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She calmly met my eyes and said, “I forgot my goggles. ” She glanced from me to Yas. “Just in time, apparently. ” She stood and dusted off her knees, giving me a smile. “I hate missing a pool party. ”
“Oh my God. ” My voice was ragged, barely a rasp. “You killed him. ”
She gave me an impatient look. “I’m better than that. ”
“You did. ” I pointed at the twin hilts, sticking out of him like an X. “His heart. You staked him. ”
“Anatomy 101, Acari Drew. I’m a Guidon—I know exactly where his heart is. ” Looking almost bored, she drew her finger down to a point just below his left shoulder, between her knives. “His heart is exactly between these two blades. The kid will be fine. ”
She pulled out those blades, and Yasuo’s body shivered. So he was really alive?
Oh crap. He was really alive.
And he’d be really pissed when he came to. I wavered to standing. “We should get out of here. ”
“He’s out for a while. ” Seeing my questioning look, she grinned. “Not my first rodeo, girlie. ”
She was cleaning her blades on the hem of his uniform sweater, her posture so cool, it ratcheted her several notches up in my estimation.
“Whose side are you on anyway?” she asked.
My eyes shot to hers. “What?”
The word brought on a fresh bout of coughing, and she waited till I was done to say, “If I’m not mistaken, this Trainee just tried to kill you. ”
I gazed at Yasuo’s face. His features were slack, but his chest rose and fell evenly now. Alive, just as she’d said. He looked so peaceful—more peaceful than I’d seen him since Emma’s death. “He’s confused. ”
“Confused?” She nudged his leg with her foot. “These guys aren’t worth the trouble, if you ask me. ”
I thought of Josh, my Australian pal. “Some of them are okay. ”
She rolled her eyes at me as though I’d lost my mind. “If you’re into that sort of thing. ”
Kenzie had obviously not bonded with a vampire. Lately, I’d thought a lot about strength versus power, but she didn’t mess with thoughts of who controlled whom. She fought. She survived. She was pure strength. A warrior.
I vowed to be more like her.
I hopped into step, catching the door before it swung shut. “Right behind you. ”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
This thing with Yasuo had to stop.
Maybe if I could definitively prove that Emma was alive when she left the ring, he’d finally understand that her death wasn’t really my fault. In fact, Alcántara had probably targeted her way back in our first semester, when she’d pulled out of the original Directorate Challenge.
I needed to get closer to the truth, which meant getting closer to Alcántara. It all came back to him.
And, I just realized, he was currently eyeing me again. I shifted in my seat, pretending to write something in my notebook. Every time he looked at me, I felt it, like a warm breeze blowing over my skin or a little shiver of relaxation at the base of my spine.
I girded myself. Sat tall. I’d lost my best friend. My other best friend was doing his best to kill me. And it was all the fault of this vampire.
He was lecturing on assassination techniques. Historical examples. Issues of distance. Questions of proximity, of position. And I wasn’t hearing a word he was saying. I was plotting.
I dared not confide my plans to Carden…and where was he, anyway? I hadn’t seen him since that intense night we’d spent together.
Had I done something to make him keep his distance? I replayed our final conversation in my mind. I hadn’t said anything too strange about Ronan, right? I would’ve known at the time if he were upset.
He was probably just busy.
