The platform I landed on wasn’t as flat as I thought. My foot slants at an odd angle, and my ankle twists.
I yank myself out of sight down an undulating passage and throw what’s left of my attention at the 16thyear guy somewhere above me with a silent apology.
My glim floods my ankle with soothing warmth. A grunt sounds above, and the guy stumbles with a yelp.
A thorn of guilt pokes deep into my gut.
He’ll be okay. A minor injury, easy for the nurses to patch up.
I just have to get through this exercise without hurting anyone else.
In my final descent, I scrape my elbow, so shallowly and suddenly I can’t even tell who my glim steals its healing energy from. I stagger to the ground in front of our instructors.
Jovak looks me over. “Do you need a nurse, Miss Devine? It looked like you had a tricky landing up there.”
I fake a laugh and shift my weight as if testing my legs. “No, I think I’m okay. Just glad to be done.”
I walk back to the larger group, and the first thing I see is a couple of 14thyears clustered around Asher.
“So your brother’s good at divination and you’re good at this kind of thing?” one of them is saying with a coy smile.
The other primps her hair and grins. “Brilliance does run in families. You’ve been keeping it quiet.”
A flare of possessive anger roars into being in my chest. I take a step toward them, hands clenching, ready to toss them away from my match.
Cadance’s laughter behind me stops me in my tracks.
I can’t.
Not even just because of the charade we’re putting on. Because after I activate Asher’s glim for him, he should probably find another partner—one who won’t have to worry about hurting him every time she’s near him. He deserves better than that.
Better than me.
Better than…
We sprawl on our backs on the grass, gazing up at the stark blue sky in our secluded nook in the park. Asher passes over one of the bottles of lemonade we bought, and I prop myself up on my elbow to take a sip without choking.
As I flop back down, he tilts his head to one side. “Do you wonder much what your match will be like?”
My pulse wobbles in an uncomfortably giddy way. I’ve wondered a lot whether I could hope that my best friend willturn out to be my match—but I could never admit that. It would make everything so awkward.
And… shouldn’t I hope fate links him to someone who can elevate him to better circumstances rather than another pariah like me?
I shrug to cover my reaction. “I guess everyone must, right? But it’s still more than five years away. Hard to imagine ‘settling down.’”
With anyone other than the boy beside me, that is.
I look at Asher, but he keeps gazing at the sky.
“What do you think about it?” I have to ask.
The soft smile that touches his lips sends a gentler flutter through my veins. “Fate probably does the best it can. But… if it doesn’t get things quite right, we still have choices. We know how we’ll be happiest better than anyone, right?”
My mouth goes dry. I want to think he’s saying that he’d pick me even if we’re not fated… butshouldI even want that?
Before I can sort out the turmoil in my head, he sits up and grabs his own lemonade. “That Illusion test was killer, wasn’t it?”
The change of subject brings a rush of relief. I don’t want to have my dreams punctured just yet, even if they’ll have to be later.