With that still-troubled look on his brow, he turned and met with Maddox just feet away, where Maddox whispered feverishly. I didn’t have the ability to read lips, but didn’t need it. I knew what Maddox was saying. She was asking him if he would train me to fight and defend myself. Darius listened to her and after a moment, patted her roughly on the shoulder. He cast a glance back at our table before exiting the room, and in that moment I’d hoped more than anything that he was up for teaching me everything that he could. I wanted to learn. I needed to learn. Because while it was comforting to know that I was surrounded by a thousand skilled warriors whose job it was to protect Healers like myself, it wasn’t enough. I and I alone was responsible for my well-being, and there was no way I wanted to play the weak and helpless Healer the next time Graplars got inside the wall. And after my bumbled attempt and horrible injury this time, I wanted nothing more than to develop my own talents. Just in case.
Trayton’s hand, soft and warm, closed over mine, bringing me out of my thoughts and back to the present. When my eyes found his, something strange and startling occurred to me. My life, as of the moment that the Graplars had appeared in the courtyard, had become split. Two worlds coexisting within one life. On one hand, I was Kaya: reluctant student to Instructor Baak, Bound Healer to Trayton. On the other, I was Kaya: the Healer who wanted to fight, the girl who couldn’t resist stealing glances at Darius when Trayton wasn’t looking. What kind of person did that make me? I felt terribly guilty for letting my eyes linger on Darius whenever he was near—not to mention irritated at myself for doing so. Trayton was tender, caring, thoughtful, and gorgeous, and I was fortunate enough to be Bound to him. He was sweet to me, and I wanted to be sweet to him. We were meant to have a life together, to share a bond that might someday mean children and a home far away from the trials of war. But first, I had to stop looking at Darius in the way that made my imagination dredge up the night I’d seen him shirtless. After all, he was just a boy. And not a particularly nice one at that.
If I wanted to learn how to defend myself, my options were limited. But just because Darius might teach me didn’t mean that I was cheating on Trayton. Did it?
My eyes widened hopefully. Trayton! Why hadn’t I thought of him?
He smiled and once again, I was taken by how smooth and lovely his lips were. “You look oddly happy for a girl who was very nearly devoured whole last night. Care to clue me in?”
Giving his hand a squeeze, I leaned in close, keeping my voice low. “Would you tell me about katanas?”
Immediately, his eyes darted to Maddox, who didn’t seem to be paying us much attention at the moment. He hesitated before answering, and when he spoke at last, I was certain he was going to refuse my request. “I…I’m not sure what it is that you’re asking me for exactly. I could tell you about them, but any more would be—”
My shoulders sank in hopelessness, cutting off his words. He didn’t have to finish speaking. I knew what he’d been about to say. Protocol. It would be against Protocol for a Barron to teach a Healer how to utilize weaponry. “Any more would be giving me at least the basics in how to defend myself. In case you’re not around.”
We watched one another for a long time, a heavy silence hanging between us.
At last, Trayton sighed, as if he’d been defeated. “Can you meet me in the armory tonight? After dark?”
It was difficult to resist a grin. Why I hadn’t thought of just asking Trayton before never occurred to me. He was skilled, talented, well trained, and what’s more, he liked me. I could think of no one better to teach me. “I’ll be there.”
His smile was genuine, but a bit guarded. I wondered if he was worried that we’d be caught. Not that there was anything to catch. Not really. I hadn’t asked Trayton to teach me—not yet. I’d only asked him to tell me about katanas, which, as far as I knew, wasn’t against Protocol or any of the rules that the headmaster was here to enforce. Bending the rules wasn’t the same as breaking them, though I intended to do that as well. I’d break their rules to save myself from both the indignity of having to wait for someone else to rescue me and from the danger of not knowing how to stand against a Graplar if no one was around to save me.
Maddox interrupted my thoughts. “Class starts soon, Princess. We should walk.”
I started to stand, but Trayton held fast onto my hand, his eyes on mine. “Kaya…”
He almost said no. I could see it in his crystalline eyes, the no burning there on the edge of his irises. He almost changed his mind about meeting me in the armory and showing me what a katana was and what it could do. But he didn’t. He just spoke my name, his tone full of doubt and fear and wonder that maybe what he was about to do wasn’t exactly the right thing, that maybe he was too close to breaking Protocol—something that meant a great deal to him. Trayton, after all, wasn’t just a rule follower. He was a rule enforcer. An admirable trait, for certain, but one that I desperately hoped he could set aside for just one night. And then maybe just one more.
I met his gaze, but said nothing, hoping that Trayton wouldn’t utter so much as a whisper of his doubts. To my amazement, he didn’t. Instead, he squeezed my hand as he raised it to his lips, then brushed a feather-light kiss against my skin.
But it was more than a kiss. It was more than the first time that Trayton’s lips had pressed against my skin, no matter how lightly. It was a promise. He would show me how to wield a katana. He would explain the parts of the weapon to me. He would bend this rule for tonight, and that was all I could hope for.
Squeezing his hand, I released my light grip and so did he. Then I stood, following Maddox out the door. She had a distant look in her eye, one that made me wonder exactly what she’d been talking to Darius about. “What’s going on, Maddox? You seem distracted.”
Maddox nodded, steering me toward the building that was home to Mr. Ross’s classroom. “I started to ask Darius if he’d train you, but he interrupted me to give me some bad news. Apparently, several Elder Barrons have decided that many guards would do better on the battlefield rather than guarding Healers inside the confines of schools, despite the fact that they lack Bound or Soulbound Healers. So they’re making a list of guards who will be moving to the front. No one knows yet. Darius was seriously going out of his way to warn me.”
My hand found my mouth in shock and my feet came to a sudden halt. “You’re going to war? But Maddox, you aren’t trained! And you have no Healer!”
As if I were telling her anything she didn’t know already.
Foregoing her usual snark, and playing it off with casual indifference—which I could tell was just barely covering her panic in a thin glaze—she said, “Darius said if he can keep my name off that list, he will. I trust him. I’m just…concerned.”
I was concerned too. Fak that, I was worried. The very idea of Maddox facing down Graplars and soldiers and some horrible, seemingly invincible king seriously frightened me. I liked Maddox. She was probably the best friend I had ever had. Which was weird, considering how obnoxious she could be.
Resisting the urge to hug her—something told me that Maddox, no matter how much she was hurting, wouldn’t exactly be very receptive to anything vaguely sensitive—I started walking with her again, and tried to find the right words, words that might lessen her stress level some. “Why don’t we ask him to train both of us?”
Maddox sighed. “And give them more reason to send me outside the wall? No, thank you. I’m clinging to my Healer duties as long as I can.”
And that’s when it hit me. Not only was Maddox afraid to die. She was afraid to fight at all, afraid to train, for whatever reason. Making the decision not to push the issue any further, I said, “It’ll be okay, Maddox. If you trust Darius, I trust Darius.”
Apparently, I’d chosen well, because she smiled at me through the shadows of her troubled expression. Once we made it to Mr. Ross’s room, I dared a change of subject. “I was thinking of asking Trayton to train me. You know. Instead of Darius.”
r />
She cast me a sidelong glance that said that that was a pretty terrible idea, but apparently she wasn’t in the mood to berate me for choosing poorly, because she said, “Trayton is Darius’s best student. But…why not just learn from the best?”
I shrugged in response, resisting the urge to say so much more. I couldn’t tell Maddox about the way my stomach jumped whenever I pictured Darius shirtless. Hell, I hadn’t even told her I’d seen him shirtless. And there’s was no way I could find the words to say what it had felt like, what it had meant to me when Darius had let his guard down and shown me just a brief glimpse, a tender moment of fragility. Because the truth was, it had meant more to me than I would dare give voice to. I couldn’t admit those things to myself, let alone Maddox.
But at least one thing was settled: tonight, after boring Healer classes and my usual extra duties in the rose garden (this time thanks to my outpouring of laughter when Instructor Baak referred to Healers as nature’s way of blessing Barrons with long life), I was going to spend some time with Trayton, learning about katanas, and maybe, if I was lucky, forgetting about the look in Darius’s eyes when he’d spoken of his loneliness.
C H A P T E R
Fifteen
Once the last rosebushes had been mulched, I hurried back to the dorms with Maddox, made myself presentable, and headed to the dining hall to grab some dinner before they closed down for the evening. I hadn’t seen Trayton since this morning at breakfast and was hoping to see him at dinner, but when my eyes swept the hall, all I found was disappointment.
Maddox filled a tray with food, and I took my now usual seat at the corner table. To my surprise, I had company. Company that I’d not been expecting.
Melanie forced a smile. “Well, well, if it’s not the walking bandage. I heard your encounter with a Graplar went as expected, ending with you cowering in a corner.”
My defenses went up in a flash, and I opened my mouth to tell her just what had happened—that not only had there been two Graplars, but that I’d not only assisted in taking them out, I’d also beheaded one entirely on my own. Even with my bumbling, that was an impressive feat. But then I remembered the story that we’d told everyone, and closed my mouth again. But only for a second. “What do you want, Melanie?”
Her smile struck me as somewhat sadistic and absolutely surreptitious. She crossed her long legs and I could sense several pairs of eyes falling on them all around me. There was no doubting Melanie was beautiful. But skin could only get you so far. “I came to ask a favor of you.”
Everything inside of me, every cell of my being screamed “NO!” before I parted my lips to speak, but curiosity got the best of me. “A favor? What favor?”
She seemed to gauge me for a moment before speaking. “There are changes coming to Shadow Academy. To all the schools, really. And I want your assistance to make those changes a bit easier on my Healer. You do want to help a fellow Healer, right?”
“Why should I make things easier on your Healer, and exactly what are you talking about?” Maddox had mentioned certain changes that had apparently been set in motion, but was that what Melanie talking about? Putting guards on the battlefield would hardly affect her Healer. Or were the changes she was talking about something completely separate from that?
“I’d like you to tell the headmaster that you’ve made a terrible mistake and that you believe that my Healer, David, would make a far better Healer to Trayton than you. Then I’d like you to request to be my Healer.”
It only took me a second to hear what she’d said, and a second more for my laughter to come pouring out of me. Melanie? My Barron? I didn’t think so. “Why on Tril would you think I’d be even remotely interested in the idea of switching, especially considering that no Bound Healer and Barron have ever switched before?”
“That’s not true. Two have switched throughout history, though it’s nothing that the Elder Barrons will discuss. Mistakes are made on occasion. And with the right assurance and insistence, it can be done. As for why…well, let’s just say that a little bird witnessed a certain Healer limping into a certain teacher’s quarters the other night. And how would that look to the headmaster?”
My heart froze solid. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, to deter Melanie from her path of thinking. The truth was that seeing me waltz into Darius’s cabin, limping and bleeding or not, wouldn’t look harmless at all to any of the authoritative figures on campus. Darius could be fired, or worse. And whatever punishment they doled out for me couldn’t possibly compare to the threat that the headmaster had given me when I’d first learned of his existence: my parents could be made to suffer for my insubordination. Would they be killed because I’d entered a teacher’s quarters unchaperoned? Maybe. I doubted it, but not enough to laugh off Melanie’s threat. “Who told you that?”
“David did. He was on his way back to the dorms and saw you limping up the steps to Darius’s quarters. Curious, isn’t it, that you’d choose a teacher’s bedroom over the hospital wing.”
“It’s not what it looked like.” It wasn’t, but I knew that even if Melanie believed me, she wouldn’t admit it. Not when she thought she could get something out of it. Regarding her smirk, I said, “Besides, you can’t prove it.”
Her smile turned sinister and dark. “I don’t need to prove it. I just need to whisper it in Trayton’s ear.”
For a moment, my heart stopped. Would Trayton really believe her over me? Maybe. The very notion that she would tell him about where I’d been that night was enough to raise the alarms inside of me, at any rate. “Why would you want me as your Healer?”
“I don’t. But I do want David as Trayton’s Healer. We have an…understanding, shall we say.”
And that’s when the pieces clicked neatly into place. With David as Trayton’s Healer, it would still be a challenge to get Trayton to break the rules of no Barrons coupling, but with me as Trayton’s Healer, it would be impossible. All this because she wanted my Barron to be her boyfriend, despite the fact that Trayton would never agree to go against Protocol like that. Melanie would destroy lives to acquire anything that she couldn’t rightfully have. She was completely delusional. I shook my head. “The headmaster will never agree to it.”
“See to it that he does. Or I’ll tell Trayton what David saw…with a few added details of my imagination, of course.” She winked at me and left the table. My stomach turned over, sour and full of tension. By the time Maddox returned with a tray full of food, I wasn’t the least bit hungry anymore.
I debriefed Maddox over some spicy chicken and a salad, and as I spoke, she looked more and more furious with every word that crossed my lips. By the time I’d caught her up on all things Melanie, I thought her head was going to explode.
“That girl is insane! You aren’t actually considering it, are you?”
Flashing Maddox my best what-are-you-stupid look, I said, “Of course not. But what am I going to do? It’s not like it sounds innocent, even without Melanie’s imaginary details about what happened.”
After I was finished eating, Maddox dropped off my tray and started walking me back to the dorms for the night. As we moved out the door, she said, “What did happen, anyway? You’ve been kinda quiet about the details. I mean, I’m not saying that any of it is my business, but…what happened that night between you and Darius? Because it’s clear that something did.”
Stopping just outside my door, I considered exactly how much to tell Maddox. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. It was that I wasn’t exactly comfortable revealing what had transpired that night. I turned to Maddox. “Darius saved my life. We talked—just talked—and I learned something about him. Something I’ll never tell anyone else. So this is the last time I’ll speak of it. He helped me, Maddox, and I owe him my silence for that.”
She eyed me for a bit, and I could tell that she was itching to know what secret I was keeping. But to her credit, she didn’t ask. She merely shrugged. “Good enough for me. Now what are we going to do abo
ut Melanie?”
Biting my bottom lip, I shook my head. I had no idea what to do and was completely out of options. One way or another, Melanie was going to get her way. Unless I thought of something fast. But nothing came to mind.
A light filled Maddox’s eyes and my heart lifted for a moment. “Of course there’s the obvious. You could always tell Trayton yourself. That would take the wind out of her sails.”
My heart’s upward journey didn’t last. I couldn’t tell Trayton. He’d be furious. I looked at Maddox and was about to give voice to my doubts, but she shoved me inside the suite and whispered, “Better he hears the truth from you rather than lies from someone else.”
As I walked into my bedroom and caught a glimpse of the fresh roses that Trayton had sent over that morning, I knew that Maddox was right. I had to tell Trayton what had happened the night I was bitten. But I didn’t have to tell him everything.
After a long, hot bath and a lot of silent personal debate, I dressed in a fresh uniform. Maddox knocked on my door and we headed out to the armory. We were barely out the door when she grabbed me by the sleeve. “Listen. If I disappear for a while, just carry on like I’m right there, okay?”
I shot her a questioning glance. “Why? Where will you be?”
“I’m going to talk to Darius, see if he’s heard anything more about the rule change.” She looked at me as she opened the door to the outside and winced, as if expecting me to smack her—which I was totally debating doing as she spoke her next words. “And ask him if he’ll train you.”
A sigh escaped me. “Maddox, I told you, I’m going to ask Trayton to train me.”
The look in her eye said that she already knew what Trayton’s response would be. But even so, I was still asking him. Trayton liked me, and I had an idea that Maddox didn’t know how much. But I did. Every time Trayton looked at me, I could feel how much he liked me, how much I liked him. Every time he touched me, no matter how brief or casual, an electric charge passed between us. Trayton cared about me. Of course he would want to help me.