Chapter 68: Don’t Lose Each Other

The four selected groups gathered at the training grounds the next morning, and the instructor waited until the murmuring stopped before he explained the exercise. Each student would enter a different section of the grounds, and their chosen teammates would be scattered across the course. They would have only limited communication, short signals sent through academy devices. The objective wasn’t simply to finish, since each group had to retrieve three markers and return together, and if one person abandoned another, the entire group would lose points.

Roxanne looked at Isla, Tessa, and Elias standing beside her. "So we’re supposed to trust each other while the academy makes that as hard as possible," she said.

The instructor smiled. "Exactly."

The gates opened, and Roxanne was sent into the forest alone. Isla headed toward the lake, Tessa toward the combat grounds, and Elias up the ridge trail, and within a few minutes none of them could see one another. Roxanne felt the old urge to take control, to work out where everyone was and steer them all from a distance, and it sat in her chest like an itch she couldn’t reach. Then she reminded herself that she had chosen these three because she trusted them, and she followed her own route instead.

Her checkpoint sat in a hollow ringed by birches, and it held two markers instead of one. One was clearly visible on a stump in the open, and the other was tucked under a heap of dead branches. She crouched and checked the scent on both. The obvious one carried a faint chemical edge, as though it had been handled recently and carefully, and she pulled the hidden marker out from under the branches. It was the right one, but the search had cost her several minutes.

Her device buzzed against her wrist. TESSA — I NEED A MINUTE. Roxanne started to turn toward the combat grounds before she caught herself, because the forest lay between them and she had her own section to finish. She had to trust Tessa to handle it.

On the combat grounds, Tessa was facing a series of moving targets and padded swinging arms set up to overwhelm anyone who tried to fight straight through them. She started to do exactly that, took a hit across the ribs, and stopped. Then she remembered how Roxanne fought, waiting for the pattern to show itself and changing her own approach when it did. She ducked under the third arm, used the fourth to knock down a target, and finished the sequence with a laugh. Her device buzzed in reply. TESSA — HANDLED.

Roxanne read it and smiled, and the tension in her shoulders eased for the first time since the gates had opened. She hadn’t rescued Tessa, and Tessa had handled it on her own, which was the whole point of the exercise.

A few minutes later another message came through, this time from the academy itself, warning that Isla had fallen behind. Isla’s section was a maze near the lake, and she had taken a wrong turn early. Roxanne stopped walking with her jaw tight and thought about breaking the rules and going after her. Then her device buzzed again. ISLA — DON’T COME. I’VE GOT IT. Roxanne laughed under her breath, half relieved and half annoyed on Isla’s behalf. "Stubborn," she muttered, and she kept moving.

Up on the ridge, Elias reached the final marker first. He could have grabbed it and finished his section immediately, but something about the placement bothered him. The marker sat on a clean, obvious path, and he crouched and studied it for a while before he understood that lifting it would trigger a false route for whoever came after him. He left a signal marker beside the path, a bent branch and a scratch on the rock, and sent a warning through his device before he took the marker at all.

Roxanne received it while she was climbing the last rise. She stopped and read it twice. Elias could have finished first and moved on, and he had chosen to slow down and think about the rest of them. He wasn’t only competitive, and he actually thought about the team. Her choice the day before had been the right one.

Eventually the four of them found each other again near the finish gate, and they were exhausted and irritated. Tessa complained about the swinging arms, rubbing her ribs and swearing she would have a bruise the size of a plate by morning. Isla complained about the maze and insisted it had been designed to insult her. Elias said the academy’s idea of fun was questionable at best, and Roxanne laughed so hard she had to lean against the gate.

One final task remained, which was to cross the finish line together. Nobody was allowed to finish early, and they all knew it. They lined up at the edge of the clearing and moved as a unit, matching stride for stride, and crossed the line at the same instant.

The instructor announced the results that afternoon. Roxanne’s group wasn’t first, because another group had completed the course faster. But her team received the highest trust score of the day, since nobody had abandoned another member and every student had completed their own section. The Moonstones’ group had also performed well, and Liam loudly complained that Roxanne’s team had beaten them.

Jace made it worse immediately. "Maybe she doesn’t need you anymore," he said. Liam looked personally betrayed, and he turned to Roxanne as if she might deny it. She only shrugged.

As everyone drifted away from the board, Kai came over to her, his hands in his pockets. "How was it?" he asked. "Hard," Roxanne said, and Kai studied her face for a moment before he went on. "Did you trust them?"

Roxanne looked across the courtyard, where Isla, Tessa, and Elias were laughing together about something she couldn’t hear. "Yes," she said.

Kai nodded. "Good," he said, and she gave him a sideways look. "You sound disappointed," she said. The corner of his mouth curved slightly. "I’m not," he said, and he walked away. She watched him go for a moment, then turned back to her new team.

Before the crowd had fully dispersed, the instructor pinned tomorrow’s schedule to the board. It read LUNAR TRIAL PREPARATION — COMBAT PAIRS, and below it the pairings began to appear one by one. Roxanne scanned the list quickly until she found her name. ROXANNE SILVER — KAI MOONSTONE.

From across the courtyard, Liam shouted at the top of his lungs. "OH, THIS IS GOING TO BE GOOD!" Roxanne closed her eyes and exhaled. When she opened them again, Kai was looking at her from the other side of the courtyard, and he smiled.