Chapter 18 #2
I ignored the urge to throw my blade through Elias’s skull before I turned and ran.
Riotous laughter from other cadets faded the farther away I got.
I let the mocking sting me for a moment before shutting it out.
I couldn’t afford to let their amusement bother me.
I didn’t have time, and I needed to conserve my energy. They were about to hunt me.
“ What do you need from me? ” Shera asked urgently.
“Nothing. Just keep talking to me.”
“I’m going to come to you. I’m not going to let them kill ? —”
“If I’m screaming, I need you. Otherwise, please stay put.”
I was hit with a powerful wave of aggravation from the other end of our pathway. I ran for about a minute, debris crunching beneath my feet, before realizing I didn’t know where I was going.
Our secret place had to be where I discovered the corpse or where we’d thrown knives together.
I turned northeast, toward the ravine, and reached the former place within minutes.
While surveying the area, I didn’t notice any disturbances, signs, or clues and decided I needed a higher vantage point.
It wouldn’t help me find the rings, but if I could spot the other teams’ banners and avoid large groups of cadets trying to capture me, I might escape this unscathed.
A mammoth tree loomed before me. Its base was at least four feet wide and at least forty feet tall, with multiple branches thick enough to hold my weight.
“I’m going to have to climb a tree.”
“ It’s not that difficult ,” Shera answered.
“Says the cat with sharp claws.”
The tree trunk was covered with rugged bark that should offer me traction. I reached for my dagger, felt an extra sheathed beside it, and smiled. The twins must have slipped another into my belt before sending me off. I still doubted a lot about myself, but I knew how to pick damn good friends.
I struck one knife into the bark, then another farther up, alternating as I scaled up the tree. My abdomen burned, but I had to get out of sight. I was painfully reminded why Gavin had insisted that I never skip core exercises.
When I reached a branch three-quarters of the way up, I secured my footing and leaned against the trunk, my shoulders sagging while I caught my breath.
Arms outstretched for balance, I stepped forward.
The branch didn’t waver beneath my weight, so I kept going.
I focused on my own steady breathing, then the rustling of the trees in the wind, until I heard voices fading in and out to the west.
The branch beneath my feet was still wide enough that I could turn. To the east, tucked beneath an alcove on a cliffside, I saw a flicker of bright yellow. The twins’ team was red. The other two were blue and green. But until I found the rings, I didn’t care about their little test.
I could see groups of cadets splitting up to cover more ground.
I waited until I saw a few different groups move away from the ravine.
Two heads with bright red hair—one long, one short—caught my eye as they moved north within a group of six.
That had to be the twins. There was no way Mavic was going to leave Mina’s side.
I let relief cool the nervous burn in my chest, but the relief was only temporary.
Two groups of four large male cadets I’d already pegged as aggressive were moving toward my clearing.
Of course, the largest and meanest would come my way.
But largest and meanest didn’t mean smartest. I shuffled backward on the branch until my back was pressed against the tree trunk, which dwarfed my form, making it easy to hide.
They would have to peer closely to see me, and only if they were smart enough to look up.
“Check above the cliff over the water!” one cadet called while pointing to the cliffside above the ravine.
“ Are you nearby? ” I asked Shera, struck with worry that I never confirmed she was somewhere safe. “ Are you hidden? ”
“They won’t find me. I’m close enough to hear, but I’m in a den that I… borrowed from some nearby foxes that… left.”
Borrowed certainly meant stole , and left meant got eaten .
“ Gods, Shera. ” I cringed. “ You’re ruthless. ”
“ You really shouldn’t blaspheme the Selvaren ,” she warned me.
“Something tells me they’ll forgive me.”
“This bitch is too fast,” grumbled a lanky cadet with shortly cropped hair from below. “She definitely went this way.”
“ I’m going to rip out the throat of the next person who talks about you that way ,” Shera growled down the pathway.
“ They’re just words, Shera. ” I was quickly learning whose words to value and whose to discard. I pressed my back into the tree trunk and watched, head turned, as two of the cadets waved the all clear from the top of the cliff.
“They don’t deserve you.”
“Maybe she went farther east,” one of them suggested.
“She has her own task. She can’t hide forever.”
A heavy gust of wind drowned out the rest of their conversation, and they abandoned the clearing, heading east. Some were bound to return, but I’d hopefully given myself time to find whatever clue Elias left for me.
My heart was frantic at the thought of never finding those rings, but if he expected me to wander around like a lame deer to be easily captured, he was wrong.
When they were gone, I checked all directions and climbed down. I slipped on the last bit but was close to the ground, agile, and prepared enough to land on my feet. I bent my knees to soften the blow, but the pain was still sharp.
A few of the trees nearby had holes in their bases.
I darted between them, digging around for clues.
The fourth tree had a hollow trunk, with a small opening almost hidden by branches and dirt.
I slowly reached in, ensuring nothing lived inside, then sifted through the debris and found a single glass jar in the far corner.
It was too clean to have been there very long, with three tiny scrolls inside, individually wrapped.
Scrolled in dark ink on the jar’s lid was one sentence:
Since I know you’re curious about things that come in threes.
“Gross.” I quickly and quietly unsealed the jar, then unrolled the scrolls to find a single line written on each, together forming… a poem? A riddle? I rearranged them until the progression made sense.
“ Shera? ” I asked.
“ Are you hurt? ” she immediately replied.
I let out a sad laugh. She was almost as overprotective as Gavin was. “ There’s a riddle inside this jar. Are umbras good at riddles? ”
“Umbras are good at everything.”
She seemed so sure of herself that I read it to her twice:
I sparkle with vows, but I’m hidden from sight, Hiding in depths where day meets night, In twilight’s embrace, the world around me dances with light.
“ How lovely ,” she drawled sarcastically after the second read-through. “ A commander, a thief, and a poet. ”
Something twisted in my chest when I read the word vows , because I couldn’t remember the ones I’d made four hundred years ago. I sniffed and shoved away the ache in my chest.
“ The first line is obviously the rings ,” I told Shera. “ The second… where day meets night. ” A sunset, perhaps. Or where light meets dark. “ A sh ? — ”
“ Shadow ,” she said at the same time.
“Nice.”
“ Takes one to know one ,” she told me. The largest nearby shadow was made by a massive oak tree reaching over the ravine.
I approached the edge and glanced down into the water, halfway up the rock.
But shadows moved with the sun. Unless he knew exactly when I would arrive here, the edge of that shadow as a guide could only be so accurate.
“ Moonlight in the water ,” I told Shera. “ The third line is water. It dances with moonlight at night. The rings must be in this ravine. ”
At least I knew how to swim. My eyes pricked, and I smiled. He’d made sure of that, too, in hot springs west of Brinnea.
“There are flesh?eating fish in that ravine. Lots of them. They attack in groups.”