Page 88 of Under Restless Skies

My cheeks feel hot, especially when I realize that the guards are watching our interaction.

He reaches out and touches my face. “Where shall I accompany you next?”

“I need to check on Celine, then go to the city to see my brother. It’s a lot of stairs, though.”

“Are you requesting me to carry you?”

An amused chuckle leaves my lips. “Of course not.”

“Then let’s go.” He gives me that charming smile that makes my breath stop and my heart race. The worst is that he knows what it does.

I rush ahead, unwilling to look at his face more than necessary, at least for now, but he catches up with me soon.

“Your friend should be fine,” he says. “She’s in her dorm, right?”

“I don’t want her to wonder where I am.”

He tilts his head. “That makes sense.”

We climb the stairs quickly, and Alayel waits for me outside while I approach the women’s dormitory. My friends are both in our room, playing a game of pawns and dragons. Celine is losing badly, as more than half of Nelly’s pieces are flipped and have become dragons, while the second-year recruit’s pieces are all pawns except for one.

“I’ll be back later,” I say, even as Celine gets up, obviously eager to have an excuse to abandon the game. “I’m going to visit my brother.”

“Don’t take long,” she says. “We’re going to the Outer Beach tonight.”

“What for?”

“Party!” Celine grins.

Nelly nods. “I can’t wait.”

They didn’t look out the window, didn’t see the gliders crashing, tumbling from the sky, the bodies falling to the ground. Maybe that’s why the academy doesn’t want us to see the attacks. They don’t want us to be mournful before we’re prepared to deal with death. Perhaps I should have stayed indoors and not dared to look.

I force a smile. “Oh, fun. I’ll be back by then.”

When I step out, Alayel is pacing the hallway, but he stops and turns to me the moment he sees me.

“That was much faster,” he says.

“I just wanted to check on them.”

He gives me a cheeky smirk. “You do know that dragons can’t breach our walls, right?”

“The rider breached it,” I say in a lower voice.

He opens a door to a quiet staircase, and we start descending. “Still not a dragon,” he says. “So much so that you’re alive to tell the story.”

“Well…” I almost mention that the rider said he didn’t want to kill me this time, but it feels strange, treasonous, perhaps, as if for some reason it meant some odd alliance between me and the invader.

Then I recall the staff. Protect them. Did the rider leave it to me on purpose? It doesn’t make any sense.

Alayel touches my shoulder. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

“You didn’t. I was just lost in thought. Do you know where they put the staff?”

“I bet some kind of vault somewhere, and I’m sure it’s too well protected for you to reach it.”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t thinking that. It’s just… So weird for a rider to breach the castle. And then they didn’t even stop the ball?”