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The thought sent a wave of despair through me. Did I truly think I could find one cadet in the vast range of mountains? Did I honestly believe that I could track her down before Dom?
I sank down and let my knees touch the grass, closing my eyes and breathing in the loamy scent of the forest. I allowed the sounds of creatures scuttling across dried leaves and leaping from branch-to-branch wash over me, as I searched out the rhythmic thump of boots hitting the ground or crackling branches. If there were cadets near me in the woods, I couldn’t hear them.
I opened my eyes, determined to retrace my steps and take another path toward the mountains. Then my gaze lit on something on the ground, something that did not belong with the grass and leaves and moss. My heart pounded and my mouth went dry, as I picked up the hair clip I’d seen Jess wear so many times.
I straightened and closed my fist around the clip, the metal digging into my flesh. She had been right where I was standing. I had not been wrong. I was on the right path. I was going to find her.
I started to run.
Chapter
Fifty-Six
Jess
The hands on my shoulders made me jump and spin around quickly, fully expecting to find my teammate behind me. It wasn’t him.
I took a few steps back when I recognized the Drexian cadet grinning at me. He was the one who’d helped me with my blade earlier. “I know you. You’re a Blade. Your name is…Dom.”
He inclined his head at me, almost as if bowing and as if he hadn’t just scared me half to death. “Correct on both accounts. Good memory, Assassin.”
I swept my gaze around the woods, but there was no one else. “What are you doing here? Are the Blades even allowed to be searching yet?”
“We are, but I got separated from my group.” He slid his gaze to both sides. “It seems like you did, too.”
“My team is nearby.” For some reason, I didn’t think I should tell him that I didn’t know exactly where they were, although the cadet seemed friendly enough.
He held up his hands. “I know this is a competition, and we are supposed to be opponents, but I do not think I should leave you alone in here. Why don’t I help you find your team?”
That seemed reasonable, and I couldn’t think of a reason why I shouldn’t accompany him. He was right about one thing. I did not want to be in the forest by myself. “That works. Like I said, they’re nearby and probably looking for me.”
He nodded, and we fell in step beside each other with him taking a slight lead. “Are the other members of your team also humans?”
I shook my head. “They spilt us up. One human per team. I guess they don’t want to handicap any one team with all of us.” I could hear the bitterness dripping from my voice and wondered if I sounded like a whiny bitch.
He glanced at me. “Truly?”
“I don’t know if that’s why, but they did split us up.”
I waited for him to say something obnoxious and cocky about humans.
He made a low sound of disapproval in the back of his throat. “You might be smaller in size than my people, but you are just as capable and clever. Any Drexian who underestimates you is a fool.”
This was a surprise. “I couldn’t agree more.”
The leaves crunched under our boots as we continued trudging through dense trees without any sign of other cadets. I was starting to think that my fellow Assassins might not actually be looking for me.
“Tell me what it is like to be a human at the Drexian Academy,” Dom said, as he held a prickly vine to one side for me to walk beneath. “I imagine it must have been a shock when you arrived.”
No one had asked me this. I thought back to stepping off the transport and peering up at the black stone buildings that loomed overhead. “It’s pretty different from schools on Earth, even our military academies. I think these might be the oldest buildings I’ve ever seen.”
He paused and wrinkled his brow. “Earth does not have ancient buildings?”
“We do, but not where I’m from. I grew up in a pretty new country, so we don’t have castles that are hundreds of years old.”
“The Drexian Academy is thousands of years old.”
I shook my head at that. “It’s incredible. I can’t imagine a building being around for that long. In my town, if something was fifty years old it was a historic relic.”
