“Huh.” Demelza studied her. “There reallyissomething going on with you two, isn’t there?”
Ellery tensed. Her eyes flickered toward Julian, still unconscious. “Seriously? This again?”
“So you’re telling me you weren’t with him last night?”
“Of course I wasn’t—”
“Oh, comeon,Ellery. Barrow might be the talk of the country right now, but the entire academy’s talking about you, too. People saw you both escorted out of the grove right after he bonded with Valmordion.”
Ellery’s heart thrummed and she tried to keep her expression still, all too aware of the magician lurking outside.
“I’m not saying you’re together,” Demelza continued exasperatedly. “I’m saying you’re involved in the prophecy, somehow. Or are you telling me the magician in the hall isn’t guarding the door, like the Prime Minister’s inside?”
“I’m not… whatever you think I am,” Ellery said helplessly.
Demelza arched a perfectly manicured brow. “Sure you’re not. You saved Julian’s life, you know.”
“I’m pretty sure the healers did that.”
“I saw it. You put out Valmordion’s flames with a training wand. That’s unbelievable!”
Ellery winced.
“Clearly you can’t get into it, or maybe you just won’t,” Demelza went on. She smiled cautiously at Ellery, with a sort of sweet, tentative trust. “But knowing you’re part of this, even if I don’t know how yet—it makes me feel a little better about what’s coming.”
Ellery couldn’t return her smile. If Demelza knew the truth, she would fear her. And if she’d actually had the chance to tell Julian, he’d probably fear her, too.
Back in her dorm room, Ellery shucked off her uniform blazer and rolled up her sleeves. Despite the Wintery chill, she was too warm.
Branches rapped against her window like knucklebones. She jolted at the sound, then dismissed it.
It happened again, louder.
Ellery approached the glass slowly. In the courtyard below stood a lanky figure, leaning against a leafless tree.
Ellery gasped and yanked up her window.“Barrow?”
The presumed savior of Alderland slackened with relief. “I was starting to worry they had you locked in a dungeon somewhere.”
Surely Barrow had more important things to do than knock on Ellery’s window, as though she were some storybook princess in a tower.
Then he added, “If you’re worried about your guard overhearing us, don’t. I’ve cast a privacy enchantment over the two of us. Chosen One perks.” Barrow patted the sheath that jutted from his coat pocket—alban wood white. Ellery glanced at a pair of students passing by the trails, oblivious to the most famous person in the country making a scene only yards away. “So are you gonna let me in?”
“Um… sure,” she said weakly. “Come in. Or up, I guess.”
He hoisted himself up the tree. At each foothold he left behind, buds sprouted from the bare Winter branches—small but vibrantly green. With surprising ease, he reached the top and ducked beneath her window frame.
“That was fast,” Ellery muttered as he straightened, dusting bits of bark off his hands.
“Yeah, well, believe it or not,” he said sheepishly, “I’ve done this before.”
Ellery flushed self-consciously as he examined her bedroom decor—paying particular attention to the posters of Kent Sinclair, her favorite movie star. “And here I was thinking all those rumors about you were exaggerated.”
She only spoke lightly because she didn’t know what to say. Dark bags sank beneath Barrow’s bloodshot eyes, and he locked his shoulders tight, like he might jolt into action at the single tick of a clock or creak of a door. Yet beyond his exhaustion, there was something different about him she struggled to identify. He seemed to stand taller, but he was already so tall it was hard to say. There was the way the light caught him, winking along his silhouette.
Ellery’s gaze fell upon Valmordion’s sheath, decorated with a rim of solid gold. A memory flashed through her mind of Julian burning, screaming, that oppressive, terrible heat. She shuddered and looked away.
“I appreciate you paying a visit to my tower and all,” she said awkwardly. “But shouldn’t you still be in Oldermere?”
