The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy

Chapter 0619

Luca and Daphne make appreciative noises as I explain, as fast as I can, Faiza's plan for me over the next few weeks. That I'm supposed to take time practicing how to control the way I am perceived in a room of strangers. Not only how to draw all attention to me in a room, but also how to disappear and become someone unnoticeable - a maid, a member of the serving staff. How to play it sexy and lure people away into corners, or how to play it so stupid that people think I don't understand what they're saying. Just to...become whoever I need to be to get my job done.

"Why on earth does she want you to do this?" Luca asks, frowning at me and then at all of the stuff. "Why this, when the war is coming to such a...crux?"

My voice is a little softer now, some of the excitement leaving it. Because this is something that Faiza and I discussed quite seriously and at some length. "Faiza thinks that I'm more useful as a spy than on the battlefield," she says quietly. "Neumann and she have been giving me good reports. She thinks it's more likely that I'll be... behind enemy lines, rather than on them."

"Whoa," Daphne says, her eyes going wide. Next to her, Luca goes rigid at the idea.

"I know," I say, my shoulders curling in a bit under the weight of the responsibility. "She's taught me a lot about how to do things unseen - how to pick pockets and locks, how to slip something into someone's drink - but in order to do that stuff...I've got to get into the room in the first place. Which sometimes means...not being Ariel Sinclair. Or Ari Clark. I've got to learn to become...other people too. Or at the very least, other versions of myself." "Holy crap," Luca whispers, staring at me curiously. "That is...no small task."

"This is all on loan, by the way, but she wants me to practice being...comfortable in other people's skin. Adopting new identities, making it convincing." "Other people's skin and their hair, apparently," Luca murmurs, lifting a shaggy brown wig experimentally. "Who on

just laugh and snatch the wig from his hand, returning it to

she rifles through the second box to look at me with interest. "I would have...no idea how to do any of that." "Yeah, me neither," I say with a little sigh, shrugging my shoulders. "That's why she wants me to go practice out in the real world." "How

come in, babes," I say, grinning and reaching out a hand to rest on

for a long

done, I sit up quite prim and proper, and press my fingers delicately to

Academy, and I like long

out laughing, giving me a shove.

a workaholic with high-fashion ambitions, and I like to dress my princess friends in very skimpy gowns -" "You

and that I don't mean any of

says, smiling between us even as he shakes his head, though I can feel his anxiety down outbond. "As cute as