The falling night draped the cloak of darkness over the Academy grounds, shrouding us from unfriendly eyes.
I pressed myself against the cold wall, hiding in the shadows with my friends.
“What’s taking Flavia so long?” I whispered to Sim.
He replied from the front of the group. “Don’t know.”
“Maybe she was delayed?” Ryoko suggested from next to me.
“Why do we need to wait for... Flavia?” Aellyn quipped in.
“She’s the leader, the one with the plan,” Sim explained.
Nobody had nominated Flavia as the leader, but nobody was challenging her for that position. She’d brought us all together and was the only one that knew how to keep us from fighting. If that wasn’t the leader’s task, nothing else was.
We waited in the shadows for a couple of minutes, trying to move as little as possib
