I was going to ask what stuff exactly, but David was already picking up his bag and heading for the door. I walked him down, stopping so that he could say good night to my parents, and then followed him out to where his car was parked in the driveway. He opened the door and threw his satchel inside before turning back to me, that familiar wrinkle between his brows. “Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just drove out of town, you know?”
His tone was casual, but something about those words made goose bumps break out all over my body. “You can’t,” I told him, my voice stiff. “I mean, right now, you literally can’t since Alexander had Ryan put up all these wards, but—”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, David leaned forward a little. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Apparently the one time Ryan decided to take the initiative, it potentially screwed us over.”
With a groan, David tipped his head back. “It would be awesome,” he said, “if people would stop doing things that affect me without, you know, asking how I might feel about those things.”
I swallowed hard.
David tilted his head back down and gave me a steady look, his hands still in his pockets. For a moment, I thought my guilt must show clearly on my face.
But he didn’t ask me anything about his visions. Instead, he studied me and asked, “If you could do it all over again, don’t pretend that you never would have gone into the bathroom that night.”
I blinked, thinking about Bee. About Saylor and the Cotillion and all the lying I’d done to my family.
Smiling as best as I could, I raised up on tiptoes and kissed him. “Of course I would have.”
Chapter 13
“SO THIS IS a thing that’s happening?” David asked as he sat against the fence in my backyard.
Pulling my hair up into a high ponytail, I sighed around the rubber band in my mouth. “Yes,” I mumbled. “And if you mock it, I’ll never ask you to come back.”
“No mocking,” David replied, laying his arms on his upraised knees. His wrists looked bony underneath the cuffs of his (both ugly and seasonally inappropriate) plaid button-down. “You’re going to train for whatever trials the Ephors may have coming your way by . . . spinning a baton? Because I was honestly kidding about that earlier.”
Hair secured, I propped my hands on my hips. “It’s not like I can practice dagger swinging or karate kicks in the backyard. But baton twirling is totally socially acceptable, and it lets me both work on my agility and wield what could be a weapon.” I gave the baton a few experimental twirls, and David laughed.
“Your ability to multitask is truly extraordinary, Pres.”
He looked back at the book he had spread open on the grass, and I tossed the baton up, catching it easily. “What are you reading?” I asked, and he raised his head, sunlight flashing off his glasses.
“Still looking through some of Saylor’s books for stuff about the Peirasmos.”
“Anything?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“Not yet. But Saylor had a lot of books.”
I kept twirling, but watched him out of the corner of my eye. “And you? You feeling okay?”
“Sure,” he said, the word clipped off and sharp in his mouth. He didn’t look up at me, and something in my stomach twisted.
“David,” I said, and he sighed, tapping his pen furiously against the page.
“It’s just irritating, that’s all. Being completely useless, power-wise. If I could just see something . . .” He broke off with a frustrated noise. “My visions might have been stupid before, but at least I could have them.” Shaking his head, he leaned back against the fence. “No idea why everyone is working so hard to protect me when I’m not exactly worth much.”
It was the second time he’d said something like that, and I still didn’t like it. Part of that, I knew, was the guilt. But warding him had been for his own good, I thought again. To keep him safe and keep him . . . well, him.
But I’d tried to ignore how that was making David feel, especially when he was all alone in Saylor’s house, with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company. David was a smart guy, and ever since I’d known him, he’d had a bad tendency to overthink things. I knew he’d been sitting there at night, brooding over all of this.
Now, he tipped his head back and studied the sky, bright blue through the oak leaves overhead. “I’m trying to help by going through all these books, but nothing there is all that helpful, and I . . .” Trailing off, he pushed his hands under his glasses, scrubbing his face. “If something happens to you during all of this, Harper—”
I set the baton down and walked over to stand in front of him, catching his chin in my fingers and tilting his head up to look at me. “Nothing is going to,” I told him. “We got through Cotillion, and we’ll get through this, too.”
David’s eyes were nearly as blue as the sky above, and as they searched my face, I could tell he didn’t believe me. But he dropped the subject, picking up the baton I’d laid down on the grass.
“I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around you twirling this thing in a pageant,” David said, idly toying with it as he stood up.
I took it from him with a skeptical frown. “It’s a traditional choice,” I admitted. “And my Paladin skills mean that I’m weirdly good with it.”
David laughed at that. “Seriously? Thousands of years of knowledge and training have resulted in the ability to spin a baton?”
“Yup,” I replied. “Check this out.” With that, I tossed the baton from hand to hand, spinning it furiously as I did. The metal rod slid easily through my fingers, and I realized that in the right circumstances, this thing could actually be a pretty impressive weapon.
But I hoped that the right circumstances never occurred. Braining someone with a baton was not on my agenda any time soon.
Tossing the baton high in the air, I added a backflip before coming down solidly on both feet and catching the baton with one hand. I used the other hand to give a little wave, and David looked at me with a grin.
“Okay, now you’re showing off.”
“Little bit,” I admitted, glad that we were talking like normal people again. I tossed him the baton.
“Maybe you should start carrying one of these things,” he mused as he inspected it.