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

“No.” He searched her face and shrugged. “It was a draw.”
    Her eyes widened. Jealousy rose up, not at the woman’s beauty, but that maybe she could beat him too. “Really?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “No way.”
    Ruby laughed despite her lingering doubts about the exam.
    Ash smiled and the room brightened, dark clouds lifting. Sage handed Ruby the latte and the Ambrosia Bar, but her grey eyes were on Ash.
    “Thanks.” Ruby took the plate and the mug. Sage ignored her when she tried to pay.
    Ash followed her to a table and sat in a chair across from her. He rested one boot on the opposite knee. “No more tests, right?” He raised both eyebrows in a quick flash and smiled. “Let’s go do something.”
    “Ash …” She started. She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t. That really it was time for her to study; there was always another test. But now that he was sitting across from her, she didn’t seem to have the words for any of it.
    “It’s Friday,” he said. “We have all weekend.”
    “I … I …” she stammered. We?
    …
    Ruby stood at the bottom of the sixty-foot cliff with the briny smell of the ocean all around. Seagulls cawed overhead. She watched Ash pull himself up with ease as he reached from one impossibly small crevice to another on the sheer rock face.
    An orange rope flecked with blue was tied loosely around a belt loop on his jeans, trailing down behind him. She bit at the inside of her cheek as she watched. She had never been rock climbing before but she knew a rope tied to your jeans would do you no good if you fell. Ash had insisted that he would be safe free-climbing. “I know every hold on this rock,” he had assured her, but still her knees felt weak.
    He told her that when it was her turn to climb he would attach one end of the rope to the harness she was wearing. The other end would run through an anchor that he would set at the top, and then run back down to a belay device on his harness. If she fell, the rope would catch her.
    She turned to the empty beach behind her, unable to watch. The rock was half a mile down an unassuming trail they had accessed from the coastal highway. “Just a place I know,” he had said, as he directed her to drive the little blue truck toward the Pacific.
    She glanced to his boots lying at the base of the rock, thrown together with her worn sneakers. They had changed them out for rock climbing shoes. A chalk bag hung from each of their waists in the back.
    She dug her feet into the sand and watched Ash disappear over the top of the dome-shaped rock, gone to find a place to set the anchor and attach the rope. He climbed down with the same surefooted ease he had climbed up, as steady as if he were on a ladder.
    “Okay, you’re ready,” he said after he made a knot that looked like two figure eights, one eight lying inside the other, and slipped a loop of rope into a metal device on the harness he wore. Now they were tied together, connected by this rope that she would rely on for her life. His eyes were the same bright blue she recognized from the railroad bridge when they bungeed off it.
    She looked up the rock face and tried to see what she had gotten herself into.
    “Good,” he said. “Plan ahead. It’s a lot like chess in that way. You can’t just know your next move. You have to know the one after, and the one after that.”
    She mapped out the first ten or fifteen feet in her mind and reached into the chalk bag hanging off her waist. The fine white powder was silky on her skin. It dried the sweat that was already slick on her fingertips.
    She placed her right foot at knee level, in a small crack, then reached up to a knob of rock above her head and pulled up. The muscles in her shoulders and forearms tensed. She placed her left foot into a wide fissure. The gripping surface of her climbing shoes gave her traction. She placed her left hand and then moved up with the right.
    She looked up and sighted her next move. She stepped