Good vs. Evil High (34 page)

When I was finished, I saw Ripper and his
headmaster heading for Luke’s room. I turned my arms and hurried
back down the hall, grateful I was still wearing my shadow suit and
that I hadn’t brought my crutches, even though my ankle was killing
me. I bumped into someone I couldn’t see as I reached them and
nearly apologized, but caught myself in time.

Ripper opened the door and waited while his
master turned around and spoke into the empty hall. “You will all
wait here until I send for you.”

I slid against the wall, hoping I wouldn’t
walk into any more of however many people he was talking to, and
entered the room just before the Cinder headmaster did.

What is this, an ambush?
I wished I
still had Roman’s gun as I looked around the room for anything I
could use to defend Luke.

Ripper closed the door once he and his
headmaster were in the room.

I went to stand against the wall farthest
away from the torch and beds.

“What about Fayre?” Ripper asked, standing
guard by the door. “She wears the shadows as we do.”

His headmaster went to feel over my bed from
top to bottom. Luke had withdrawn his arm. “She’s not here.
Knight!” the headmaster barked.

Luke started and gave his headmaster a
zombieish look, still half asleep. “What are you doing here?” he
asked, sitting up and looking at the clock. Midnight.

He struggled to keep both eyes open as he
looked over at my cot. His sleepy eyes became alive with vehemence.
“Where’s Kristine? Did you take her?”

“I owe you something,” his headmaster said
calmly. “I’ve come to see what you will ask of me.”

“I want Kristine back. I want her name
cleared for trying to help me when I was locked up on the
prisoners’ floor.”

“But you could have anything you wish. The
world is at your fingertips at this very moment. Are you certain
you wish to waste this opportunity on that girl?”

“I want her,” Ripper said in a beastly voice.
My heart quickened at the crazed look in his eyes. “I want the girl
with the gun.”

Tobias looked back at Luke.

“I want Kristine,” Luke said. “I want her
untouchable like me from now on.”

“Wouldn’t you even like to think it
over?”

“No. Give her back to me—now!”

“I don’t have her, you fool. You’re wasting
an opportunity on her which you will never have again.”

Luke stared at my blankets darkly, clearly
unsure of whether to believe his headmaster or not.

“Your decision is final, then?”

“Yes.”

The headmaster nodded to Ripper, so he opened
the door. Six guys came in the room— the six higher-ups—each of
them appearing a few steps in and standing in a half-circle around
Luke’s bed, an arc of muscle and malice that made me shiver. Luke
raised an eyebrow and stared at each one in turn.

“The six that stand before you, Titus,
Damian, Orion, Bane, Axel, and Phoenix, are what they are because I
made them that way,” the Cinder headmaster began. “They stand
proudly above everyone else for a reason. When they were chosen,
their instructors and I made sure that anyone who challenged them
in any way was threatened or punished until it ended.

“Bane will be eighteen soon. He will be
leaving us this fall. Whenever one of the six I consider my sons
leaves, another must take his place. Bane recommended you not long
after your arrival.” He stared at Bane, who took a step closer to
Luke.

“When you stepped into that fight against
Titus, I figured you were dead and I’d wasted a trip recruiting
you,” Bane said. “But you took him out in five seconds flat. Then
you walked in on a Snow Rider practice and beat out every guy on
the team right then. So I decided to keep an eye on you, and you
haven’t disappointed me yet.

“But what really made my decision was Fayre.
You’re the first Cinder who’s ever had the guts to be with a
Havener and go public with it. It didn’t hit me right away, but
then there was this Haven girl I really liked and I was too chicken
to ask her out. That’s when I realized the kind of nerve it took
for you. I’m supposed to be this big shot, and I couldn’t even do
what you did. And you just went for days undetected, even though
our whole school’s been looking for you. I’m giving my place to you
when I leave, if you want it.”

Luke sat there with his arms hanging over his
knees and his face expressionless, as Bane stepped back into the
semicircle. I knew he had to be throwing a party inside, since he’d
wanted into the six from the moment he heard about them. But he’s
always been a master of disguise when it comes to emotions.

His headmaster picked up the conversation
again. “Whether you accept or not, you must never share what you’ve
heard tonight with anyone else. Doing so would cost you your life,
no exceptions. Choosing to join us would mean more time training to
fight, as well as increasing your abilities. Any future you desire
when you leave here is yours. But once you choose, there is no
turning back. You cannot change your mind, and you must choose
now.”

“I’m in,” Luke said at once, still keeping
the party of one completely concealed.

“Meet me in my office at eight o’clock
tomorrow night, and bring Fayre if you see her. My brother and I
need to have a word with you two. Your training will begin after
North Haven leaves.” With that, he turned to leave, followed by the
others.

Luke lay back down and stared at the ceiling
when they were gone. He knocked absently against his mattress with
his fist, keeping an eyebrow raised.

I waited a couple of minutes to appear, in
case they came back. “Luke,” I said, moving away from the wall.

“Kristine?” He sat up too fast and reached
painfully for his side, before deciding to lie back down. “You were
here the whole time?”

I hopped across the room and sat on my bed
beside him. “I had to go to the bathroom. I sneaked in when I saw
your headmaster. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” The lines that formed all over his
forehead as he looked back to the ceiling told me he was thinking
about something extra hard.

“Aren’t you happy?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m just—I’m kind of in shock. I’ve
spent so much time thinking about how I could get into their crew,
and now I’m in, just like that...” He smiled over at me. “I should
be thanking you, really, since I wouldn’t have gotten in without
you.”

“No.” He held out an arm for me as I lay
back. “You’re the one who did all those things Bane was talking
about, not me...Thanks for using your one request to save me.”

He laughed quietly as he rolled over to put
his other arm around me. “Nothing could have compensated for you. I
love you.” He kissed me and pulled me even closer.

His body felt enormous, pressed against mine.
I felt safe, like nothing could hurt me when he was there. “I love
you, too, Luke,” I said, as I snuggled up against his chest.

Chapter
Forty-Three

~ Ambassador ~

Luke and I were sitting across from Bane and
Titus in the dining hall at fifteen until eight the next evening,
getting ready to head to his headmaster’s office, when someone
slammed two Cinder medals down on the table. Thorn sat sideways
beside me so that she was facing me. Somehow I’d avoided her all
day. “I still hate you with every particle in my body, but—we’re
straight.”

“Uhh...” I was relieved, but not really sure
how to respond. “I hate you, too?”

Thorn smirked before she picked up her medals
and went to sit somewhere else.

Luke stood up and held a hand out to me. “We
need to go.”

“Okay.” I used it to pull myself up and then
grabbed my crutches. I felt like a big holdup, having to use those
stupid things. But Luke didn’t seem to mind.

We hardly passed anyone—that we could see,
anyway—as we walked through the bleak Cinder hallways.
How can
he like this place so much?
I wondered, feeling the gloom of it
pressing against me.

“What do we do now?” I asked him when we got
to the hidden office.

“Knock, of course.” Luke banged on the wall
twice. It seemed silly to me to be knocking on a solid wall, but it
slid back and to the side after a few seconds.

Tobias’s eyes shot fiery daggers at me the
moment they met mine. “Your headmaster was supposed to be here ten
minutes ago.”

“Umm, d, do you want me to go find him?” I
asked hesitantly.

“It isn’t your job to look after him,” he
snapped. “You’ll have to wait here with Knight.”

I followed Luke’s lead when he sat down in
front of the desk. The old cuckoo clock on the wall told me we were
five minutes early, assuming it still worked. “Can you tell us why
we’re here while we’re waiting?” I asked.

“Insolent girl, I will tell you nothing until
my brother is here.”

I let out a sigh and forced myself not to
roll my eyes as I leaned back in the musty old pea-green chair. It
seemed he was back to being his old hateful self with me again.

Ten more minutes passed by before a knock
came on the wall. Luke’s headmaster reached under his desk, and the
wall slid open. My very disheveled-looking headmaster stood there
with his snowy hair all over the place, clearly out of breath.
“Roman Armstrong has escaped,” he wheezed, leaning with his hand
against the open doorway.

“What?!” Luke shouted.

“How did that happen?” Tobias asked, standing
up.

“He injected one of your doctors with enough
anesthesia to put him in a coma hours ago.” He paused to huff and
come stand behind my chair. “Someone just found the victim and
alerted me. I’ve got every North Havener, short of Miss Fayre, and
every Cinder I could find out searching for him.”

“You should have given him to me from the
beginning,” Tobias seethed, moving around his desk. Luke stood up
to follow him, but he turned and said, “Stay here with Fayre. I’ll
have Ripper and Hanghard out looking for Armstrong, so you’ll have
to look after her. Take a gun from my bottom right-hand desk drawer
and do not leave before I get back.” Luke went to find the gun as
his headmaster stopped beside mine. “Go ahead with what we talked
about. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Luke let out a whistle from behind the desk.
“This is a nice collection.” He held up two shiny handguns, one
black and one gold. “Take this,” he said, handing me the gold one.
“It’s the best one in here.”

“No, Mr. Knight,” my headmaster said, going
to take his brother’s seat. “My students do not use guns.”

“She needs this to protect herself.”

“No.”

“I’m not leaving her side tonight unless
Armstrong’s found or she’s got a gun.”

My headmaster crushed the armrest of his
chair with one hand and shut the drawer full of guns with the
other. “Do you honestly believe I would leave her unprotected? I
love my students like my own children and I promise you I will see
to her safety myself. Now, kindly take a seat so I can explain why
you’re here.”

Luke’s nostrils flared with abhorrence. He
shoved both guns into his pockets and came to sit back down.

Dinner bubbled in my stomach as the
reawakened danger swirled through my mind. Roman was loose. He
would be looking for me until he was found. If he was found. But
the petrifying fear I felt wasn’t for me. It was for Luke, because
Roman wanted him dead.

Headmaster looked more like the man who’d sat
in that chair before him as he spoke, the situation with Roman
obviously wearing away at him. “My brother and I would like to
propose something to the two of you. We’re hoping you will become
ambassadors of sorts for your schools.”

I glanced at Luke and then gave my headmaster
a puzzled look. “I don’t understand. Don’t ambassadors work for
presidents and kings?”

“Generally, but I’m speaking strictly for
your school.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Tobias and I have been discussing how you
two are the first Cinder and Havener to get along so well and how
we could encourage this sort of behavior between other
students.”

“My headmaster wants us to be friends with
Haveners?” Luke asked incredulously.

“Not friends, exactly, but perhaps the two
will simply behave more civilly to one another if things go well
enough.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“You’re right, and I’ll admit that I had to
talk him into our arrangement. But he did agree that it might be
nice not to have everyone hating each other quite so much.”

Luke didn’t look convinced.

“Anyway, as ambassadors you would spend a few
days out of each month at the other person’s school, teaching the
students and adults about your own school and letting them know
what sorts of things have happened over the previous month. You
could share classmates’ achievements or new recruits. You would
make the decisions about what your presentations would consist of.
I believe it would help each of our schools get a feel for one
another. That way when we get together we don’t feel so unnatural
to each other. Would either of you be interested?”

“Yeah,” I said, totally psyched about the
extra time I’d get to spend with Luke.

“Hold on,” Luke said, his eyebrows sinking
lower. “Would we be going to each other’s schools at the same
time?”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“No, Miss Fayre could come here for a few
days. Then you would fly back to North Haven with her. You could
even assist each other with presentations if you like.”

“We could spend a week and a half together
every month,” I said, turning to Luke.

“Your teachers will put your work together
for you, so you won’t get behind,” Headmaster added.

“This still doesn’t sound like my
headmaster,” Luke said.

“I assure you he has put the offer on the
table for you.”