Mount Asteria

Chapter Thirty One

Tired as she was from her weekend in London and with a million things to do – which included writing three essays and finding a missing pair of earrings – Alexandra slept on the bus journey to Knightbridge on Tuesday afternoon. It was not a long trip, unfortunately - just half an hour normally – and she found herself being woken by Hestia what felt like seconds after closing her eyes.

"We're here, Lexa," Hestia said, poking her arm.

Alexandra smiled. It seemed Damien's nickname for her was sticking. Most of the girls used it now – though Ebony and Bláithín flatly refused to call her anything but Alexandra.

"Oooh!" She winced, stepping of the bus and being hit immediately with a gust of sea wind. At least it wasn't so foggy today; she could see the sea this time. It was rather pretty; clear blue water, white tipped waves and jagged black rocks.

"Brought some lip balm?" Damien winked at her, greeting the girls off the bus.

Alexandra grimaced. "This is going to be so awkward."

Damien grinned. "Don't worry. This is my area of expertise."

"I don't want to know about it, Damien."

"Suit yourself. Now, we can't get too passionate on stage, much as we might want to, because -"

"Because your girlfriend will be jealous?"

"I don't have a girlfriend. Currently. Anyway, what I meant was, we don't want to get too carried away in case we lose control of -"

"Okay!" Alexandra yelled, clamping her hands over her ears. "Shut up!"

Thea glanced over to her, eyebrows raised. Alexandra knew what she was thinking; Thea had been moaning endlessly about having to act alongside Louis while Alexandra had Damien "all to herself". *These frequent remarks had already resulted in most of the fourth years conducting a mass exodus of the common room in protest, though Bláithín had taken in a step further had was refusing to speak to Thea. Even Hestia seemed annoyed. She told Alexandra, "Girls just shouldn't get that caught up over guys. We do have work to be doing."*

"Have you see this?" Grace came over to Alexandra, handing her her phone. "The renewable heat incentive in the North is going to cost hundreds of millions."

"Oh?" Alexandra took the phone and scanned through the article.

"There's trouble brewing," Ebony added, slipping in next to them.

Alexandra frowned. "Do you think so? It's just another financial issue."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Damien cut-in, surprising Alexandra. She had yet to have a conversation about politics with him. "It won't take much to tip them over the edge."

"Is Stormont so fragile?"

"Yes," Grace, Ebony and Damien said in unison. Alexandra didn't say anything more; she clearly had a lot to learn.

They were distracted then by the sound of gun fire behind the school.

"Oh my God!" Alexandra jumped. "What's going on?"

"Sixth year field exercise," Damien replied simply, smiling at her exclamation.

"Are they shooting each other?" Alexandra asked incredulously.

He shook his head, smiling. "Come on," he grabbed her wrist and pulled her around the building so she could see.

Alexandra had in fact only been on the sea-facing sides of Knightsbridge, having never had reason to go anywhere else. She was now greeted with quite a spectacle: some sort of military parcours through which six Knightsbridge students were moving with speed and apparent ease. Alexandra watched as they pulled themselves up a three-metre high wall, jumped off the other side, crawled under a low lying net and then swung across what looked like monkey bars. Several obstacles later, at the finish line, they had to pick up a large hunting rifle and fire at a target.

"Well that explains the gunshots," Alexandra muttered, watching the boys' agile bodies flying through the course in a matter of minutes in amazement .

"Basic training exercise for seniors," Damien explained. "Most people do it – not just the field-ops majors."

"You included?" Alexandra asked, eyebrows raised.

"Of course, when the fourth years do it. Believe it or not, I wasn't born with -"

"-a clever thought in your brain?" Bláth supplied and Alexandra turned around, surprised to find the other girls had joined them. "So what's so interesting over here?" Bláth asked before Damien could open his mouth to defend his intelligence. "Oh, bootcamp. Fascinating. You're late for rehearsals."

"Thank you, Bláithín," Damien said, his words turning cold.

***

Author's Note

Apologies for not keeping up with updates. I'm still in the middle of 'bridging' two sections I've written and I've been rather low on time or inspiration...