"All right.” Kingston accepts a second folio of papers from Emrys. Then he glances at me sideways. "I don't think I made that many mistakes," he says under his breath. "It was just one word."
I ignore him. Emrys doesn't.
"One word," he says sagely, "can make a world of difference, Mr. Pendragon.”
TWENTY
KAI
“I have no words.”
Luther loves to do the supervillain thing. Make you stand in front of him while he sits at the desk.
“Well, that makes two of us,” I mutter. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
Tuesday morning and I’ve been summoned to chambers. Informed by a slip of paper in my Camlann mailbox that my foster father needs to see me, since he’s now apparently back from escorting our robed overlords to Boston harbor and wishing them bon voyage. So now I’m here, my least favorite place on Planet Earth: Luther Pendragon’s campus office surrounded by Kingston’s precious childhood fencing trophies and crusty-ass oil paintings.
I only wish I’d woken up early enough to get drunk beforehand.
“Don’t play dumb, Kai,” Luther says, eerily cool. “You know exactly why I needed to see you.”
Do I? I stuff my hands in my pockets and look up at the distant ceiling of his office, pondering.
“What did I do this time?” I say, snapping my gaze back down to Earth. “Was it the Lord’s name in vain? Or, no”—I snap my fingers—“the impure thoughts.” I let out a low whistle. “Listen, I’ve been trying with those, but?—”
“Quiet.” The cool façade cracks a bit before Luther composes himself.
Yeah, yeah, I think. More injuries in golf, more fatalities in horseback riding. I’ve been hearing the same spiel since my Y-8 days in the rec center. “What’s your point?”
“You embarrassed yourself. Us. Gravely.”
I shrug. “What else is new? Hardly baby’s first black card. Remember that one Summer Nationals?” I sure fucking do. Fourteen years old, mid-growth-spurt, and just barely two weeks out from my bio mom finding a new dealer—through, I shit you not, her her NA sponsor—and dying with a needle full of fentanyl in her arm.
What are the fucking odds, right?
So yeah, I fenced terribly, I drop-kicked my mask, I got black carded—noshitI got black carded—and stricken off the roster for the tournament.
I would’ve medaled silver.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part, the most fucked up part, was how I was worried about what Luther thought. That he’d…I don’t know, return me or something, even though at that point there was no one to return me to.
“Enough!” Luther roars. Do you haveanyidea what you've done?"
I blink. Okay, so he's actually mad. Not just performatively pissed.
"Second place," Luther continues, voice like ice. “Second. Do you understand what that means?"
After first, before third?“We still made the final—" I start.
"On St. Ignaty's home turf!” Luther slams his hand on the desk. “Because of your failure, we travel totheirterritory. Where they will have every advantage. Where the Russians can sabotage us at will. You have put this entire quest—centuriesof work—in jeopardy, because you couldn't control yourself forfive minutes.”
I swallow hard.
"The Brothers came here to observe us," Luther goes on, each word precise and cutting. "To assess whether we—whetheryou—are worthy to continue this quest. And what did they see?"
He doesn't wait for an answer.
"Laxity. Weakness. A knight who cannot control his temper even when deliberately tested."
