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from those horrid beasts was to train at length. And Shadow Academy was going to provide mewith just that. I didn’t want to go. I needed to go—to protect my parents, and to protect myself.
    I knew what it meant, leaving home and entering the Academy. My parents had told me all about the hundred-year-old war, and how once you entered a school for training, the war became your way of life. I also realized that by returning to that lifestyle, I was virtually undoing everything my parents had fought for to give me a normal, peaceful existence. But I couldn’t, in good conscience, let anyone else lose a friend to the insatiable hunger of a Graplar. Avery would want me to go. Avery would tell me it was the right thing to do.
    As I pressed my lips to my father’s brow in a kiss, my mother’s tears turned into body-racking sobs. I kissed her forehead too, suppressing my own tears—after all, there would be another time to cry, maybe one when I was alone, away from my parents, and my tears would cause them no further grief—and went upstairs to my room to pack.

C H A P T E R
Three
    I f I ever found Maddox, I was going to kill him.
    Granted, all I knew of him was his name and the fact that he was supposed to pick me up from the trailhead three hours ago, but that was enough to place blame on him for the predicament I was in. After waiting for what seemed like forever, I’d gripped the note from the headmaster in my hand and trudged up the hill, dragging my trunk behind me. After all, how hard could locating Shadow Academy possibly be? It was supposed to be this giant school with an enormous wall around it. Should be fairly easy to spot, considering there were no other buildings around—just miles and miles of forest. Little did I know that an hour later, the beaten path I was on would abruptly end, and I’d be dragging my trunk through the prickly underbrush, over roots, dead leaves, rocks, and every insect known to man. I hadn’t broken down and cried—I pridedmyself on that—not even when a rogue branch had slapped me across the face, scraping my cheek. But my stomach was rumbling and my muscles had just about enough of wandering through the woods as the sun began its descent. It was time to eat, time to rest, time to find Shadow Academy already and just be done walking for about a billion years.
    And kill Maddox. Can’t forget that.
    Shadow Academy was certainly living up to its name, as I couldn’t see it anywhere, despite the crudely drawn map on the headmaster’s letter. My father had checked and double-checked the map, assuring me that if I stayed true to the dotted line, I couldn’t go wrong. “Wait at the trailhead,” he’d told me. “Your guard will collect you there. Don’t get impatient and start wandering the woods alone.”
    But my father hadn’t been counting on my guard forgetting all about me, leaving me alone in near-dark with no food.
    It hadn’t occurred to me that it was an odd thing for the headmaster to give me a map when he was sending a guard to meet me at the trailhead where the wagon had dropped me off. Not until Maddox had forgotten me. Then it all made sense, and I was starting to think that maybe this was the norm for Maddox. But then, my mind needed something to think about, someone to blame, while I made my way up the pathless hill. Might as well be that.
    I leaned forward, digging my shoes into the soft earth as I climbed. For the hundredth time, my trunk got caught on an exposed root and I had to wrench it free. My shoulder screamed with pain, but I pulled harder. With a loud snap the root gave way, sending me flying. I landed hard right in the middle of a mud puddle.
    Slowly, I thought to myself. That’s how Maddox would die. Slowly.
    Standing and wiping the mud from my face, I opened and closed my hand to stretch the muscles and get the blood flowing and then rested for a few minutes on top of my trunk. The woods around me were thick with roughthorn trees, and the forest