Soulbroken Read online

  Edmond turned back to me and Trayton slammed his door. Then Edmond opened my door for me. I managed a wounded smile. "Thanks, Edmond."

  "Just following Protocol." He winked, and I instantly felt badly for having judged Edmond so harshly. He might not be Maddox, but that didn't mean that he wasn't on my side.

  As we stepped inside, I said, "What's he doing? Flaunting how much fun he's having now that I'm no longer in his life? What could he possibly be thinking, hosting a gathering in his room, when so many people have been hurt?"

  "Actually, it was part memorial party, part farewell party." When I snapped my attention to him, he shrugged. "Guards talk."

  The notion that it was a memorial party made total sense, and the moment that Edmond said it, a memory flooded my mind--one that I had completely forgotten until that moment. I was seven years old, and my mother had opened the door to a man who'd greeted her with whispers and tears in his eyes. A man with a long scar lining his left cheek, drawing a line from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth. In his hand, he clutched an intricately designed pipe. As my father hugged the nameless man, my mother ushered me out the back door with my dollies, to the garden behind the house. "Play out here for a while, Kaya. Let the grown-ups have some time to talk."

  I never met the man. My parents never introduced me, and I had no idea then or now how a fellow Barron knew where to locate them or that he'd be met with welcome arms. My parents never discussed such things. That night, as I lay in my bed, high up in my bedroom loft, I listened as they say songs and laughed. The next day, when the strange man was gone, I'd asked about him. My father said that the stranger was a Barron, just like them. A dear friend of theirs had died, and it was only right that they should celebrate his life, rather than reduce it to a sorrowful, passing moment in time.

  Such a celebration of life must have been a strong, shared belief amongst Barrons. Relief suddenly filled me. Maybe Trayton was still the man that I'd thought he was. Maybe the talking, the laughter, the people in his room were all a celebration of the lives of those that they had lost in battle. Maybe it was just his way of grieving, of mourning.

  With his final sentence locked inside my mind, I turned to Edmond. "A farewell party for who?"

  "For Trayton. He's apparently been granted permission from the Zettai Council to go on an exploratory mission with select Barrons to Okumatte."

  So that was his plan. Trayton was going to leave the Academy, and leave me behind with it, despite the dangers of travelling outside the wall without his Bound healer. My concern for his safety ballooned, but I had to focus on his motives and reasons for going. I had to understand why he'd take such a stupid risk. "What for? Why would he go there?"

  Edmond lingered near the door that led to the parlor, but he didn't reach for the door handle. "It's the only village in higher elevations that has never reported a single Graplar attack. The team is charged with learning all that they can about the town, and whether or not there is anything in the elements surrounding the town or actions of the villagers there that are keeping Graplars at bay."

  "But Okumatte's all the way on the other side of Haruko." I wasn't speaking to Edmond anymore, more to myself, trying to wrap my brain around exactly what my Barron could possibly be thinking. "That's at least a week's worth of travel, through some of the most dangerous parts of the Outer Rim."

  "I know."

  "And he'll be there without me?" I looked at Edmond then, and felt as if I couldn't breathe. If anything happened to Trayton, I'd never forgive myself. Even if it happened because he was being stupid.

  Edmond lowered his voice, in an effort to keep me calm. "He has arranged an alternative, if you're curious to hear it."

  "What is it?"

  He took a breath, as if measuring just how much he should tell me. "The Council wasn't going to grant him permission--not without the accompaniment of you, his Bound Healer. But Trayton appealed to his father, who convinced the Council that he'd be fine, as long as a Master Healer accompanied him. It's a lesser-known rule of Protocol, but passable. Especially when accompanied by a sizable donation to the cause. And believe you me, it would take some serious trinks to get the Council to go against standard Protocol. Especially with the recovery efforts still going on here at the Academy, and Healers so sparse. But if anyone has the trinks to spare and the palms to influence, it would be Trayton's father."

  It didn't sound like something that Trayton would do--beg his father to bribe the council into helping him run away from his problems. But again, I was brought right back into wondering how well I really knew him.

  Edmond cast me a questioning glance, as if asking for permission to go check on the dispersal of Trayton's party. I nodded and sank down on my bed, marveling at how drastically my life had changed in a single moment, with a single touch.

  Late that night, unable to sleep, I decided to be as reckless as my Barron was being. I opened my window and climbed carefully out onto the ledge, inching my way along to Trayton's window, which pushed open with ease. The room was lit by several candles, but Trayton was nowhere to be found, as if he'd just stepped out for a moment. I was about to sit on the bed and wait for him when the door to the hall opened and he stepped inside, closing himself in.

  The moment he saw me, he cursed under his breath. It wasn't exactly the greeting that I had been hoping for. When his eyes met mine, I could tell that he was considering having a lock installed on his window. "What do you want?"

  I was just everyone's favorite person on Tril this week.

  I swallowed hard, my throat raw from all of the dust in Quill's office. "I heard you're leaving. When?"

  "Not soon enough." He turned around and reached for the door handle, as if he meant to storm out into the hall, leaving me behind. But I couldn't have that. I'd come here to say some things, and I was going to say them, whether or not he wanted to hear them.

  "Trayton--"

  "What?" He spun around to face me, his eyes full of a heated anger. "What, Kaya? What can you possibly say to me now that will make all of this go away?"

  Beneath his anger, I could spy heartbreak. Trayton was hurting. Mourning the idealized image he'd had of our relationship, and questioning what was to become of it, all under the blanket of upset that had rocked the foundation of Shadow Academy. I couldn't be mad at him for that.

  "I'm sorry." My words seemed to stun him for a moment, and the anger blinked away, albeit briefly. Hopefully enough that he could hear what I'd come here to say. "I'm sorry that you're hurting, and I'd do just about anything to take that pain away, but apart from picking up a katana again, I don't see how any of the hurt that you're feeling has been caused by me directly. I didn't know that Darius and I were Soulbound. I was told that the boy I was Soulbound to had died and I believed it. And up until the moment when I realized that my touch had brought Darius back from the brink of death, I still believed it. I didn't lie to you about that, if that's what you're thinking."

  And it was what he was thinking. What's more, it was the thing that terrified him the most, losing his Healer. Again. That much was apparent in his eyes as he looked at me, their surfaces shimmering slightly.

  "But that doesn't change things, does it? It doesn't take away the fact that you're still Soulbound to another person--worst of all, my friend and teacher. It doesn't take away the look on your face when you thought that Darius was dying." His voice caught in his throat, and tears welled in his eyes. Tears that spilled upon his cheeks. Tears that he shamelessly did not wipe away. "It crushed me, Kaya. It crushed me to see how much you loved him in that moment. And I couldn't help but doubt that the tears of concern you'd shed for me just an hour before that moment weren't nearly as desperate, or as broken as they were for him. That's why I'm leaving. Because I can't bear to look at you without seeing a reflection of him in your eyes."

  A silence befell us both then, and after some time, he turned back to the door. I stood and moved to him, gently coaxing his hand away from the handle
and cradling it in my own. "I wish you wouldn't do this. I wish you wouldn't take such a huge risk with your life, just to get away from me."

  He met my eyes. Sadness oozed from his every pore. But he didn't pull away. "I wish a lot of things as well. Doesn't make them true."

  "You said you loved me. Was that true? Because this isn't how you treat someone that you love, Trayton. You don't run from them when things get difficult. You stay and fight. You talk it out. You do whatever you can to fix it, because if you love someone, it's worth fixing. Love isn't easy. Love is hard. But it's worth fighting for."

  "I do love you." He stretched his arm out, and just as I thought he meant to cradle my waist in it and pull me to him, I heard the faint click of the door to Edmond's station as Trayton unlatched the handle. "But I don't think that you love me."

  My chest felt hollow then, but quickly filled with a pain that I could not explain. Trayton loved me. But he doubted my affection for him, doubted that I felt for him as he did for me. I didn't know what to say. I could only stand there with my heart breaking in two, wondering if it would ever be whole again. And wondering, on some level, if Trayton was right.

  Without looking at my guard, Trayton said, "Edmond, please escort Miss Oshiro back to her room. It seems she's lost her way."

  Confused as to how I made my way past him and into Trayton's room, poor, clueless Edmond blinked at Trayton's door and then at mine.

  Newly born anger sharpened my tongue, and as I turned to leave Trayton's room, I said, "Going to Okumatte without me is incredibly fakked up and beyond stupid, Trayton. Without me, you'll die out there."

  He closed his hand over my wrist, pulling me back to him briefly. Our lips were so close, but I was torn about whether or not I wanted them to touch. Trayton whispered, "I'm leaving in the morning. If you want to say goodbye then, I'll be at the south gate at dawn."

  Pulling my hand away, I pushed past Edmond and entered my room, slamming the door behind me.

  Chapter 3

  I lay on top of my covers, still fully clothed, my mind racing with too many thoughts to be considered rational. Everything that Trayton was doing seemed reckless and dangerous and wrong--which weren't exactly traits I was used to seeing in him. Normally, I was the one to throw caution to the wind, but now Trayton was. And I couldn't help wondering if maybe he hoped that he wouldn't come back from his trip to Okumatte alive. What other reason would such a slave to Protocol like Trayton have to bend those rules until they were on the verge of snapping, and head off into the wilds of Tril with a Healer that wasn't Bound to him? It didn't sound like the Trayton that I had thought I knew, but then, he'd been acting drastically different ever since he spotted my hand on Darius's wounded head. It was possible, though I loathed suspecting, I was just only now getting a peek at the real Trayton.

  He'd described to me the immense sorrow he'd succumbed to upon losing his Soulbound Healer, Samantha. What if the depths to which his depression had dragged him had been even darker than he'd hinted at? It was a crazy thought, but was it one not based on reality? Maybe there had been a perfectly sensible reason that his father had offered a bribe to move Trayton's name to the top of the list of those in line for new Healers. Trayton, in his gloom, might have had a death wish. And it was entirely possible that that death wish had resurfaced at what he'd deemed to be my betrayal.

  Wasn't it?

  Did I really believe that Trayton might be a danger to himself? Not really. But it wasn't a long jump from where I was standing. I didn't think he'd fling himself from a cliff or anything, but I could imagine him falling in battle without his Healer there to mend his wounds. Of course, I was tired and still reeling from Trayton's actions in the past few days. I might have been imagining that he'd do something so rash, and scrambling for answers behind his out-of-character decisions. But I was truly worried about the possibility that he might never come back.

  At long last, the sun dared to peek over the horizon, and I rushed Edmond out the door. He sprinted to keep up with my hurried pace to the south gate. But I was determined to reach Trayton as soon as possible, and to convince him that he needed me, despite whatever it was that he was feeling. He needed me.

  As we approached the south gate, my steps slowed. No group was gathered there, no supplies laid out. It was quiet, manned by just the usual amount of guards, like any ordinary day. Raden exited the guard shack, and I called out to him, "Raden! Where's the group that's leaving for Okumatte?"

  He blinked at me, as if trying to understand why a Healer who'd barely spoken to him would address him in such a familiar tone. I had to remind myself that most of my interaction with Raden was through a training mask that had covered my face, under the guise of a Barron who was being trained by Darius. As if attributing the moment to a fading memory on his part, Raden said, "They left last night. The moon was high, so it was light enough. Trayton wanted to get going, so they could make double time."

  "Fak!" He'd left without seeing me one last time. He'd lied to me the night before, so that he wouldn't have to see me at all. Furious, heartbroken, I turned to my ever-present guard. "I want to see Maddox. Take me to see Maddox, Edmond."

  Edmond shook his head stubbornly, but I could see the empathy in his eyes. "You have class. And then you have extra duties in Headmaster Quill's office."

  "And then?"

  Edmond ran a hand over the back of his neck and sighed, looking torn. Torn between Protocol and me. "You know that I'm forbidden from bringing you to see her. Once the Headmaster reassigned your former guard to the north gate, he made it very clear that you two are not to be allowed contact."

  Every word he spoke was true, but that didn't mean I wanted to hear them. I shook my head, remembering how it had hurt to hear Maddox inform me that we would no longer be allowed to see one another. We'd been just outside Headmaster Quill's office, shortly after Trayton had discovered that I had just been posing as a Barron and fighting off Graplars. It was, in retrospect, one of the best and worst moments of my life.

  Lowering my voice, I offered Edmond a pleading glance. "Can't you just turn your head or something?"

  With a whisper, he shook his head. "I'm sorry. If I go against Quill's orders, I'll end up at the north gate too."

  My chest tightened with sorrow, with fear, with anger. We were all under Quill's thumb here, and all subject to the Zettai Council's whims. It felt, for the moment, like there was nothing that I could do about that. But as I turned and headed back to my dorm, the tightening in my chest loosened, and my heart beat sure and strong. I was determined to do something--anything--to change things. At whatever cost.

  Chapter 4

  "So, you see, the three schools work in absolute harmony together, creating the perfect machine against King Darrek's efforts to gain control over the Zettai Council and, thereby, all of Skilled society." Instructor Ross had scribbled the names of all three academies--Shadow, Darkmoon, and Starlight--on the slate board in chalk. Beneath it, he wrote 'harmony' and circled it, eliciting a snort from yours truly.

  When he threw a questioning glance my way, I said, "Why just Skilled society? Why doesn't King Darrek care about the Unskilled?"

  "You ask a good question." His words said that it was a good question, but the look in his eyes and way his jaw was set said that he wished I'd just shut up and maybe slip back into my Anatomy of War class coma. "The answer lies in the way that our societies exist separate from one another. Darrek would have nothing to gain by taking control of the Unskilled, as their society has nothing to offer we in Skilled society."

  His reply sent my head shaking in disgust. Nothing? Was Skilled society really that blind? Without the Unskilled, the foundation of Tril, the Skilled would have starved a long time ago. "What about food? And clothing? The majority of the farmers that Skilled people purchase those materials from are Unskilled. Does that make them useless to us?"

  His cheeks and forehead were beginning to turn a lovely reddish hue, and I could tell that he'd probably had just en
ough out of me. It had to be pretty difficult to push a mellow guy like Instructor Ross to the brink of sanity, but I was pretty sure I was doing a fine job. What's more, I was rather proud of my accomplishment, which probably said a lot about me as a person. He took a breath and leveled his gaze at me. If flames could have shot from his eyes and bored into my skull at that moment, he probably would have made it happen. "Kaya, I will not be drawn into a needless argument with you. I cannot help it if my attempt to answer your query isn't what you want to hear. Yes, it is true that much of our food and fabrics come from Unskilled farmers. But we can and have grown and create those things ourselves. It's just that we've found it a better use of our time to leave those tasks to the Unskilled, freeing us to focus on our fight against Darrek."

  "So you use the Unskilled for what they can give you, but refuse them the knowledge of your lifestyle, your existence." Yes, I was being snotty. Yes, I was giving him attitude. But I was so sick of being stuck in a place full of people who subscribed to the idea that they were any better than anyone other person on Tril, simply because they possessed different abilities. I was fed up with the snobbery of the Skilled and very much wanted to show them where they could stick their beloved Protocol.

  "We." He was looking at me, and it took me a moment to understand what he was saying. Though his words were spoken softly, they quickly weighed heavy with significance on my heart. "We, Kaya. The Skilled, yourself included. We do those things, yes. But with good reason."

  Sinking down in my chair, at a loss for words, I realized that he was right. What had I done to educate the Unskilled about King Darrek or Graplars or whatnot? Nothing. I'd done nothing, but sit back and keep my mouth shut. And what had it gotten me? My best friend, Avery, ignorant to the dangers that normally only affect the Skilled, had been killed by a Graplar. All because my Skilled parents had taught me, their Skilled child, to follow Protocol. Who was I to throw my disgust back in Instructor Ross's face? I was part of the problem.