She raised a brow. “So I can’t leave when I want?”
He kept his focus on the blackness of the tunnel before them. “You can leave. Once you’re safe. I told you that.”
She fell silent. Misgivings rose. Had she made the wrong choice? Trusted the wrong side? Reyes had saved her. He had helped her, all along the way. Was it all a sham? Maybe she’d been alone so long she didn’t know how to read people anymore. Or was he really that good?
He glanced at her sideways, his eyes crinkled. “You still don’t trust me?”
“I don’t know you.”
He barked a short laugh. “There are only two others alive who know the real me better than you, Lena. I’m not sure what more I can do to reassure you.” A frown dipped his brows low and then disappeared.
What, because he’d told her about his childhood? And shared some poetry? What kind of life did he lead if that meant she knew him?
And who are you to question his life choices, Miss Desert Hermit?
She mulled it over, chewing her lip, fingers moving restlessly over the edge of the control panel in front of her. Reyes left her alone, immersed in his own thoughts. All too soon, the train slowed. The blur of lights began to thin and separate. A light grew ahead of them.
The tunnel opened into a huge space much like the one they had left behind. Multiple levels of metal-grated floors were connected by stairs. This area, however, was not empty. People moved around with purpose. Lena took them all in. Reyes had an army.
The train eased to a stop. Reyes’s fingers tapped on the panel, and it powered down. The train sank beneath them, and a humming eased and then stopped. The door on the side of the cabin opened.
“You ready?” He waited for her, hip propped on the panel, the picture of relaxed ease though barely tamped energy rolled off of him.
She took a deep breath. She’d made this decision. She’d roll with whatever came of it, as she always did, and she’d take what she needed to make it all right. She shrugged one shoulder.
“Ready.” Her answer earned her a smile.
He turned and gestured her out. She walked alongside him as he talked.
“It doesn’t look like much down here. But I promise there’s more to us than sewer tunnels and a gutted building.” He waved at a young man who rose from a desk at the end of the platform. The young man nodded and saluted.
Saluted? Military.
Reyes responded and then placed his hand on the small of her back, guiding her down a short flight of stairs toward a set of double metal doors along the back wall. He went to the wall, palmed a small box with a button atop another. When he took his hand away, the top button had lit.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her. “Do you need a bathroom?”
“Yes, and yes,” she answered.
The doors in front of them slid open to reveal a small room. He walked in. She hovered, hanging back as she looked for the exit.
He had turned and smiled, but his face showed the edge of nerves. “It’s an elevator. It’s like stairs. It’s going to take us up.” He pointed up.
“Oh.” Lena walked inside the box. The doors closed behind her.
Reyes leaned around her and pushed a numbered button. Eighteen. He took a long, slow breath as the box shimmied slightly.
Her stomach dropped. Her hand flashed out to the wall.
He spoke, his words a little quick. “I hate the damn things, but it’s perfectly safe.” He nodded to reassure her, then continued, his voice distracting her from the strange sensation. “I’m going to take you to the dining hall. You can use the restroom, and we’ll get you something more substantial to eat. Then I’ll take you to your quarters, and we’ll figure out—”
“My quarters? I have a room? Already?”
Reyes nodded. “It won’t be much. After all, Fort Nevada is just a school.”
“A school?” Her brows knit together. Her stomach lurched, and it wasn’t because the elevator had stopped moving. “I thought this was like a military fort or something? That you were an army planning to take on the Council of Nine?”
The doors slid open, and he stepped out, his breath coming out in an audible sigh of relief. He turned back to her. “Well, yeah,” he said, “that’s the idea. But we’re also the school.”
The words barely penetrated. Behind him, painted on the wall, an eagle soared over words in some long-irrelevant language on a scrolled banner. Above the bird, large, black-framed lettering proclaimed, “The Ward School.” At the bottom, below the scroll, the curving words, “Out of Darkness, Light” closed the crest.
The elevator tried to close, and Reyes’s arm shot out to hold it back. “Lena?” He reached out to pull her toward him.
She shook him off. “The Ward School? You brought me to the Ward School?” Her voice was shrill in her ears. Her father had warned her about the Ward School. He had told her over and over that it was dangerous.