Soulbound (25 page)

He looked about and found me quickly. When he ran over to where I was holding Maddox, he didn’t miss a beat. “What direction? How many?”

“Just one that I saw. It ran west, but it bit Maddox.”

His eyes scanned the darkness. “It won’t go far. They prefer to feed rather than injure. Stay here and stay still and quiet. I’ll get it.”

He took off at a sprint, but I could barely make out the sound of his footfalls. Tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped from my chin to Maddox’s hair. After a long silence, a horrific screech filled my ears, ringing through me. Raden returned a moment later, a triumphant look in his eyes, and scooped Maddox into his arms. As we hurried to the hospital wing, I swore that I would figure out how the Graplars were getting into the school, and I swore silently to Maddox that I would stop it from happening ever again.

I
awoke the next morning in a chair beside Maddox’s hospital bed, my head lying on her blanket. Maddox’s neck was covered with a thick white bandage, her face pale. When she saw me stir, her eyes brightened. I glanced around the room, happy to find that we were completely alone. “Maddox, how are you? Do you need anything?”

She started to shake her head, but then winced at the pain the action had caused her. “I’m fine. Really.”

“What were you doing outside? I thought you were confined to the parlor at night.”

“It’s stupid.” She sighed, but I could tell she was holding back her movements. She must have been in a great deal of pain. “I heard the dining hall was open late and serving fruit pastries.”

I threw her a disbelieving look. “That is stupid. How’s your neck feel anyway?”

“Sore.” For a moment, the Maddox that I knew was gone, replaced by someone who seemed softer, more fragile. She looked at me, and lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “I’m so scared, Kaya.”

I flicked a glance at her bandage, uselessly hoping to get a look at her wound and see how it was healing. “You don’t need to be scared, Maddox. Raden killed the Graplar that bit you.”

“That’s not it. I mean, that’s part of it.”

“So what’s the rest of it? What are you afraid of?”

Her eyes looked haunted, as I had never seen them before. The sight of them frightened me. “I don’t have a Healer, Kaya. And I’ll probably never have a Healer. And I have no idea what I’m doing with a katana. I’m scared that I’m going to die. Maybe not now. But the next time I encounter one of those things.”

My voice caught in my throat as I shook my head again. “You can’t think like that, Maddox.”

Maddox sat up in bed, her expression hopeless. “Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? All of it’s true.”

It was hard to imagine what it was like to live in a world full of people who knew that they could be healed by the touch of a hand, but that you couldn’t. I reached out and squeezed her hand. “When you get better, I’ll teach you everything I know about how to kill Graplars.”

A small ray of hope returned to her eyes then, and I was grateful to see it, grateful to see a glimpse of the
girl that I’d come to care about. But guilt came crashing down hard all around me. I should have offered to show her what I’d learned before. If I had, she might not be lying in bed, injured right now. “Thanks.”

Hours later, at the Master Healer’s insistence, I finally exited Maddox’s room in the hospital wing. Maddox didn’t need me there. Her wounds had looked far worse than they actually were, and now she was well medicated and cleanly bandaged. The Graplar’s bite had been treated to the best of the Master Healer’s ability, and when the Master Healer wasn’t looking, I’d retreated it with some of Darius’s amazing healing cream. After that, it was a matter of waiting. All I had really been doing for the past three hours was holding Maddox’s hand and apologizing for something which I had absolutely no control over. So, with needless guilt weighing down my every step, I let go of Maddox’s hand and moved into the hallway.

Trayton was waiting for me in the hall—for that, I was truly grateful. Despite the fact that he hadn’t been in the courtyard when I’d needed him. He stood as I approached and cupped his hand over mine, intertwining our fingers. His eyes were locked on mine, as if he were trying to gauge my well-being. “How is she?”

My heart was so heavy I could barely speak. “They say she’ll be back in action in two or three days.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But where were you?”

A flash of guilt crossed his face. “It’s not always easy to hear through the dorm walls. Believe me, if I had kn—”

I cut off his sentence with a look and sighed. “This is exactly why Healers should know how to fight, Trayton. If I’d had a katana in my hands, I could have protected her.”

Shaking his head, he did his best to sound reassuring—and failed miserably. “Don’t beat yourself up wondering what might have been. And don’t forget that Maddox is a Barron. Even if she’s not trained in the art of fighting, she has a natural ability that far surpasses anything that even a well-trained Healer could accomplish.”

I shot him a look. “And why wasn’t she trained exactly? She is a Barron, after all.”

Trayton looked past me down the hall. When he met my eyes again, he lowered his voice, as if what he was about to say were a secret. “The headmaster thought that if she had training, she might eventually use it in an effort to leave the academy.”

Disgust filled me. “So instead of teaching her a skill to defend herself and risking her running away, he’d rather keep her ignorant and ensure she stays here? That’s ridiculous.”

“It may seem ridiculous, but it’s for her own good.” He shrugged, and then went back to looking down the hall toward Maddox’s door. “Besides, like I said, Maddox has a natural ability. With or without training,
she could defend herself in a dire situation, I’m sure.”

The urge to argue with him was undeniable. I don’t know who’d been put in charge of deciding who had a natural ability to do what, but Maddox seemed far more like an Unskilled than she did a Barron. I could have taken down that Graplar ten times quicker than Maddox could—even if she had been armed. But there was no use in arguing with him. Trayton had grown up believing that Healers were Healers and Barrons were Barrons, and that’s just the way it is. Opening his mind would take more than a five-minute conversation in the hospital wing.

My thoughts drifted to the wall, and I wondered about possible weaknesses in it. Darius had assured me that the wall was solid, and that Graplars could not possibly get through or over it. But what if he was wrong? What other way could Graplars possibly be getting inside? “Do they have blueprints of the surrounding wall at the library?”

Trayton narrowed his eyes a bit in suspicion. “Of course.”

“Good.”

“Can I ask why?”

As we moved down the hall, I answered, “Because I want to know how Graplars are getting inside the wall, and I think that’s a good place to start. Don’t you?”

“The blueprints aren’t going to show you anything that you don’t already know or haven’t already seen.
Besides, don’t you think Headmaster Quill has patrols searching every inch of that wall even now?” He held the door open for me, and as we crossed the campus I mulled over what he was saying.

“The outside of it or the inside?”

“What? Where the patrols are searching?” At my nod, he replied, “The outer perimeter, of course.”

I straightened my shoulders, certain I’d found the answer to our dilemma. No one was searching the inner perimeter, so clearly, the problem had to be there. It wouldn’t be the first time that Barrons’ arrogance had been their downfall. “Then I’ll start my own search inside.”

“Tomorrow.” Trayton smiled, as if he were trying to pacify me. “You need your rest tonight.”

As we passed the courtyard, I glanced up. Darius’s window was dark.

I couldn’t help but wonder where he’d gone.

S
o of course the Outer Rim has been designated the most dangerous area in all of Tril, running through all three continents—that is, Kokoro, Haruko, and Kaito—in an oval shape.” Mr. Ross breathed in, his breath wet and nasally, before continuing his lecture. I was leaning my cheek on the heel of my palm, trying desperately to keep my eyes open. “It is highly suspected that this ring of danger is due to the elevation of each of those areas. Graplars, as we all know, thrive best in high elevations, and all along the naturally formed Outer Rim are the highest peaks throughout Tril. Sadly, this area is also home to many Skilled villages. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost on this front, and so the Outer Rim has become the most active part of the battleground and our fight against Darrek. If you’ll turn to page—”

The door opened abruptly and someone moved inside. Whoever it was, I was blissfully thankful that their
presence had silenced Mr. Ross for the moment—even though I knew that silence would be painfully short. I could feel the breeze of their swift movement on my arms as they stepped past me to the front of the class, but didn’t bother looking to see who it was. I was too close to sleep and the blissful dreams that would take me away from Mr. Ross’s boring history lessons. Who cared about the history of the war against Darrek anyway? The point was, we were fighting him. For reasons that had yet to be explained to me. It was yawn inducing. Almost coma inflicting.

Just as I was starting to feel myself slipping away into a nice nap, a hand—warm and strong—closed over my biceps and squeezed, as if to shake me from my stupor. I opened my eyes and looked up to find Darius staring down at me. Under his breath, he said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

Confused, I blinked at Mr. Ross, who nodded and gestured to the door. So with his permission, I gathered my books into my satchel and made my way out the door. I followed Darius in wondering silence for several yards, until we were out of earshot of any of my fellow students, before I hurried to his side and whispered, “What’s going on? Where are you taking me? How did you get me out of class?”

He didn’t even look at me as he replied. “You’re welcome for that, by the way. Probably the dullest lecture I’ve ever had the misfortune of overhearing in my life.”

As we rounded the corner of his cabin, Darius said, “Wait here, but stay out of sight. If someone sees an unguarded Healer milling about, we’re fakked. We’re going on a little field trip, and we’ll need supplies. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Leaning with my back against the wall, I kept my head down and tried to act casual. Darius seemed to do nothing without express and distinct purpose—aside from irritate me, which I suspected was solely for his amusement—so I trusted that this, too, had its purpose. Several long, grueling, worry-filled moments later, Darius returned with two rucksacks, stuffed full of the supplies that he’d said we’d need. As we moved west, toward the south gate, I dared a question. “Where exactly are we going?”

He didn’t pause in his steps, didn’t change his breathing or even so much as blink when he replied, “We’re going to the Outer Rim.”

I very nearly stumbled, but managed to keep my feet moving forward. Everything that I had heard about the Outer Rim said that it was very much a place that you wanted to avoid—and if you couldn’t avoid it, you really wanted to surround yourself with many talented Barrons. It was the most dangerous area of Tril, full of more Graplars and soldiers from Darrek’s army than anyone cared to think about. Grabbing Darius by the sleeve, I tugged in a near panic. “Are you crazy? We could die out there!”

Turning his head toward me, he paused briefly, his demeanor calm and cool. “We could die in here too, or have you forgotten?”

His eyes dropped to my thigh and I released my grip. When he moved forward, I followed. He had a point. Nowhere was safe. Still, that didn’t mean I understood his apparent death wish. As we approached the gate, Darius muttered, “If Raden asks, you’re gathering moss sprigs for the Master Healer.”

The south gate was relatively quiet, but as we approached, Raden had his list of names of people who were allowed outside at the ready. He smiled at me in recognition, but furrowed his brow as he looked over the list. “Darius, I have you here, but I’m afraid Kaya’s not on the list.”

Darius looked bored and disinterested, and Raden’s eyes turned to me. Shrugging, and trying to ignore the way my heart was racing, I said, “I’m gathering moss sprigs for the Master Healer.”

Raden chuckled then and made a note on his list. “That explains it. Darius’s favorite task. Be careful out there, you two. See you tomorrow.”

Darius strode forward, still looking bored, and I followed. We were steps from the now open gate when Raden grabbed the handle of the second katana that Darius was wearing—my katana. His brow furrowed with suspicion. “What’s this then? You’re bringing a
spare weapon? Expecting trouble while on a simple herb-gathering mission, Darius?”

We were caught. Raden knew that something was up, that we were headed outside the wall for nefarious reasons, and he was going to report us for sure. I tried not to look panicked, but wasn’t certain I was pulling off cool and confident, as my heart was practically jumping out of my chest.

Darius shrugged Raden’s hand away casually. “The blade’s a bit pitted. I was working on cleaning it when I got wind of this little trip, so I figured I’d bring it along. It was either this or stare at tree bark while she picks weeds.”

Raden’s laughter followed us out the gate and was only cut off by the clank of metal as it closed behind us. Once we were down the hill several yards, I hurried to Darius’s side. “We’ll be gone overnight?”

“Yes. It takes that long to get where we’re going. Fortunately for us, moss sprigs only grow in one area of Tril. So the story’s believable enough.”

“So…what exactly are we doing? Hunting Graplars?”

“No. We’re actually going to practice your stealth as we make our way to the Outer Rim. But that’s not the real reason I’m taking you there.” He stopped moving and pointed to my rucksack. “You might want to change. If we do get attacked, the training uniform is so
much easier to maneuver in than the Healer uniform.”