The Immortal Game (book 1) by Joannah Miley Read Free Book Online

she paused. In one direction was campus, the test, her future. In the other was Athenaeum. She wanted a coffee, an Ambrosia Bar, and…
    She shook her head and ran on.
    She sprinted across campus and saw the last stragglers arrive in the science quad. Once the door to Dr. Reed’s classroom closed that would be it. She would get a zero on the exam. She could not recover from that.
    The thought propelled her even faster. She ran into the large glass entranceway of Mendeleev Hall and down the long corridor. She got a whiff of the microbiology lab and caught a glimpse of a tartan jacket sleeve as it pulled the door to the chemistry lecture hall closed.
    “Wait!” she shouted.
    Luckily, thankfully, blessedly, he did. She ran into the room, out of breath, and took the heavy test packet from him as she passed. She sat in the first open seat she came to, half-blind with adrenaline.
    She placed the exam facedown and waited for the signal to begin. Someone a few seats over leaned in close to her. She glanced up and saw that it was Mark. He had a look on his face that was somewhere between relief and bewilderment.
    “Where were you yesterday?” he whispered.
    “Uh …” she huffed, still out of breath. “Sorry … There were road blocks and … I ran into a friend.” She busied herself with taking pencils out of her bag. “I hope you guys didn’t wait for me.”
    “You should have been there. Sarah had a bunch of old tests .” Mark said the last word with the same inflection a prospector would have when finally striking gold. “Even last year’s.”
    “The questions will be different,” she shot back, hoping it wasn’t as big a deal as he was making it out to be.
    “No. But the same ideas.” He still leaned toward her, but his eyes were on Dr. Reed, who now stood at the podium in the front of the room.
    Ruby closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. She would fail. She would fail this test because—
    “Begin,” Dr. Reed interrupted her self-castigations.
    The sound of a hundred test packets being turned over filled the room. Ruby blinked and turned hers over just a beat behind everyone else.
    She read the first question: “Draw all isomers of 1,2-dichlorocyclobutane.”
    She couldn’t think. She didn’t know where to begin. Her heart was still pumping hard from running.
    She glanced over to Mark, who was writing furiously, already moving on to the second question. She squeezed her hand painfully around her pencil and tried to dissect the complicated chemical name down into its more manageable parts. She tried to picture the molecule in her mind.
    Instead she saw Ash.
    At first she pushed his image away, more frustrated than ever, but she found that if she concentrated she could feel the sensation of touching him.
    Her muscles relaxed.
    Her breathing slowed.
    Her heart became steady.
    She put her pencil to the paper.

FIVE
    Ruby walked down the sidewalk in a daze, distracted by the exam she had just taken, distracted by the thought that—maybe—she had done well. She remembered how easily Ash had come to her mind during the test and how calm and focused she felt. The questions seemed obvious after that and their answers easy. She wanted to celebrate, but she kept her emotions in check. She couldn’t assume anything.
    Ash was more and more of an enigma to her. She still had all those unanswered questions about his healed injuries and the Battle of Hastings, though his knowledge of the battle no longer seemed so odd. Of course he could have learned about it in books.
    She knew she should ride the wave of clarity and go home to study for other classes but her feet headed toward Athenaeum instead.
    When she walked in she only glanced in the direction of the chess table. Ash was there, playing a pretty blond with legs long enough to match his. He might have looked up, but she pretended not to notice. She didn’t want him to think she made too much of the afternoon they had spent together.
    Sage was at the