we've been watching him, so we can't exactly get close, and even if we did, he's a Varin spymaster. I don't think a dozen of us could take him down."

He was pacing again. He had a bad habit of that. The guys used to hate it; said it made them nervous.

"We could wear disguises and maybe lure him somewhere?" Rosin offered. It was a bit of a naïve idea, but at least she had an idea. Sam was fresh out.

"No," Mattie said, "I'm pretty sure his talent has something to do with seeing into people's minds. He'd know it was one of us. We could trap him, though? Set up a tripwire or two in the admin building. Of course, we'd have to get in there after hours to begin with, and that's a feat on its own."

Sam shook his head and stared at the ground. Think, think, think. There had to be something. There was always a solution to any problem.

"Oh!"

Sam's eyes snapped to Drina, who had a huge smile on her face. "Poison dart. I filched one from combat class on our first day. We can use the rest of the paralysis poison you stole from Franklin."

Yes. Brilliant. Except he'd spilled the lot of it into Delcan's drink. Sam's sudden smile dimmed.

"I used all of it, remember? We'd have to make more."

"Shit."

"You won the competition, the brew was perfect, can't you just make some?"

"Well, I don't remember the bloody recipe, do I? We'd have to steal the brew card from Franklin too."

She was right. They had textbooks for class, but the book only had information on ingredients, not the recipes to make them. That was probably in the fifth-year textbook, but first years couldn't be trusted walking around with diagrams of the deadliest poisons known to man. So Franklin just handed out recipe cards during class. He also collected them afterward.

"Uh, I remember it," Rosin said quietly, raising her