The Prince's Trap Page 20

  Celia gave Landon one final, condemning look before pushing off his body and starting out of the room. Staggering left and right, she struggled to maintain her balance. Her strength was returning, but she was nowhere near fully recovered. Landon watched as her hand thudded against the glass in sporadic intervals, streaking it with sweat as she guided herself down the hallway. Soon only the fading sound of her feet scuffing the floor and the drifting echo of her hand connecting with the wall signaled her continued trajectory out of the medical wing. Landon still couldn’t move. She sustained her telekinetic hold on him until he finally passed outside of her tactometric sphere and fell to the floor, collapsing over his knees.

  As he lay on the ground in a ball, the finality of her words struck Landon like a hammer to an anvil. Her conviction was irrefutable, and the undeniable truth of her words burdened Landon’s thoughts with guilt and remorse. He had no idea what he’d put her through. He was elated that she was finally free from her mental prison, but he had never contemplated how being entombed in her own mind for over a month with no means of escape would affect her. Now that he thought about it, it must have been torturous. What have I done? What am I doing?

  Pangs of failure consumed Landon. He pessimistically believed that his inability to understand or control his gifts continued to make him unstable and a hazard. He decided Sofia had lied to him; he wasn’t learning to master his gifts—his time at the Gymnasium was only proving to make him more of a danger to himself and those around him. What am I going to do now? All he wanted to do was talk to Celia and tell her everything that had happened since she had fallen unconscious. He wanted to tell her that he had managed to protect her identity against Washington’s prying force. He also wanted to talk to her about Katie Leigh and their plan, and he needed her to know that they were closing in on the answers, but could only succeed with her help. But none of that would happen—at least for now.

  Landon listlessly rose from the floor and languidly walked out of the room. Although wallowing in utter defeat and depression, his stomach still called to him for sustenance, and he headed toward the cafeteria for dinner.

  The dining hall roared with activity; its sound reached Landon from the stairs well before the large doors to the cafeteria were in sight. People gathered around Celia. Her return was welcome and exciting, providing the student body with fresh gossip and news. A pair of guys sat beside her on a bench at one of the middle tables, holding her upright while others continued to gather around. A few students brought her food. Landon imagined she was still rather shaky when she entered, so people were desperate to fill her up and replenish her strength so she wasn’t too tired to tell them what had happened.

  Landon noticed Parker sitting unmoved a few tables back, her fork held a few inches from her face as she looked longingly at the crowd, but made no effort to approach or talk to Celia. No one would ever know Parker’s hand in reviving her. She would never tell, and Landon was unable to speak of it. The Pantheon guarded Parker’s hacking skills and any mention of it outside of the Olympic Tower was prohibited.

  Landon dropped his head and sulked over to the food line. Dragging his tray along the counter, he sloppily piled his plate with mashed potatoes, meatloaf and glazed sweet carrots. The sauces ran together in the center of his plate, forming a strange amalgamation of brown grease, starchy paste, and sugar. Although it smelled delicious, it looked rather unappetizing.

  When he turned to find a seat far from the crowd, he saw Katie Leigh racing toward him. The excitement of Celia’s return was more important to her than their arrangement to stay away from each other until the Qualifiers started.

  “You did it,” she congratulated Landon excitedly, her face beaming with elation and pride. She was nearly dancing across the floor.

  “Yeah,” Landon replied halfheartedly. On the verge of tears, his face advertised his depression like a poster. He wanted so much to celebrate with everyone else but he couldn’t muster the energy.

  “You all right?” Katie Leigh asked, concerned. She inspected Landon with quizzical eyes.

  Landon didn’t want to talk about it, especially not in the middle of the cafeteria. “We shouldn’t be speaking, remember? I’ll tell you later.” With that, Landon walked away without giving Katie Leigh a chance to respond. She stood planted in the same spot for a few moments, shocked by Landon’s sudden dismissal of her.

  From his vantage point at a back table, he ate mindlessly and watched as the word continued to spread throughout the Gymnasium of Celia’s sudden return. He worked on his meal purely for the sake of his stomach; his mood had stripped him of any desire to eat, but he knew it was necessary. People filed in through the large doors at the entrance in steady sequence and, disregarding the food entirely, made a beeline for her and the growing crowd. Murmurs and gossip were running rampant as people bombarded her with questions.

  Landon flashed back to his first morning in the Gymnasium; people had flooded around him asking questions while a photo of him lifting a city bus was passed around and speculated upon. He knew now, from her own admission, that Katie Leigh was to blame for his sudden stardom; she had uncovered the photo from a blog and printed it out for everyone to see. How fast would Celia’s newfound popularity wane as the masses lost interest?

  Landon looked down at his food, spinning a carrot around with his fork. What do we do now? he wondered. His failed plans and dashed hopes festered in his mind, making it impossible for him to think of anything else. With only a day until the trials phase of the Qualifiers, he did not have much time to come up with a new plan to get Celia up to speed, and then figure out how to tell Katie Leigh to ensure she was onboard.

  Suddenly, unease pulled Landon’s attention away from playing with his food. It was that sense of heightened awareness that came whenever he felt he was being watched. Could Washington or one of his goons be watching him now? Landon tried to glance over in the direction of where he thought his voyeur was. When he looked up, he didn’t find Washington or some other Olympic Tower stooge, but Brock Holbrooke leaning against the doorjamb, his eyes laser-focused on Landon.

  Landon stared back at him, wide-eyed, for longer than he should have. Realizing this, he speedily piled his utensils and glass onto his tray and made his way out of the cafeteria, dropping his tray off by the trashcans before heading to the exit.

  As he walked past Brock, they locked eyes for a split second. It sent a chill through Landon’s body, from the top of his head down to his toes.

  What else do I need to deal with? Landon asked himself as he opened the door to his dorm room. Isn’t it enough that Celia hates me and Washington suspects me? Do I really have to deal with my roommate trying to catch me, too?

  Landon propped himself up against his pillows at the head of his bed, turned on the reading lamp, and grabbed the first book he could reach on his nightstand. If ever there was a night he needed to escape, it was this one. The book he grabbed was The Prince. Even in the privacy of his own room that mysterious man taunted him. He’d read the book more times than he could count, could recite multiple passages from it if requested, and was still unsure of who had gifted him the text in the first place. Disgusted, he tossed the book to the far side of his nightstand and picked up the next book in his pile: Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky—heavy reading, but Landon thought it oddly appropriate given his current frame of mind. He sunk down in his bed to get a bit more comfortable and opened the book to the first page. Before long, he lost himself in its words.

  Landon had no recollection of when he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PASSING NOTES

  When the day of the trials finally arrived, Landon woke feeling refreshed but still unsure how to fix his current predicament. As it stood, he had failed to figure out a solution to his problem with Celia, he hadn’t spoken to Katie Leigh about devising a new plan, and he had avoided c
ontact with members of the Pantheon. Landon had spent the day prior to the trials ruminating on everything and disregarding the pleasantries of idle conversation or the incessant scheming and lies his life had been consumed by in recent weeks. He spent the majority of his time holed up in his secluded alcove at the Library, curled up in the large leather armchair in which he’d spend many a night absorbed in a book.

  Crime and Punishment proved a fascinating read—a murderous man, testing his belief that he is one among men who have the right to commit crimes, kills a pawnbroker in the night with the justification that he is ridding the world of a worthless woman, whose money he can use for good deeds to mitigate his crime. However, he slowly degrades mentally from anguish, proving that he is not “extraordinary” as he had theorized. It didn’t have the fantastical setting or the adventurous storylines Landon typically sought out when he wanted to escape, but the story enraptured him. It seemed to encapsulate everything he felt and feared, and it drew to light that he needed to think on the consequences of his mischievous actions before it was too late, and he was left as doomed as Raskolnikov.

  As Landon entered the cafeteria, he found it abuzz with activity. Per the instructions of the staff, every student was required to be in the cafeteria by nine o’clock on the morning of the trials. Then they would be called alphabetically, one by one, to a series of rooms to perform their assigned tasks. The complete run of the activities was not expected to take someone more than two hours at a maximum, so with the multiple rooms they were using for each activity, they intended to get everyone through their rounds in one day.

  The heat from the excess of bodies permeated the room and somehow managed to enhance the scent of the morning breakfast fare. Landon sped through the food services line, piling his plate high with a stack of pancakes drenched in warm maple syrup and butter, crispy bacon, breakfast sausage links, and a tall glass of cold milk, and headed to the tables. Intent on some last minute carb-loading before his tests, Landon scarfed down his plateful like a swimmer before a big meet.

  As he drew bite after bite of food to his mouth, he tried to tune out the din of conversation that reverberated off the walls and high ceilings of the cafeteria. Landon still didn’t understand what made the Qualifiers such an electrifying event, but everyone, no matter their standing in the social pool of the Gymnasium, appeared beside themselves with excitement that they’d finally arrived.

  “Care to make a wager?” asked an unfamiliar voice. Landon pulled himself up from his plate, an end of bacon sticking out of his mouth like a wrinkly tongue as he looked to the interrupter. A gangly seventeen-year-old named Sam Willards, with pale, nearly translucent skin, and brown hair that was gelled and combed back until it looked like a ribbed plastic helmet, stood across the table from him. He carried himself with an air of importance, but had a distinctly slimy quality about him.

  Swallowing the crispy piece of fried pork, Landon wondered why Sam was there. They had no training together and had never spoken to one another. Landon only knew him by reputation—the smart guy that excelled more in his tutoring than in training. “So?” Sam goaded; the words slipped past his teeth with a hint of a lisp as his thin, knotty fingers tightened around the notebook he carried.

  “What?” Landon asked, sounding more annoyed by the interruption than he’d anticipated, or intended.

  “Do you want to place any bets? For the trials, that is.”

  “Bets?” Landon’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What would I be betting on? And with what?”

  “Well, at this stage, on who makes it into the tournament, of course!” Sam shook his head in disbelief at Landon’s ignorance. “And people tend to put up items or services more than anything, like shoes and such. Money’s pretty useless around here, but stuff is hot. The odds of you making first position in the brackets are quite good, might I say . . . 4-to-1 against. You’re basically a sure thing for the tournament behind Brock, who’s at 2-to-1.”

  “Are you serious?” Landon asked, dumbfounded by the whole thing but unable to withstand the pull of his curiosity.

  “About your odds?” he asked, the words hissing to a close. “Yes, right now I can give you 2-to-1 on Brock, 4-to-1 on yourself.” Landon opened his mouth to interrupt him, but feverishly scanning a page of his notebook, Sam spoke with such speed Landon couldn’t find a gap. “The twins are both at 10-to-1; Cortland Cartwright at 8-to-1; Parker has 15-to-1. Austin Thompson at 20-to-1. But Peregrine Mortimer would give you the best payout should she make it, with 250-to-1.”

  “No,” Landon finally said. “Are you seriously taking bets on the trials?”

  “What else would we be doing?” Sam scoffed. “The wagers are what make the Qualifiers. Otherwise, it would just be some boring exam week. I’ll be taking bets the entire week.”

  “Gotcha,” Landon replied, before turning his attention back to his plate of pancakes, leaving Sam standing in the aisle across the table from him.

  Sam hesitated there for a few more moments before realizing Landon lacked interest in placing any bets. He proceeded through the cafeteria, moving from one student to the other, jotting down wagers all the while.

  At 9:30 on the dot, Sofia Petrovanya entered the cafeteria with a tablet computer in her hand. A hush fell over the room as awareness of her arrival rippled through the student body. The sudden silence was off-putting, making Landon’s ears ring from the unexpected lack of stimuli.

  Sofia panned the cafeteria with commanding intent, like a drill sergeant looking over her new batch of recruits. She wore a crisp navy pantsuit with a white silk blouse that billowed around her neckline. Her blonde hair was bone straight, falling in two columns beside her ivory face. The severity of her appearance and rigidity of her stance told Landon she was in business mode.

  With deliberate steps, she walked to the head of the cafeteria. The clicks of her heels echoed over the silent audience. When she turned to face everyone, light glinted off something on her jacket, almost blinding Landon. Since he was only about ten yards away from her, when he leaned forward to inspect further, he noticed a brooch—a golden eagle clutching an arrow, the symbol of the Pantheon—pinned to her lapel.

  “Xavier Alcantar,” she called out in an authoritative tone Landon had never heard from her before.

  The scraping of a bench against the floor caused everyone’s heads to turn. From deep in the back of the cafeteria, an eighteen-year-old boy started up the aisle toward Sofia. Groups of students stepped back, pressing themselves against the benches and tables to allow him through. His tanned skin and dark raven hair glistened in the light. But their shine paled in comparison to the long, slender keloid scar that ran along the left side of his face, starting on his forehead, dividing his brow, running down his cheek and stopping just to the side of his mouth—a gruesome remnant of some untold incident. Like Sam, he was someone Landon had never spoken to; unlike Sam, however, Riley had not forbidden interaction with him.

  Due to the age gap, and presumably their gap in training, they didn’t run in any of the same circles. By reputation, Xavier was a force to be reckoned with, and if the stories from years past were true, Landon was surprised Xavier didn’t have a spot on the Pantheon.

  But then, judging by his aggressive air as he moved with confident steps up the aisle, Landon wondered if perhaps Xavier wasn’t the most cooperative of people. His eyes brewed with rage and combativeness, and Landon felt tension like a noxious gas hit him in the face, leaking from Xavier as he passed.

  Landon wondered what the odds were on Xavier in Sam’s little notebook. He imagined Xavier would in all likelihood be in the tournament that started the following day.

  When Xavier made it to the front of the room, Sofia whispered something to him, and he continued out of the cafeteria, presumably headed toward the first test in his run of the trials.

  “Everyone else,” Sofia’s stern voice
projected over the crowd as she returned her attention to the remaining students, “I will be informing each of you when it’s time for your examinations. Your cooperation is appreciated.”

  After a moment of silence, the crowd of students went back to their conversations and continued to migrate around the cafeteria, chatting about this and that with friends along the way. But as time progressed, and more and more people were called away to their run of the trials, the cafeteria began to quiet, the students’ anticipation turning to nervousness as the realization of their impending exams crept in.

  Landon found himself sitting in much-desired isolation. He blocked out the clamor of those around him, their constant murmuring becoming white noise to him, and he focused on solving his current dilemma.

  Landon still believed Celia needed to be on the Pantheon in order for them to discover the true extent of the Pallas Corporation’s plans. Even though she wasn’t talking to him right now, he imagined her attitude would change after she’d had a chance to acclimate to the life of the living and her focus returned. In the end, he decided all he could do was wait and hope that Celia somehow managed to excel at her run of the trials and make it into the tournament.