I wince. Again. That’s something like six grand’s worth of weaponry right there. Plus a few hundred for the mask, which now has a considerable dent in the mesh.
The salle goes quiet, except for the sound of Kai’s breathing. I slowly edge my gaze over from the pile of blades to him and King. Kai’s eyes are hard on his brother’s, but King doesn’t flinch.
A lifetime of training on the strip will do that.
“Prick,” Kai mutters. But he steps off, grabbing the zipper on his jacket and ripping it down as he swings for the door.
After he leaves, we all wait a long, long moment.
And then it’s business as usual.
“Cal, take your line.” Kingston shoves his mask back on and strides back to his foil. “Lanz, you ref. En garde.” He picks up the blade, toes his line, and sets. “Ready?”
His masked face snaps from me to Cal.
“Ready,” we both say.
And I don’t know about Cal, but I’ve never felt less ready in my life.
TEN
GWENNA
“So he’s just goingto…sit there like that?”
Morgan casts a glance across Holy Grounds, to where Kai is slouched alone at a small table, drumming his fingers on its chipped surface, staring at us.
At me.
I glance over too. Briefly. And shrug.
“I guess so.”
“Charming.” Morgan sips her lavender latte. I opted for plain coffee, black. Never mind that it’s coming on four p.m.
The registrar took her sweet time finding me classes—which, except for Emrys’s independent study, were a grab bag of whatever relevant coursework had availability—and then tracking down the individual syllabi was another forty-five minutes or so of back-and-forth. Afterthat,it was a trip to the Housing Office to have my housing assignment officially transferred to Morgan’s suite in Cornubia Hall, which ran into a few bureaucratic hiccups until Lanz finally intervened and reminded them who I was—or, really, who Luther was.
But it all got done. And just like that, I’m back to being a regular student at Caliburn again.
Except for the part where a fencer is stalking my every move across campus.
Holy Grounds, at least, feels familiar—still plastered over with postcards and trinkets, still almost swelteringly warm even in the dead of winter, still smelling like coffee and burlap and dusty brick basement. If I close my eyes, I can almost believe things are normal.
“So how’d it go with Emrys?” Morgan asks. “Did he…explain things?”
“Sort of.” I lower my voice, not that anyone around us is really listening. Not even Kai, who arguably should be. I rehash what I learned from Emrys as much as I can, sketching out the basic contours of his theory.
When I’m done, Morgan snorts. “Typical. The church catches on to something magical and just decides to bundle it in with its own mythology. Convenient.” She harrumphs and takes another sip from her mug. “So you’ve got some kind of latent power in you, then?”
There’s that word again. Power. I don’t know how I feel about it—having power. Being powerful. I certainly don’t feel like I do, or am.
“So the theory goes,” I say.
“And you think he’s right?”
I twirl a spoon in my cup for no reason—not like I added sugar. “I don’t know,” I say. “If I hadn’t…been through what I’d been through, I probably would say he’s nuts.”
Things have happened to you that you can't explain.
