Dan the Barbarian: A Gamelit Harem Fantasy Adventure by Hondo Jinx

Author:Hondo Jinx [Jinx, Hondo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Harem
ISBN: 9781718095243
Google: dgIFvwEACAAJ
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2018-08-09T17:32:12+00:00

33

We’ll See…

Afterward, they cuddled and talked.

For Dan, pillow-talk Nadia was a surprise. He’d seen two other sides of her–streetwise thief and shiny, happy RA–but now she was relaxed and happy and sweet. This felt like the real Nadia. And if it was, he liked the real Nadia very, very much.

When he told her this, Nadia shook her head, looking genuinely troubled. “Don’t be fooled,” she said. “Let’s just say that I have a wild side. If you knew the real me, you’d kick me out of here.”

“So dark and mysterious,” Dan joked, but he pushed her to tell him about her life.

They talked for a long time.

Nadia was an orphan, who’d grown up in foster care in Philadelphia and the suburbs. Life had been tough, and she’d bounced around a lot, so she was always the new kid.

Early on, she understood that teachers, who knew that she was a foster kid, treated her differently. Some teachers paid her little attention, probably assuming that she wasn’t worth their time, since she’d likely move away soon; other teachers treated her with suspicion, as if she might steal their chalk or possibly infect the other students with lice; and the worst teachers of all patted her head and made every day a pity party.

Meanwhile, Nadia knew that she was smart and capable, so she became very competitive at an early age. Whenever she stayed in a school district for a few months or longer, she rose through the academic and athletic ranks.

No matter how well she performed, however, Nadia always learned the same, bitter lesson; a lesson learned every year by countless kids in schools across the nation. You can fight your way up the ladder, but skill and hard work won’t get you to that final rung. In too many towns, you can’t earn head cheerleader, quarterback, or king or queen of the prom unless you come from the right family.

Nadia still tried. She craved success back then, she explained, seeming embarrassed and sad and perhaps a little angry. As a kid, she had wanted so badly to impress everyone and had worked hard to be the best at everything, hungry for some accomplishment that would prove that she had risen above her circumstances.

“It was bullshit,” she said, shaking her head. “All bullshit.”

Meanwhile, outside of school, life in the chaotic, often brutal foster system taught her stealth and struggle. By six, she had learned to steal food for her foster siblings and herself. By seven, she’d learned to steal without getting caught. Soon after, she learned how to read people, fight, and escape any placement.

After fleeing several abusive foster placements, she spent most of middle school in juvenile detention and group homes, where she met dozens of streetwise kids, from whom she learned pickpocketing, burglary, and the secrets of both the underground and the knife culture.

Through it all, however, she maintained her dual realities. Whether she was stealing food to feed her foster siblings or learning the correct angle at which to plunge a blade into a victim’s kidney, she maintained perfect behavior and grades at school.

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