They took the elevator down, which Naomi considered a rcy, given that her legs were still registering a complaint from the morning’s mile run.
The elevator doors opened into the lobby and they walked out into the California afternoon together, the sun sitting high and warm over the campus.
Naomi pulled up the academy app automatically.
Jace put his hand over her phone screen.
She looked at him.
"Let’s not use the map," he said.
"Jace, you got lost six tis yesterday."
"And I still got everywhere I needed to go."
"Eventually."
"That’s the key word." He dropped his hand, and she lowered her phone. "Let’s get lost on the road of life."
She stared at him.
He stared back. Those amber eyes completely steady, like he hadn’t just said sothing ridiculous.
"That is," she started.
"Profound."
"I was going to say strange."
"They’re not mutually exclusive."
She laughed again and she pressed her fingers against her mouth to contain it. Two girls from Sapphire walking past glanced over, and Naomi felt her face go warm again.
They turned left out of Building C, which was technically the right direction, and started walking.
It was a good afternoon for walking. The kind of weather that California apparently just had all the ti, like it was running a permanent show. Warm without being heavy, the ocean sowhere beyond the buildings sending a faint salt sll over everything. Naomi had grown up near water and it still got her every ti, that sll, the way it settled into the back of the throat and made her think of her father’s boat at dawn.
"How was your morning?" Jace asked.
"Exhausting."
"Sa."
"I got eight pull-ups," she said, unprompted. "I didn’t know I could do eight pull-ups."
"That’s more than I got."
She glanced at him sideways. "How many did you get?"
"One."
"Jace."
"It was a quality rep."
She pressed her lips together. "That’s not how pull-ups work."
"It’s how my pull-ups work." He said it with no self-pity, just stating a fact. "I’ve got a lot of room for improvent."
There was sothing in the way he said it. Not fishing for reassurance, not performing humility. Just honest. She was used to people performing things, performing confidence, performing strength, performing not caring.
Even the lottery kids perford their anxieties in slightly theatrical ways because they needed each other to see the stress.
Jace just said things.
"You’ll improve," she said.
"I know I will."
They cut between two buildings, which was probably not the most direct route to the dining hall, and ca out on a path that ran along the side of the recreation center. Naomi recognized it from the morning. She didn’t ntion that she knew where they were.
Jace didn’t seem to realize they were still on track. Or perhaps he preferred the silence.
"You called your family?" he asked.
She looked at him. "How’d you know?"
He shrugged. "You seem lighter than this morning."
That was a specific thing to notice. She wasn’t sure how she felt about soone noticing that about her this early in the year, this early in knowing each other. She thought about her mom’s voice and her dad pretending to check the water heater and Devon screaming sothing unintelligible in the background before being cut off.
"Yeah," she said. "My mom. She’s..." She tried to find the word. "A lot. In the best way."
"Good kind of a lot."
"Exactly. She asked about boys."
She didn’t know why she said that. It ca out before she’d cleared it.
Jace’s expression didn’t shift dramatically or anything. He just glanced at her, a quick look, and sothing in his face did sothing small.
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her it’s only been a day."
"Fair."
"She told she knew she was going to marry my dad on the first day they t."
"Also fair."
Naomi looked ahead at the path. The dining hall was coming into view around the bend, its glass walls catching the afternoon light, the faint sll of lunch drifting out through so vent she couldn’t see.
"My mom is very confident in her own judgnt," she said.
"Smart woman."
"She has a very specific worldview."
"Sounds like it works for her."
It did. It absolutely did. Twenty-three years of marriage and her parents still sat on the back porch together on Sunday evenings watching the water.
That was the data point her mother based all relationship advice on, the Sunday porch evenings, which ant every single piece of advice she’d ever given Naomi ca filtered through the lens of soone who’d found what she was looking for on day one and had never had reason to doubt her instincts since.
Naomi had different instincts. Slower ones. More cautious.
"Did you call anyone?" she asked.
"No one to call."
Naomi stopped walking.
"No one?" she said.
"No one." Jace kept walking at the sa pace, easy, like the answer cost him nothing.
She caught up quickly, her legs covering the distance in two strides. She studied the side of his face, the way he was looking at the dining hall doors without any particular expression, and she wanted to ask a follow-up question but couldn’t figure out which one wouldn’t feel like prying.
She settled on nothing.
So things didn’t need a response. Her mom had taught her that too, though in different words.
They walked the last stretch in quiet, and Naomi was just reaching for the dining hall door when Jace said her na.
"Naomi."
She turned.
He was standing two steps back on the path, hands still in his blazer pockets, the California sun sitting directly behind him. He looked like soone who had been rehearsing sothing and had just decided to stop rehearsing and say it.
"I need a favor."
She let the door close. "Okay."
"Tonight." He shifted his weight slightly. "The field. The one by the Arena, there’s a practice section off the east side that’s open after six."
She nodded slowly, waiting.
"I want to practice my ability. I haven’t really worked with it properly and after today—" He stopped. Started again. "Garrett’s assessnt put dead last in every category. Which I knew was coming. I knew walking in."
Naomi watched his face.
"But dead last ans I’m already four weeks behind everyone else before evaluations even start. And if I wait to figure out my ability alone, I’ll still be in the sa place by the ti rankings post."
He looked at her directly then, and there was sothing in his amber eyes that wasn’t performance. Just soone telling the truth and being mildly uncomfortable about it.
"I could use a partner," he said. "Soone to work with. Soone who’s not going to make it into sothing."
Naomi thought about the Hollow Crawler lecture from this morning. The forty-five seconds. The part about identifying the weakest mber.
She thought about her own eight pull-ups, which she was still privately proud of, and her wave blast that had sent a simulation dummy fourteen feet sideways during her awakening assessnt but had also nearly taken out the examiner standing behind it.
She thought about Captain Cross, who had looked at a fisherman’s daughter and seen sothing worth a sponsorship.
"What ti?" she said.
Sothing in Jace’s posture shifted. Not relaxing exactly. More like a small recalibration.
"Seven. Is that too late?"
"No." She reached for the dining hall door again. "Seven works."
"You don’t have to run drills with or anything. Just—"
"Jace." She pulled the door open and looked back at him. "I said yes."
He was quiet for a second.
"Okay."
"Okay." She held the door. "Now co eat lunch before I change my mind."
He walked past her into the dining hall, and she followed, and the sll of garlic bread and sothing with lemon hit her imdiately. She spotted Belle’s blue hair near the middle of the room and Marc’s glasses catching the overhead light beside her.
She also noticed, very quietly and very privately, that she was already thinking about what to wear to the field tonight.
Which was completely irrelevant.
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