Cassiel Winters 1: Sky's End Read Free

Daz’s whereabouts very early on. Three times. He sticks to ESE Command’s line: On a mission.
    I try to believe him.
    I want to believe him.
    The thing is, the first time I met King, he was doing his best impression of a burglar. Yeah, for real. He’d broken into our dome, somehow, the very next morning after I’d had the freaky déjà vu.
    I still can’t believe it sometimes. There he was, just standing there, staring down at me, as I awoke. I had crashed on the sofa, with all the lights on, too spooked after the note to sleep in the dark. His chiseled face was passive, like a mask, only with King, I later learned, if you look close enough, you can see a hint of the stormy emotion underneath. That morning it was his clenched teeth, visible through his zero-body-fat cheeks. His eyes, wide open, alight, were so penetrating, for a moment, I felt there was no escaping them. I yelped and scrambled toward the end of the sofa while he came to life and rushed to introduce himself, offering up the lame excuse that Daz had asked him to check on the place.
    Please .
    Lucky for my intruder Daz had spoken often about this ‘King’ in training. How King was almost as good a pilot as him, how King was an incredible fighter, how King was always doing this or that, though, he never mentioned how good-looking this King was.
    He might have at least mentioned that.
    Anyway, you’d think someone who had just scared the living daylights out of someone else would be somewhat contrite. Not King. He couldn’t seem to wipe the smirk off his face, even after I asked him to pass me the blanket on the nearby chair (I was wearing nothing but a worn, thin nightie, covered in very tiny pink cherries, which I still squeeze myself into because it was the last thing Mom ever bought me). I flush, even now, remembering (okay, reliving) how he didn’t even try to rein in those roving eyes of his.
    “. . . and don’t forget about the screwdriver,” King adds, as we step into the turbolift. He’s unusually animated as he recounts other things that ESE might throw at me. The “screwdriver” is a colloquialism among cadets and refers to ESE’s ability to trick you into thinking that things just can’t get any worse—they always do.
    Obviously, I’m elated at how keen King is to help me out. He seems . . . oblivious to the fact there are other officers on the turbolift.
    Okay, confession: I have a possible reason to support the theory that there’s something more than a passing, quasi-obligatory interest in me. That morning he broke in, he saw the Academy admission form on my com-tab (well, I had to invite him for breakfast, he’d come all that way!). He encouraged me to go for it, and I was accepted so quickly, I wondered if he’d somehow pulled some strings to get me in—naw, wishful thinking. But that’s not why I’m hopeful. When I hedged about applying, he said, using these exact words, “Is there some reason that would stop you from joining?”
    Well, I took a good, long, hard look at him. The first thing I thought of was the note. But, come on . Then I thought, surely Daz would not have told him about my ability. Not when he’d warned me a million times to never tell another living person—he was always scared he would lose me to a Care Center.
    Well, King met my stare, inhaled through his nose, and clenched his teeth, again.
    Knowingly.
    Pleased.
    Possessive.
    I gasped, and some kind of recognition flickered across his face, then surprise, then nothing. He changed the subject casually, and the moment was over.
    I can’t explain it, but I swear, I wasn’t just imagining those facial expressions. For the briefest time, standing in the kitchen, a stack of pancakes between us, I felt those specific feelings he was having about me, inside of me. And, even weirder, I knew he knew that I’d felt them.
    But . . . what do you do with that?
    Fear slices through me as the turbolift doors vanish at Level X, already?, and the gigantic room,