14. Katya

“Katya?”

I shake the daze off, Tasha is inside the elevator waiting for me and I’m just in another world, thinking of Yuri, still. I smile and walk beside her and we go up to the library.

We reserved a private study room yesterday for me to get ready.

“Now,” Tasha says, turning to me, “let’s get you sorted.”

“What do you mean?”

She raises her perfect brows, “You look terrible. Scared and disheveled. You need a more confident demeanor for your test.”

There’s a bathroom attached to the study room, and she opens the door for me. “Go on then. Splash some cold water on your face. Mammalian dive response, remember?”

I walk to the sink, turn the faucet on and splash water across my face.

Sure enough, it does help.

Immediately, I feel more alert.

Refreshed.

“Now, to touch up your face. You’re a beautiful woman, Katya. You could go without any makeup, but it helps with confidence. Think of the makeup as face-paint, war-paint like the blue stuff in that Braveheart movie.”

“War-paint,” I repeat. Can’t hurt to think of it like that.

“There,” Tasha says with a satisfied nod. “You’re ready.”

She’s smoothed my hair back into the sleek bun I was wearing before I tripped and fell onto Yuri’s dick, and my makeup looks better than it ever does when I apply it myself.

The effect is startling. And just like she promised, it does inject a little more confidence into my hunched posture.

“That’s right, girl,” she says. “You need to wear that suit; don’t let it wear you. And remember: ‘fuck that test’.”

I nodded and followed her out. She walks me to the test room.

“Take no prisoners,” she tells me at the door.

I’m beginning to feel her confidence in me, war-paint, dive-reflex, etc. Can it all be that simple, tricks to make yourself feel confident even if you’re not? Further experiments needed; we’ll see how it works on this test. I smile at her and start to open the door to the classroom, then she stops me with a hand on my arm as she reaches for her phone.

“Hold on, that’s the Yuri direct line,” her face shows worry for a fraction of a second, then she smiles reassuringly at me.

I study her face closely, her arm is still on mine, insistent I don’t move an inch from her. She picks up the call, “Yuri?”

She listens, her brow furrows and she starts to look around. She nods, “Got it,” she says into the phone and moves it swiftly back in her pocket.

“So—” I start to ask what’s going on, but her fingers bite down on my arm as she pulls me away from the door and classroom and my test. Shit.

She’s dragging me through the hallway to the stairwell.

I start to say, “What was—”

But the words are wrenched out of my lips when she snatches up my hand and drags me through the hallway, away from my test.

I let her drag me away, passive, limp, accommodating, until I’m disgusted at myself for being so limp and passive. I wrench my arm from her grip and raise my voice, “Tasha what the hell is going on?”

“Danger. That’s what that call was about, and we have to go. Right. Now.”

“What?”

She grabs my arm again, in a cold, vice grip and locks my eyes into hers. “Petya is coming for you. You come with me, or you go with him, get it?”