Spycraft Academy B. Miles (new ebook reader txt) 📖

already on their schedule, which was fantastic. Then again, since she'd lived on a farm, she was probably used to getting up before the sun.

"You savages have fun with the dawn. I'm going to take my time."

Savages, right. More like desperate wretches who weren't going to shuck their singular opportunity to not be wretches any longer.

"See you in class." Sam grabbed his schedule from the side table and pulled his ragged footwear on before opening the door and walking into the first morning of the rest of his life.

He and the girls had the right idea to get up so early. While everybody was still asleep, the three of them had gone to the sparsely populated mess hall and had plenty of time to eat and mentally prepare for the day. While everybody else was rolling out of bed, Sam was already walking down the hall to find his first class. Drina and Mattie trailed behind him, talking quietly and giggling about something that he probably didn't want to know about.

They got lost in the corridors a couple of times, but they eventually made it to the appropriate classroom. Well, it wasn't really a room at all, which was why they'd passed it up so many times. Instead, it was a small amphitheater, the entrance of it tucked into a corner and disguised as a nondescript little corridor.

And it was completely empty.

"Helloo?!" Drina called, looking from the left to the right. When nobody answered, she smiled impishly at Sam and darted to the long rack of weapons set to the side of the arena, her feet kicking up sand as she went.

"Looks like the palace arena," Mattie said, looking straight up at the large open circle set in the middle of the ceiling. "If I'd ever seen it, that is. I bet they make people fight when it's raining. Wonder how they get the sand to dry so well . . ."

She kept talking, mostly to herself, one statement following another until she was asking herself questions that had nothing to do with the arena.

Sam anchored his head toward the ceiling as well, though his eyes kept covertly bouncing from the sky to Mattie’s face, not really listening to what she was saying because his damned brain kept flooding with thoughts of her that were both incredibly distracting and incredibly strange. Or maybe they weren't strange and he was just overthinking things. He could ask her, but then if they were strange things to think, then she might think that he was strange.

And although the thought of her thinking he was strange had never bothered him before, he also had never kissed her before. Nor had she ever shoved her hand down his pants. That changed things.

Or at least he thought it did. She'd been acting so normal, though, like nothing had ever happened. It almost felt like he imagined it, but he didn't. If he imagined fooling around with her, then he imagined the trip here, and he was here now, so he had to have gotten here somehow; ergo, they actually did travel to the campus, they really did bunk on the hillside, and he and Mattie really did touch each other in ways that he never imagined they would.

Yesterday, he understood why she didn't act any differently. Too much was happening, and she hadn't been focused on him at all. He’d thought it a little odd when she hadn't even so much as looked at him outside of normal conversation, but again, maybe it wasn't so odd for her. She had never been the sort of person to split her attention on more than one objective at a time, so why would she start now, just because Sam was the second objective?

No, that wasn't right. That was assuming that she thought he was something worth focusing on to begin with, and he didn't know if he was, not to her at least. But she'd said she'd been wanting to kiss him for years, so what did that mean?

Was she just curious for years, and now her curiosity was sated, or did she decide that she didn't want him like that after all? Yesterday, she'd said she supposed he was her beau...was she simply deflecting Fletch?

He wouldn't have worried about it normally. It had only been a day and she was still trying to find her sea legs, so to speak. Even if she wasn't, Sam had been with girls before, and when they acted as if they didn't have any interest in him, he just left rather than stick around where he wasn't wanted. But he couldn't really do that with Mattie. Maybe he shouldn't have kissed her back, maybe it had all been a mistake, maybe he wanted her more than she wanted him.

Spirits be damned, why did that bother him so bloody much?

"—if it was a bird, I would understand, but not a pig, don't you think?" Mattie was no longer looking at the ground, but right at him.

Sam blinked. He had been far away and hadn't caught a word of what she'd said.

"Oh, yeah." But he was good at pretending, he supposed.

"I thought as much." Mattie shrugged. "But I suppose there's nothing to be done about it but practice. Which I suppose I can do now, since we have plenty of time before anybody gets in."

She nodded to herself and turned on her heel, her face pulled down into a concentrated expression, a reflection of her sharp mind that was too busy churning thoughts of pigs and birds to leave any room for Sam.

He frowned at her retreating form. This shouldn't bother him, he shouldn't even be thinking about it right now. He was right in the middle of an impossible dream. The reality that he had the power to truly change the course of his future should have been enough to draw his focus to the task at hand. He should have been as focused as Mattie, his mind so concentrated