Valkyrie Rising ✓

Chapter Twenty-Four

I set my tray of food down across the table from Kaz. He glances up, then does a double take, his eyes lingering on my exposed arms.

"Nadia, your arms!" Eveia is staring at me, wide-eyed. "What happened?"

I sit before answering. "Contrary to popular belief, my life has not been that great."

"Holy Nikolai, did you—?" She just stares at me as if seeing me for the first time.

"Drop it, okay?" Kaz says softly, eyes still on me. I wonder if he's thinking about the kiss, our almost kiss. My face is tinged pink, no matter how hard I try not to think about it.

I take a sip from the bottle Briar gave me. My sutures are starting to itch in a very painful way.

The table is quiet for a moment. Wick breaks the tension.

"Kiira told us for tomorrow's visitation they're having an old fashioned carnival, then a party tomorrow night!"

I raise my head up, interested. I remember learning about carnivals in school. Before the bombings, people would pay money to play games and win prizes.

"So this carnival, they're doing it right after breakfast in the morning. It'll have some throwing games, and some strength games, things like that. And they're making popcorn!" Wick's smile widens when he mentions food.

We were given popcorn in class when we learned about the carnivals. I had never had it before, and haven't had it since. But I remember the taste, salty and buttery and crunchy, yet somehow it melts in your mouth with a kind of sweetness.

"I heard the party after will be pretty great," Kaz says. "Music, finger foods, dancing." He grins at me. "We should go and enjoy Wick's parents dancing."

I laugh, picturing the large couple moving as if they played the dance videogras game.

"Hey, you know I got my sweet moves somewhere." Wick shakes his shoulders back and forth.

"Oh my gosh," Eveia says. "Please don't do that in front of my parents." Eveia covers her face.

"Officially meeting the parents, eh?" Kaz smiles.

Eveia glares at him over the top of her hands. "They've already met, donkey. I just don't want them to realize what dorks my friends are."

Kaz turns to me, his face serious. "Nadia, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to this party and dancing as dorkily as possible with me?"

I play along, imitating his mock-regal tone. "Why, I would be positively delighted!"

"I hate you both," Eveia says.

Wick wiggles his shoulders again. "This is going to be fabulous!" He throws his hands in the air and sings the last word.

Eveia holds her fork in her fist like I had the other day. "Don't. Ever. Do that again."

Wick smiles at her. "So I shouldn't exclaim my excitement at seeing our families again in such a fashion when they arrive?"

"Not if you want to live."

We spend the rest of lunch chatting about the carnival, the party afterwards and about what our final week of training might bring.

"Let's go outside," Eveia says as we get up to dump our trays. "It was beautiful out this morning."

We climb to the cave entrance and decide to sit just outside, rather than hike all the way up to the roof to sit. When we reach the soft pre-dusk sunlight, though, there's a frenzy of noise and commotion going on. Several Troods are all building things; one group, a tall wooden wall with grooves and protruding objects, another, a strange giant pallet of wooden beams, alternating in height and space between them. Ritter oversees the construction.