He looked at me, pausing, as if waiting for me to agree with him. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t about to agree to anything.
He cleared his throat before continuing. “You convinced your guard Maddox to acquire the teaching services of Darius, knowing that Healers are not allowed to train. It is your blatant disregard for the rules that has brought you here today. You should thank Trayton—he knows what’s good for you. He knows the difference between right and wrong. You could take a page out of his book.”
I sank deeper into my seat, fuming. Talking back would only get me into more trouble, and would likely only hurt Maddox more. So I said nothing, and waited for the chubby dictator to finish his rambling.
“Healers do not train to fight, Kaya. If I so much as glimpse you practicing whatever maneuvers that Darius has taught you, it will be your parents who are made to suffer for your insubordination. Am I making myself clear?” His threat shot through me and I sat motionless, the image of my parents’ faces locked in the forefront of my mind.
My word came out in a whisper. “Abundantly.”
“And Darius…” Headmaster Quill’s attention turned on him then, though his tone turned much kinder. “I think it would be a good idea if you were transferred to Darkmoon Academy. They have need of an advanced level instructor, and I think you may fit the bill. A move certainly is warranted and may in fact be necessary.”
“It’s not, Headmaster.” As Darius spoke, his voice cracked slightly. When he spoke again, his tone’s usual strength had returned. But I had already seen behind the curtain. “A move is not necessary. But I would like to request a month’s leave of absence in order to get my head together and put this behind me. Behind all of us.”
The headmaster considered this briefly before nodding. “I think that would be wise. Consider your request granted. Trayton will cover your classes, with Raden’s assistance, while you’re away.”
Darius barely let him finish his reply before he interjected, “If it’s all right, I’d prefer to leave immediately.”
Headmaster Quill merely nodded. He scribbled a note on one of the papers on the desk in front of him before turning eyes back to our little group. “Kaya, you’ll serve extra duties for the next month.”
I shrugged, uncaring.
“You’re dismissed. All of you.”
As we exited, Darius remained behind with the headmaster. Trayton held open the door for me, but refused to meet my eyes. I passed by him so closely that I could feel the heat radiating from his skin, could see his Trace peeking out from behind his dark hair. The urge to apologize was immediate and intense, but passed as quickly as it had come. After all, I wasn’t in the wrong. I had merely wanted the ability to defend myself on the battlefield—nothing more. It wasn’t like I was merely sneaking away to spend time with another boy for no reason.
As I turned my head away, I was tempted to stop moving, stop walking past him and say something—anything—to acknowledge him in some small way, the way that he was ceasing to acknowledge me. But in the end, I did continue walking, and stepped out into the hall, where a boy was standing. Sandy blond hair, caramel brown eyes, light freckles dusting his nose and cheeks. He looked nice enough, though he didn’t smile. “Pleased to meet you, Kaya. My name is Edmond. I’ll be your guard from here on out. Now if you’ll follow me, I’ll make sure you get some lunch before heading back to your room to study.”
Immediately, my eyebrow rose up in an arch. Study? I didn’t recall anything at all about saying I’d planned to study. Not that I was opposed to it or anything. Studying was important. But the last thing I wanted to do after facing down Graplars and terking off Trayton was study the proper way to administer a tonic.
With another glance at Trayton, who’d already moved halfway down the hall, I followed Edmond toward the dining hall, missing Maddox already. It worried me that she was guarding the north gate now, especially after what had happened there this morning. Picturing her, I imagined she was likely clearing away the dead Graplars. Their breath was so rancid that I could only imagine the smell of Graplar corpses. With visions of rotting blue flesh locked in the forefront of my imagination, I moved into the dining hall, the need for food squashed by an onset of nausea.
Edmond walked me to an empty table at the center of the room and pulled out my chair for me. With a polite nod, Edmond left me alone at my new table and went in the direction of the food line. Slumping in my seat, I looked around, completely convinced that I’d see no one of consequence. No one I wanted to see, anyway.
Two tables over, however, I spied black hair and pale skin. It hurt that Trayton was sitting somewhere other than with me, but what really stung was the company that he was keeping. Melanie tossed her hair over her shoulder in an annoyingly feminine way, her laughter rolling through the dining hall, like poison in my ears. Neither looked my way. I slumped further down in my seat, hoping that I’d do the impossible and disappear. Or at least that they wouldn’t notice me at all.
What was this? I knew he was hurt—mad, even—but was that really cause to start hanging out with Melanie? Especially after I’d told him of her twisted plans to get them together?
As I waited for Edmond to return, I tore my thoughts away from Trayton and his motives for hanging out with Melanie, turning them instead to the Graplars, and just how they’d been getting inside the wall. Everyone seemed to think that Graplars were so incredibly stupid, just big, hulking masses of muscle with little brains. But if that was the case, how were they getting inside? And doing so in such a way that completely hid how they were accomplishing it? It was mind-boggling. Unless…
I sat up in my chair, gently biting the inside of my cheek in deep thought. Unless someone was helping them get inside.
But who? A guard? A Healer? An instructor? My eyes flicked to Melanie.
She certainly was devious enough. But why? She had no reason to help Darrek, did she? She did hate Healers though, so I made a mental note to keep her on my list of potential suspects. There was also Instructor Baak, who seemed crazy enough to do just about anything. Mr. Groff loved Protocol too much, so he was off the list—unless being a total dek was enough of a reason to accuse someone of this kind of treachery. And Headmaster Quill was certainly evil enough, but did that put him in league with Darrek?
I chewed my bottom lip in contemplation. I’d just have to keep a eye on everyone, it seemed.
C H A P T E R
Twenty-nine
My bed was covered in various piles of notes from each of my classes, but I wasn’t reading any of them. Guilt about lying to Trayton all this time was robbing me of the ability to really focus on anything else. Edmond had dutifully been insisting that I attend class and eat right for almost a week now, and I had smiled politely through it all. It was only as I lay in bed at night that my true feelings surfaced. Darius was gone—off to wherever he needed to go in order to escape the trouble he’d gotten me into. It was his fault, after all. If he’d never pitted Trayton against me, Trayton never would have recognized me on the battlefield, I was sure of it.
And Trayton was here, but not really here at all. I had barely seen him since that day in the headmaster’s office, and hadn’t spoken to him at all. Whispers in the hall said that he and Melanie had been spending an inordinate amount of time together, and I was beginning to wonder if the rumors were true. Or if it was my place at all to say anything about how much time Trayton spends with anyone else in secrecy.
The familiar squeak of the window being opened drew my attention. Maddox slipped inside, closing the glass behind her. “Again with the dramatic moping? You’ve been like this every night this week.”
Flicking my eyes to the parlor door, I shushed her with a wave of the hand. “Quiet! Edmond might hear you!”
Maddox rolled her eyes. “Does he ever come in without knocking? Of course not, apart from an emergency situation, that would be against Protocol.”
I flipped through a paperback copy of The Art of Healing and sighed. “You har
dly ever knocked.”
“Well, that’s the difference between Edmond and me. I don’t give a fak about Protocol.” She grinned and gingerly jumped onto the bed beside me, sending notes flying. “Have you talked to Trayton yet?”
My heart sank further into the dark depths inside of me. “Little difficult to talk to him if I can’t even manage to run into him.”
Maddox raised an eyebrow. “You sleep one room away from the guy, Kaya. It can’t be that hard to get him alone. Not if you really wanted to.”
“Are you saying I’m avoiding him? Why would I avoid him?” My tone was two decibels past irritated, and I was beginning not to care if Edmond heard us or not.
“Because you worry that you hurt his feelings by sneaking around with a hot commodity like Darius and bonding in a way that you and Trayton never have. There’s an intimacy that goes hand in hand with training, after all.” As my jaw fell to the floor, Maddox shrugged. “Sorry. But you did ask.”
Flopping back into my pillows, I groaned. She was right. Completely, annoyingly right. Not about the intimacy with Darius—I couldn’t even think about what she might be implying when she said that—but how was I suppose to approach Trayton to talk about what had happened, to defend my actions, when I’d known all along that it was wrong to lie to him about what I was doing every morning? I felt enormously guilty.
And twice as guilty for kind of enjoying my time with Darius. Not just the training, but his presence.
My stomach churned. No way. I hated Darius, and had every reason to.
Trayton and I were Bound, which meant that we shared a bond that would last an eternity. I had to get Darius and training and lies out of my head, had to fix whatever was broken between Trayton and me, and move forward. Like Darius was doing, wherever he was.
“Come on.” Maddox tugged my arm until I was reluctantly standing. “You might want to grab a sweater or something. It’s chilly out tonight.”
As I slipped my arms into the sleeves of the softest sweater I owned—one that my mother had knitted me out of purple sheepsilk, I said, “Where are we going?”
“We aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to talk to Trayton and straighten this whole thing out. Think of it this way, if he’s going to hate you for doing what you did, he should at least listen to your reasons. I know for a fact that Trayton’s at a party right now. You head into his room and wait for him to come back. I’ll go to the party and coax him to call it a night. Then you corner him in his room, talk it all out, and there you go.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Maddox. How am I going to get past Edmond? He’ll never let me into Trayton’s room, and even if he did, he’d never leave us alone together.”
She pushed me toward the parlor door, and then changed direction, nudging me to what I thought was the wall. “Minor setback. But not one I hadn’t thought of. I’ll distract him while you sneak by the window.”
“Window?!” Freezing in my tracks, I shot her a look filled with amazement. “Maddox, I’m not tiptoeing along the ledge outside just to talk to Trayton. Are you crazy?”
“Do you like him?”
“Of course I do.”
Maddox folded her arms in front of her and gave me a look that spoke volumes. “Do you love him?”
At first, I couldn’t reply. I liked Trayton, yes. And just seeing him was enough to make my heart flutter. But love? I wasn’t sure. Avery was the one who had given her heart to every boy who handed her flowers, not me. So I didn’t know if I loved Trayton. But I did know that it was breaking my heart that he wasn’t speaking to me.
Maddox must have seen the answer on my face, because she jabbed a thumb at the window and said, “Then get out there, and figure it out. I’ll go distract Edmond.”
A million questions filled my mind. What if I fell? What if I somehow managed to sneak into Trayton’s room and he still wouldn’t talk to me?
“Kaya…” Flipping the latch, Maddox pushed the window open. A light breeze brushed my skin, and I was glad I’d put on the sweater. Because one way or another, Maddox was pushing me out the window. “Don’t make me volunteer you for private tutoring with Instructor Baak.”
Stepping over the windowsill and onto the four-inch-wide ledge, I forced my eyes to focus on the darkness, counting each brick as my fingers moved along them. I inched my way toward Trayton’s window, until my back was no longer touching window space, but brick. Before closing the window, Maddox said, “Don’t fall. And if you do fall, aim for the grass. Tuck and roll.”
Rolling my eyes at her eternal wisdom, I kept my focus on my heels as they moved along the ledge, breathing slowly in and out, and hoping like hell I didn’t die. It seemed like an eternity before I neared the parlor window. From inside, I heard girlish giggles that probably belonged to Maddox, but sounded unbelievably foreign. Maddox didn’t flirt. I wasn’t even all that convinced that Maddox was interested in boys. But she was proving to be incredibly loyal.
A slight breeze rushed along the building, sending goose bumps up my arms, but I pushed forward, inch by treacherous inch, until I came at last to Trayton’s window. The terrifying thought gripped me that it might be locked from the inside, but when I pushed on the glass, the window slid open with ease. It didn’t even squeak.
Stepping over the threshold, I rubbed some warmth back into my arms and looked around. It was the first time I’d ever seen Trayton’s room, and though I felt a bit wrong about having snuck in, it was nice to be close to him again, in some manner of speaking. A fresh pile of laundry was occupying the chair by his desk, which was covered with books—mostly manuals on different fighting stances, but some on the history of weaponry. His floor was clean and clear of any kind of mess, unlike mine, and his bed was made. It felt strange to be inside his room without permission, and I had to fight the urge to scramble back out the window and abandon Maddox’s grand plan.
After a while, I sat on his bed. The room smelled spicy, warm, and very much like Trayton.
Along the headboard of his bed was a row of thick candles, and I imagined Trayton lying there, reading up on war materials, his cozy pillow stuffed neatly under his head. The image was completely endearing, and at once I missed his company more than I had all week. My body sank into the soft mattress, and I lay back, counting the minutes, wondering all the while what I was going to say to Trayton when he walked through that door.
The bed was so soft, so welcoming, that I didn’t realize that I had fallen asleep until I heard the door close with a determination that suggested that Trayton had immediately noticed my presence.
I sat up, resisting the urge to stretch, and met his eyes. Words formed in my mind and faded away again, so quickly that I didn’t have time to snatch them from the air and hold them out as an offering to his good will. His body was full of tension, and the look on his face said that he wasn’t exactly happy to see me. He growled, “What are you doing here?”
A strange relief shot through me that he hadn’t emphasized the word you, like he’d been hoping to find someone else waiting for him in his bed. As quickly as I could manage, I found my voice. “I wanted to talk to you. To see you.”
He paused briefly before sighing, and I couldn’t tell how mad he really was that I’d snuck into his room without permission. “Well, you’ve seen me. What do you have to say?”
“You’ve been avoiding me all week.”
“With good reason.”
Score one for Trayton. Suddenly, my skin grew incredibly warm, and I slipped the sweater from my arms. Was it really that hot in here, or was there something about guilt that made a person feel like they’d caught fire? I chose my next words carefully. “Don’t you even want to know why I was training?”
He removed his shoes with a casual flair, as if this conversation was already finished, and he had already won. Not that anyone should be winning. “Because you’re drawn to Darius and share his recklessness.”
“Recklessness? Is that how you see me, Trayton? Because if so, you need
to take a closer look.” My voice had risen, and I didn’t care if anyone heard. I was tired of being discounted, just because I was a Healer. “I just want the same thing that you have—the knowledge and training to protect my family and friends.”
He pointed a finger at me, his eyes dark and serious, his voice a low growl. “It’s not your place to defend anyone.”
“And it’s not your place to tell me what my place is!” I stood quickly, my jaw so tight it was aching. It wasn’t fair, the way he was treating me. It wasn’t right that Trayton wanted me to submit myself to rules that I heartily disagreed with, despite my fervent objections. “I’ve been told repeatedly that I’m supposed to stand on the sidelines of a battle and wait for someone else to rescue me. But I’m not just a lowly Healer, Trayton, I’m a person, and I deserve the right to know how to stand up for myself, just in case you aren’t there to save me.”
“I will be there. Every time.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I’ve been training for a reason? What if you weren’t there to rescue me? What if Graplars got into the school and you weren’t by my side at that exact moment? I have a right to defend myself.”
Trayton shook his head. “Maybe it would be different if you’d been defending yourself, but we both know that you were outside the wall, fighting Graplars with complete disregard for the rules. Rules that are in place to protect us, Kaya.”
“Rules that are meant to control us, you mean.” I was seething. “You worry too much about rules, Trayton. Too much about people’s perception of you.”
He seemed to take a moment then to let my words fill his ears, and to really consider what it was that I was saying. “Kaya…I would have taught you. If you would’ve insisted, I would have—”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” My tone wasn’t accusing in the least. It was matter-of-fact. Because we’d already been down that road, and Trayton had adamantly said no to the idea of teaching me how to fight. I met his eyes, hoping that we could somehow come to an understanding. I was wrong, yes. But I was wrong for a damn good reason. “We both know that. And none of the knowledge and skill that I learned from my lessons with Darius could have been acquired without a little deceit. I’m sorry that I lied, Trayton, but I had little choice.”