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“Come on,” she says.

I let her pull me along. “Where?”

“Home. I’ll tell you there.”

I glance at her. “Why there?”

“Because if I tell you here, you’ll go looking for him immediately.”

I scoff, and she tugs my arm again.

Hours later, after Alya finishes telling me everything there apparently is to know about her boyfriend, I lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Adrian Rybakov. Not completely useless, I suppose. His family is small, based on the other side of the city, and respectable enough that Father probably won’t have an aneurysm the second he hears the surname. Honestly, that already puts the poor bastard ahead of most candidates.

The sound of my phone ringing drags me out of my thoughts, and I glance down to find Kento’s name lighting up the screen. Well, fuck. I stare at it for three whole rings before finally answering.

“My prince,” Kento says. His voice sounds rough, and it makes my dick twitch. Jesus fucking Christ. I guess I’m attracted to sound waves now. Excellent development. “You answered.”

I swallow, suddenly aware of how quiet my room is and how loud my heartbeat sounds in my ears. I try to play it off.

“You’ve been blessed,” I say, leaning back against the headboard. “Consider yourself lucky.”

He chuckles. “I missed your voice.”

“You heard it yesterday.”

“I know.” There’s a pause. “I could never get tired of hearing you speak.”

I bite my lip, staring at the dark ceiling. There are butterflies in my stomach, delicate little traitors beating themselves senseless against my ribs, and every single one of them seems to have Kento’s name carved into its wings.

“People don’t like that.” Fuck. I shouldn’t have said it. My instinct tells me to bury it beneath a joke, but I keep going. “When I speak a lot. I mean, I do it anyway, and I don’t care, but they find it annoying.”

“Then they’re idiots.” His voice changes on the last word. I can kind of hear the dagger being drawn beneath it. “Anyone who ever made you think you needed to be quieter deserves to choke on every word they made you swallow.” He pauses. “You are not annoying, Ilya. Never.”

I don’t know what to say to that. He isn’t even mocking me. He means it, and I don’t understand why. I’m worse with him than I am with anyone. I argue with him over things I don’t even care about just because irritating him has become one of my favorite hobbies. Even Dimitri and Alexei find me annoying sometimes, especially when I start talking and forget how to stop. So why doesn’t he? I’m suddenly grateful he can’t see my face, because I’m pretty sure you could cook an egg on it with how red it must be.

“Talk to me,” Kento says softly.

“Why?”

“Because I want to hear you.”

I huff, but I shift on the bed, pulling my knees up and pressing my feet flat against the wall above the headboard. “Fine. But don’t blame me when you regret this.”

“I won’t.”

So I start talking, like he asked me to.

I complain about the pretentious assholes in my advanced security systems course who think they’re hackers because they can run a script they found on GitHub. About the girl in my economics lecture who keeps trying to flirt with me by asking if I can “help her with her homework,” as if I look like a fucking tutor.

Kento clicks his tongue. “I will deal with her.” I don’t know what that means, but I think I shortened her lifespan.

“Oh,” I say suddenly, remembering. “And Dima killed five people last week to get flowers.”

“Flowers,” Kento repeats.

“Yes. For Rai. He’s such a thief. He just murdered a florist and took the entire shop’s inventory, because the florist said the flowers were already pre-bought. But Rai said he wants them, in passing, one day before, so that fucker claimed he had to get them.”

Kento exhales, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “That’s romantic.”