I follow them, close enough to hear them speak but far enough that they won’t notice me. Who knows what they’d do if they caught me trailing them?
“—can’t stand this,” a voice drifts back to me. “I feel like he’s taking over my mind.”
“Stop being such a damned girl,” Marcus replies. “He teaches us what we need to avoid the Augurs’ mind-leeching. You should be grateful.”
I edge closer, interested despite myself. Could they be speaking of the creature from the Commandant’s study?
“Every time I look into his eyes,” Zak says, “I see my own death.”
“At least you’ll be prepared.”
“No,” Zak says quietly. “I don’t think so.”
Marcus grunts in irritation. “I don’t like it any better than you do. But we have to win this thing. So man up.”
They enter the training building, and I grab the heavy oak door just before it shuts, watching them through the crack. Blue fire lanterns dimly light the hall, and their footsteps echo between the pillars on either side. Just before the building curves, they disappear behind one of the columns. Stone grates against stone, and all goes silent.
I enter the building and listen. The hallway is quiet as a tomb, but that doesn’t mean the Farrars are gone. I make my way to the pillar where they disappeared, expecting to see a training-room door.
But there’s nothing there, only stone.
I move on to the next room. Empty. The next. Empty. Moonlight from the windows tinges every room a ghostly blue-white, and they are, all of them, empty. The Farrars have disappeared. But how?
A secret entrance. I’m certain of it. Giddy relief floods me. I found it, found what Mazen wants. Not yet, Laia. I still have to figure out how the twins are getting in and out.
The next night, at the same late hour, I position myself in the training building itself, across from the pillar where I saw the Masks disappear. The minutes pass. Half an hour. An hour. They don’t appear.
Eventually, I make myself leave. I can’t risk missing a summons from the Commandant. I feel like shouting in frustration. The Farrars might have disappeared into the secret entrance before I ever got to the building. Or they might arrive there when I’m already in my bed. Whatever the case, I need more time to watch.
“I’ll go tomorrow,” Izzi says when she meets me in my quarters as the final peals of eleventh bell fade. “The Commandant rang for water. Asked where you were when I took it to her. I told her Cook sent you on a late-night errand, but that excuse won’t work twice.”
I don’t want to let Izzi help, but I know I won’t succeed without her. Every time she leaves for the training building, my resolve to get her out of Blackcliff grows stronger. I will not leave her here when I go. I cannot.
We alternate nights, risking all in the hopes that we’ll spot the Farrars again. But maddeningly, we come up with nothing.
“If all else fails,” Izzi says the night before I’m to make my report, “you can ask Cook to teach you how to blow a hole in the outer wall. She used to make explosives for the Resistance.”
“They want a secret entrance,” I say. But I smile, because the thought of a giant, smoking hole in Blackcliff’s wall is a happy one.
Izzi heads out to watch for the Farrars, and I wait for the Commandant to summon me. But she doesn’t, and instead I lay in my pallet, staring at the pitted stone of my roof, forcing myself not to imagine Darin suffering at the hands of the Martials, trying to figure out a way to explain my failure to Mazen.
Then, just before eleventh bell, Izzi bursts into my room.
“I found it, Laia! The tunnel the Farrars have been using. I found it!”
XXXII: Elias
I start losing battles.
It’s Tristas’s fault. He planted the seed of Helene being in love with me in my head, and now it’s sprouted like a misbegotten weed from hell.
At scim training, Zak comes at me with unusual sloppiness, but instead of obliterating him, I let him knock me on my ass because I’ve caught a glimpse of blonde across the field. What does that lurch in my stomach mean?
When the Hand-to-Hand Centurion screams at me for poor technique, I barely hear him, instead considering what will happen to Hel and me. Is our friendship ruined? If I don’t love her back, will she hate me? How am I supposed to get her on my side for the Trials if I can’t give her what she wants?
So many bleeding, stupid questions. Do girls think like this all the time? No wonder they’re so confusing.
The Third Trial, the Trial of Strength, is in two days. I know I have to focus, to ready my mind and my body. I must win.
But in addition to Helene, there’s someone else crowding my thoughts: Laia.