“A little, I suppose,” Vi says. “But I’ll be the first to admit that this wasn’t part of the plan for at least the next fifty years.”
“This is what you and Ryn were arguing about, right?” I ask. “This is why he doesn’t want you working.”
“Yes,” Vi says with a sigh.
“Well, now that this baby thing is happening,” Tilly says, holding up her glass and clinking it against mine, “you guys should probably get married. Make it official.”
Vi rolls her eyes. “We are married, Tilly.”
“Oh please. That boring-as-mud gathering we had at the Guild where you guys signed a scroll and then went straight back to work? That was not a wedding.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t a wedding because we’re not human and we don’t call them that. We call them union ceremonies.”
“Ugh, you sound like my grandmother. Just call it a wedding. Almost everyone else does these days.”
I sit back, sip my slightly dry, honey-hinted drink, and watch the argument playing out in front of me. I know Tilly’s going to win, and I’m fine with that. I happen to agree with her.
“Fine. Wedding. Whatever,” Vi says. “And we tried to have one three times, remember? It just never worked out.”
“Right, because some end-of-the-world emergency always came up that one of you had to run off and deal with.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, not this time. This time I’m planning your wedding, and someone else can deal with the earthquakes and floods.”
“It was a volcano.”
“Whatever.”
“Yay!” I lift my glass into the air again. “Wedding time!”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Monday morning comes, and I’m still riding the high of knowing I’m going to be an aunt. The fact that Mom is still in a potion-induced sleep is a bit of a damper, but I’m almost certain it won’t be long before she wakes. Couple that with the fact that I’m no longer furious about her lying to me—my anger is diminishing a little each day—and this looks like it could be a good Monday. Even an interrogation about my fugitive mother—which I’m pretty sure is coming—can’t ruin my day, thanks to one tiny and obvious fact I remembered yesterday about Guild interrogations.
An envelope appeared on our kitchen table last night with a note from the Guild informing me that training would return to normal today. After everything that’s happened since I left the Guild on Friday morning—traveling to a distant mountain, falling down a chasm, my parents’ attack, Mom turning out to be a Seer, Vi and Ryn’s baby—I’d completely forgotten about the enchanted storm the Guild considered a potential threat.
“So, does anyone know what that storm was actually about?” Perry asks. The four of us are sitting in a lesson room waiting for our first class of the day.
“My mentor said it was because of some silly duel two faeries were having,” Gemma says. “After the storm ended, guardians found them both passed out on a mountain peak.”
“Idiots,” Perry mutters.
“At least your mentor tells you stuff,” I say. “Olive keeps our conversations to the barest minimum.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” Perry says as he tilts his chair back on two legs and uses magic to hold himself there, “considering how fantastically unfriendly she is.”
We get through our lessons for the morning—the various procedures the Guild follows after guardians bring in law-breaking fae—and as we’re about to head to the dining hall for lunch, a first-year trainee appears in the doorway of our lesson room. As my classmates file out, she raises her voice and asks, “Is Calla Larkenwood here?” I wave and hurry over to her. “Your mentor wants to see you,” she says.
Here it comes.
I climb the stairs to the second floor and find Olive tapping her stylus impatiently against the surface of her desk. I sit down, she watches me for a moment, and then she says, “Why am I not surprised?”
I’m almost certain I know what she’s talking about, but since I’d rather not ask, I wait without saying anything.
“Of course you turn out to have a fugitive mother who is guilty of both breaking her contract with the Guild and creating illegal potions. So. What do you suggest we do with you now that we’re aware of this? It doesn’t look good at all for you that you hid this information from us.”
“I didn’t know until two days ago,” I say, making sure my gaze never leaves hers.
She laughs. “You didn’t know? You’ve been living with a Seer your entire life. That isn’t something you can miss.”
“Yes, there were signs that something was different about her, but I didn’t know what they meant. Neither my mother nor my father ever said anything about her being a Seer.”
“Well, isn’t that a lovely story.” Olive pushes her chair back and stands. “We’ll have to see what the Council thinks of it. Hopefully they’ll see right through it like I do, and we’ll finally all agree that Calla Larkenwood shouldn’t be here.”
“Am I seeing the Council members now?”
“Yes. Three of them. In precisely six minutes. So I hope you’ve got your story straight.”
“I have.” I stand and walk with Olive out of her office. “I assume they’ll be questioning me with a compulsion potion?”
“Of course. So no matter what story you’ve got planned, the potion will force the truth out of you in the end.”
“Great.” Compulsion potion is the tiny fact I remembered yesterday. The tiny fact that means this will all be settled soon.
* * *
Once the Council is satisfied that I haven’t deceived them in any way, they come to the entirely reasonable conclusion that Mom’s crimes have nothing to do with me and send me on my way. Olive is furious. She doesn’t say it, and she doesn’t look it, but the atmosphere between us as we leave the interrogation room feels like a brewing storm. She accompanies me down to the training center and informs me she’ll be paying close attention to every maneuver I practice today. “You won’t be leaving until everything is perfect,” she says.
And that’s how I know my Monday’s not going to be so great after all.
I head to the target practice station first. Olive hovers at the edge of my vision, making me feel uncomfortable. I had planned to practice more with the knife Dad gave me, but the moment I slide it from my boot, Olive says, “No. I can’t have you wasting half the afternoon walking back and forth to fetch a knife. Guardian knives disappear once they’ve struck the target, so you’ll be using those. I want to see fifty perfect throws in a row. If you mess up, we start counting again.”
“Fifty?” I say before I can stop myself.
Olive folds her arms over her chest, and I catch a glimpse of the underlying anger in her eyes. “Do you have a problem with that, trainee?”
I shake my head and turn back to my target without another word. I think of my invisible cache of weapons and try to pick out a knife that most closely matches the size and weight of the one dad gave me. I grasp the air, and feel the knife handle in my grip. Ignore Olive, ignore Olive. I pinch the handle, bring it up behind my right ear, position myself with my left leg forward, and throw.
The handle whacks the target and the knife clatters to the floor. Possibly the worst throw I’ve executed since Zed gave me my first lesson.
An exasperated Olive steps into my line of vision and says, “Do not tell me this is the first time you’re throwing that knife.”
“Of course I’ve thrown knives before. I—”
“That knife. Have you thrown that specific knife?”
“I’ve thrown lots of knives, so I’m sure at least one of them was—”
“Is it handle-heavy, blade-heavy, balanced? How far are you from your target? Is this a handle throw or a blade throw? You should know these things!”
“Can you just give me a chance to get the feel of it?” I’ve thrown plenty of knives before with Zed, and it always takes a few throws to get into the
right rhythm. Adjusting my distance, changing my grip. And then once I’ve got it, I can hit my target almost every time.
“The feel of it?” Olive says. “You don’t have time to get the feel of anything when you’re in the midst of battle. In a split second, you need to be able to judge your distance from a target, choose the correct knife, and know whether to grip the blade or the handle so that when you throw it, it strikes the target. Understood?”
“Or I could use something other than a knife,” I mutter.
“Or you could practice with every single knife you have until you know what the hell you’re doing!” Olive shouts.
The other trainees in the target practice area keep their eyes averted, but I can tell that everyone’s attention is on Olive and me. How could it not be when Olive’s shouting loud enough for the entire training center to hear?
“New plan,” Olive says, pacing behind me. “You will do this with every knife in your guardian collection. When I’ve seen twenty perfect throws in a row for one knife, you move onto the next.”
I don’t argue. I know there’s no point.
When the session is up, I’ve only gone through half my knives. I look over at Olive, waiting for her to give me permission to move on to the next activity in my schedule—stick fighting with Perry as an opponent—but all she says is, “Why are you stopping?”
So I continue. I wonder if Perry ends up fighting himself with a stick for the duration of the second session because I only finish with the knives just as the third session begins. My arm aches from all the throwing, so it’s a good thing my next activity—running—doesn’t require much arm work. I head for the running rectangles, wondering how many things Olive will be able to criticize about this simple activity. I can’t imagine there’s much more than too fast and too slow, but I’m sure she’ll find something.
“No, no, no,” Olive says as she realizes we’re approaching the rectangles of moving floor. “You can do this in your spare time. Right now, we need something more challenging.” She looks around, surveying the various areas of the training center. “Obstacle course,” she says. “Perfect. We can have some fun with that.”
Whatever Olive’s idea of fun is, I don’t think I’m going to like it.
“You,” she says, pointing to the trainee who’s already in the obstacle area examining the collection of obstacles stored in the corner. “You’re doing running now. Off you go. And you—” she points at me this time “—do some stretching while I set this up.”
I do as I’m told while Olive raises her hands and uses her magic to move the obstacles around, push the unwanted ones aside, and set up a course using the chosen pieces. When she’s finished, I see a circle of seven obstacles: a table, six stepping stones floating above quicksand, five parallel sliding panels, a climbing net, a series of low stone walls, a flaming hoop, and a balancing bridge. Not too hard.
“Get up on the table,” Olive tells me. “That’s your starting block. You’ll do a back tuck off the table onto the floor—landing in a crouch—then front roll under the table toward the quicksand. Three front handsprings should get you over the stepping stones. Get through the doors of the sliding panels as quickly as you can—not as easy as it looks, since the panels are continuously sliding back and forth and the doors keep changing their positions. Then climb the net and somersault off the top. You’ll vault over each of the stone walls, then dive through the flaming hoop, tuck into a shoulder roll as you hit the floor, and come up on your feet. Run up the narrow beam and across the swinging bridge, somersault off the other end, and land back on the table. No wobbling.”
“Okay.” I climb onto the table.
“And no magic,” Olive adds. “Obviously.”
As Olive holds her stylus up, I tense and get ready to flip backward. She flicks the stylus, it makes a hooting sound, and I jump. I land well and go immediately into the front roll under the table. I jump up on the other side and run at the quicksand, launching into a front handspring just before I reach it. Hands, feet, hands, feet—but I’ve misjudged the distance, my toes catch the edge of the second-to-last stepping stone, and I fall backward into the quicksand.
Way to go, Calla.
I propel myself out of the sucking sand with magic, clean myself off with another quick spell, and head back to the table. Olive watches me with a withering expression as I climb back onto the table, wait for the starting hoot, and begin again. I almost make it to the end the second time, but after running up the beam and onto the swinging bridge, I lose my balance and tumble off the side. Third time around, I make it all the way back to the table, rising from my somersault with barely a wobble.
Sounding bored, Olive says, “Again.”
Okay then.
After completing the course another five times, with Olive pointing out some minor mistake each time, she plants her hands on her hips and sighs. “Pretend you’re a performer. This sequence of obstacles is your dance. You don’t get to leave here until your dance is perfect.”
A performance. Okay. You can do this, Calla.
The third session comes to an end, but I climb back onto my table. Ignoring all the trainees moving around to find their final station for the day, I give myself a few seconds to catch my breath. I imagine my audience, tell myself that this is an art, not just exercise, and leap backward. I move seamlessly into the front roll. My handsprings are perfection. I dash from side to side through the sliding panels and throw myself at the net, clawing my way up as fast as if a horde of goblins is on my tail. The rest is easy. I’m used to the way the swinging bridge moves now. I speed across it, launch myself into the air at the end, spin, and land on the table. I rise, breathing hard as I take a bow for my imaginary audience.
“Nope,” Olive says. “Again.”
“What? That was perfect!”
“It isn’t perfect until I say it’s perfect.”
And so I do it again. I continue going through the remainder of the fourth session. The session ends, trainees start leaving, and still Olive doesn’t let me go. “You’re getting worse!” she shouts after I finish the course for what feels like the five hundredth time.
Instead of shouting back that I’m exhausted so obviously I’m getting worse, I sit on the edge of the table and wipe the sweat off my face while reminding myself what it feels like to breathe. Olive walks over to me with a look of disbelief. “Did I tell you to sit down? Get back up there and do it again.” Behind her severe expression I see a kind of vindictive gleefulness. She’s enjoying making me suffer.
I won’t let her win.
I give myself another few moments to breathe, then stand up. A number of trainees are still here, and at least half of them are watching. This really is a performance. They are my audience.
This is the one, I tell myself. Make. It. Perfect.
My body moves without hesitation from one obstacle to the next. Leaping, flipping, somersaulting, climbing, running, jumping—faster, faster, faster! It’s a flawless performance. At least, that’s how I feel the moment my feet hit the table and I straighten. As my chest heaves, I look at Olive.
“Well,” she says. “I’m not sure that counts as perfect, but it’s probably as close as you’re going to get.” She turns and walks away. “Oh, and make sure you move all the obstacles back against the wall,” she calls without looking back.
I climb off the table on legs beginning to feel jelly-wobbly. I drag myself to the nearest mat and collapse onto it. My chest rises and falls rapidly as I attempt to get my breathing back to normal.
“That was spectacular,” Gemma says. I raise my head enough to see her, Perry and Ned seat themselves on the mat beside me. “I’ve never seen anyone complete an obstacle course with such … finesse.”
“Or such speed,” Perry adds. “I’m pretty sure you broke a record.”
“Several records,” Gemma corrects.
I let my head drop back onto the mat. “That’s what happens when … you have a mentor who’s … insane.”
>
“Hey, if her insanity makes you a good guardian, it’s all worth it,” Perry says.
“Is it?” I ask as I watch the inside of my eyelids. “I’m not sure I … agree right now. Ask me again in … half an hour. Or tomorrow … when my muscles have recovered.” I lie on the mat for another few minutes. By the time I sit up, my three friends have moved all the obstacles back against the wall. “Hey, thanks.” I manage to stand up. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“I think we did,” Gemma says. “Looks like you need all your magic just to keep your legs working.”
“Do you think you’ll have recovered by tonight?” Perry asks.
“Yes, probably. I was joking when I said ‘tomorrow.’ Why, do you have something exciting planned?”
“Well, we don’t,” Perry says, a grin appearing on his face, “but someone else does, and we’ve been invited. Sort of. I mean, I found an invite.”
“So … we’re actually not invited?” I ask, struggling to make sense of what he’s saying.
“It was this follow-the-clue-and-find-an-invite sort of thing. I saw it written on someone’s leg when we were Underground last week looking out for you. So I followed the clue. And now we have an invitation.”
“Is this an Underground party?” For some reason my first thought is, I wonder if Chase will be there. Stupid thought. Stupid, stupid thought.
“No, it’s at the top of Estellyn Tower.”
“Seriously?” I look from Perry to Gemma. Gemma nods. “That place is super fancy. Are you sure we’re allowed to go?”
“Well, we have three entirely legitimate invitations,” Perry says, “so yeah.”
“I’m not going,” Ned says quickly, his eyes flicking to me before looking away. “So the third invitation is yours.”
“The clue led to this random old tree, and when I put my hand inside one of the knots, I was able to pull out an invitation,” Perry explains. “Only one per person, though, so I got Gemma and Ned to go back with me so we could get another two.”
“Because we can’t let him go waltzing off to a celebrity party on his own,” Gemma says. “We need to keep an eye on him. So can you come?”