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I made a low sound in the back of my throat, disgusted with myself that I’d lasted all of two seconds before thinking of the human again. Would I last as long on the climbing wall? Would my distraction make me the first cadet to fall from the wall and plummet through the air?
“At least the holds do not move,” I said to myself.
Kort snorted out a laugh as he strode up to me. “Do not remind me about that wall in the maze.”
I swung my head to him. “You had to go over the lava?”
Kort shuddered and rubbed his chalky palms together. “When I got there, bits of alien monster were still being devoured by it.” He inclined his head to the towering wall dotted with holds. “This is a dream in comparison.”
He had a point. This challenge would not be easy, but we were Blades. It should not kill us. Unlike the trials, which had been intended to end us all. “It feels good to have the trials behind us.”
“But the battle of the schools is still ahead of us.” Zenen had joined us, but he looked almost excited when he gazed at the wall.
I’d almost forgotten that the end of our second term—and the first full term as Blades—would be marked by a competition that pitted the schools against each other. My gut clenched with the reminder that I would not be able to go through with the same group of cadets who’d been in the maze with me. Those cadets would be my opponents because each of them was in a different school. Jess would be my opponent.
Thoughts of battling against Jess brought memories of being in the secret tunnels slamming into me. How was I supposed to work to defeat her when the only thing I wanted was to hold her, protect her, make her mine? The better question was how was I supposed to go back to being tutored by her in my room without wanting to touch her and kiss her and feel her body pressed against mine again?
A bellowed name brought me back to the climbing wall, as Zenen grinned, ran to the wall, and started moving up hand over hand. Then Kort’s name was called, and he grinned at me.
“See you at the top.”
I shook out my arms as more names were called and more Blades started their ascent. By now, the cadets who’d been first up the wall were engaging in one-armed dagger fights, and those of us left on the mat had to leap aside as the first cadet up the wall came crashing down. He roared and slapped his hand on the mat after he landed in a crouch then he raced back to the wall.
My tentative route was all but forgotten when my name was called. The wall was swarming with cadets, and more were dropping from above, making even getting to the wall to start a bit of an obstacle course. I eyed the cadets clinging to holds and decided to take a different approach. Instead of leaping for a hold, I leapt for a cadet.
He yelled in protest as I stepped on his shoulder, but I was already jumping onto a second cadet’s back. Body parts were easier to grasp than wall holds, so I was able to catapult myself from cadet to cadet until I was almost halfway up the wall where there were fewer climbers.
I paused for a breath, glancing below to assess any threats. Apparently, the cadets I’d used as human holds hadn’t been happy about it, and they were all coming straight for me. One held a sparring dagger between his teeth so he could move quickly and be ready to slash when he reached me.
Using my feet to push myself higher, I climbed to one side around a pair of grappling Blades until I reached Kort, who’d just forced a cadet off the wall. For a moment, I wondered if he’d try to dispatch me as well, but he tucked his dagger into the sheath on his leg and nodded to the ceiling. “Together?”
I grinned at my friend and reached for an overhead hold. That was when I felt a searing pain across the back of my calf, and my leg slipped from its hold. Kort turned at my scream, reaching out a hand with wide eyes as I fell from the wall. The air rushed around me as I pinwheeled my arms and tried to right myself, but the pain from my leg overtook me. Until the pain from hitting the mat consumed that.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Jess
The hot water beat on my shoulders as I stood under the shower with my head bowed and let the pressure melt away all the tension of the past few days. Tension that wouldn’t have been there if I could stop obsessing about Torq and what had happened in the hidden passageways.
I swept my hands across my face and down my hair as I pivoted, breathing in the steamy air and the scent of lavender soap, one of my few girly indulgences. Why was I making this such a big deal? So what if he kissed me? So what if my knees became jelly and my brain short-circuited the moment his lips touched mine? So what if I actually moaned out loud?
I squeezed my eyelids together as I remembered my throaty sound echoing back to me in the stone tunnel. So much for playing it cool. Not that I’d ever been great at being any kind of cool.
I’d always been the nerdy girl who studied all the time and never got noticed. I’d been the one who didn’t go to dances or get asked to prom. So why was a hot, hunky Drexian kissing me?
It couldn’t be because of the tutoring. He’d already conned me into that. It wasn’t like he had a secret that I was keeping for him either.
I shook my head. Did he actually like me? Was it possible that the gorgeous alien was into me?
Flipping off the water, I stood dripping in the shower before daring to step outside and into the cool air. I swiped at my eyes before opening them. I wasn’t going to find any answers by staying in there, and I wasn’t going to get them by hiding out in my quarters, which was what I’d been doing since the night in the tunnels.
“I’m not hiding,” I said, challenging my own assessment of the past two days, as I stepped an inch from the stone shower enclosure and snatched a towel off the hook. “I’m regrouping and reevaluating.”
Yeah, right. Regrouping, reevaluating, and running was more accurate.
Then again, as my mother would have said, running was what I did best. I’d run as far away from my going-nowhere-fast small town as I could as soon as I could. Then I’d left Earth and taken a place at the Drexian Academy that was literally across the galaxy.
