“Yes,” I said.
Chance nodded. “Good. Wear comfortable shoes, okay?”
“When do I not?”
He chuckled and turned away, walking past Daniel without further acknowledgment.
Daniel rotated toward me. “Part of me never thought I’d see the day.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I never actually thought you’d go out with him.”
“Daniel, we all trust Chance enough to let him into our inner circle. He’s put in a lot of work to be a better person. I think I owe him the consideration.”
“So, you don’t really like him that way? You’re just going out with him out of common courtesy?”
I frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“So, you do like him?”
“Why do you care?” I started to walk out of the arena and Daniel matched my pace.
“The guy used to be a tool.” There was an edge to Daniel’s words I hadn’t heard in a while.
“Key words being used to be. People change, Daniel. Roll with the punches.”
Daniel sighed and his aggressive tone softened. “I just don’t care for the guy is all. And I don’t want to see you get hurt in case this change of his doesn’t stick.”
His sincerity caused my briefly miffed feelings to fade. I knew he wasn’t trying to provoke a fight. He was only concerned.
“Daniel, I appreciate that,” I replied. “But plenty of people have hurt me. I can take it if he does too. And anyway, while I agree with you about how Chance used to be, people who prove they deserve it should get a second chance because who knows what good could come of it. Look at us. Let’s not forget that you’ve hurt me too. If I hadn’t forgiven you, where would be?”
“Not here, I guess,” Daniel admitted.
I nodded. “And I like it here. You and me. Just like this.”
We paused for a beat at the end of the tunnel. I found it somewhat ironic that it was in this very spot that he’d once stomped on my feelings and pushed me away. Now neither of us would ever do such a foolish thing again.
“You usually hang out here for another hour, right?” Daniel asked.
I shrugged, surprised he’d noticed. Daniel and I usually parted ways after practice. “I like using the equipment at your school. And lately I’ve been giving Girtha and Divya a ride back. They prefer to travel by dragon than Pegasus.”
“Do you want to train together for a while?”
I found this offer peculiar but pleasant. “Did you have anything particular in mind?”
“I have some ideas.” His mouth curved into that confident smirk I knew so well.
A thirty-foot-long mechanical arm—thick and curved like a tree root—rushed toward my legs. It was one of fifteen limbs extending from the mechanical tree before me. I leapt over it and its counterparts, which spun around like the spokes of a windmill.
“This is the coolest thing ever!” I shouted.
Daniel had brought me to a tall, unremarkable-looking building at the back of Lord Channing’s training campus. It was a solid hike from the Twenty-Three Skidd arena. While in the past after practice I had explored parts of the grounds I was allowed in, I hadn’t made it to this unassuming building. What a loss. It housed one of the most awesome pieces of training equipment I’d ever encountered.
The base was modeled after a tree—thick, twenty-foot-diameter trunk stretching up sixty feet high. The goal was to get to the crow’s nest at the top of the tree, where there was a zipline you could ride back to the floor. Simple enough, but there was a lot you had to get through to make it there. The roots of the tree were the first obstacle; they moved with deadly speed. The trunk, meanwhile, was like a rock-climbing wall with grips built in for your feet and hands. Every so often a miscellaneous handful of those grips would retract into the trunk.
Once you got to the higher part of the trunk, metal tree branches rotated at various speeds and in various directions. If you managed to break past their challenge and reach the twisting rope ladder that connected to the crow’s nest, mechanical vultures that sat on perches near the gymnasium’s ceiling were activated. Their red eyes glowed to life and they tried to pull you off the ladder before carrying you back to ground level.
After three attempts, I’d yet to make it to the top of the tree, but I was not going to stop trying. The whole thing was nuts and amazing. I was sweating like crazy and loved it.
The tree came with a couple key safety measures. Weight-sensitive ropes dangled from the metallic tree branches—if you fell and grabbed one, it would lower to the ground gently. Additionally, each participant had to wear a special backpack equipped with a sensor linked to the vultures. If the sensor detected a body in free fall, a vulture would zip in like lighting and catch you by the backpack. The pack was a double-edged sword in that way. It served as the homing beacon that could save you, but also notified the vultures to come after you if you got too close to the top.
I bounded over the roots onto the tree trunk anew. Daniel had started from the opposite side, and was now about ten feet away. I moved with speed and agility, pursuing him with a grin on my face. I was learning. My hands and feet scaled the trunk, sometimes barely pushing from grips before they were sucked back into the tree. My arms started to quiver as I got closer to the branches, but I powered through.
“I thought you might like it!” Daniel called. He pulled himself up into the rotating tree branches and vanished from view.
The grip under my right boot suddenly withdrew. I swung from one of my handgrips and heaved myself up onto another, panting in exhilaration. I’d gotten knocked out of play in the branches the last time, so this time when I reached them I immediately jumped—right over a limb coming for my feet. I ducked a second limb a split-second later, but a third rammed me in the stomach. It hurt, but I grabbed the branch and let it carry me as I regained my breath.
Watching the branches, I timed it so that when I clambered on top of the limb I clung to, I could leap to a higher one spinning in the opposite direction. I thought I spotted Daniel through the fake foliage a couple of times, but it wasn’t until I broke the threshold of the last set of branches that I saw him in full.
He was scaling the twisting rope ladder, vultures inbound. As one bird descended claws first, Daniel threw his body weight to the side, swinging around to kick the vulture and send it into another. His ladder ricocheted back and he kicked the last bird in his pursuit. All three metal creatures flopped away but weren’t giving up. If you got a good blow, they were programmed to take a lap around the gym. That flying time was your reward. You needed to use it to your advantage and finish the course before the birds returned.
I grabbed onto the rope ladder. Two more vultures activated along the wall, their eyes gleaming red.
Daniel and I climbing the rope ladder at the same time should’ve thrown both of us off balance, but like in Twenty-Three Skidd and so many other things we did together, we adjusted for a better result. He and I worked in sync, acting as the other’s counterbalance. He made it to the top as the birds, both his and mine, closed in. They’d lost interest in him now that he’d made it to the platform, leaving me as their only target. So, I did what I normally did in these kinds of situations—something a little bit smart and a little bit stupid.
I hung onto the net with one hand; with the other I unstrapped my backpack and slipped it off. When the vultures were a few feet away, I hurled the backpack at the closest bird, a strap looping its neck. The other creatures changed course and started attacking their vulture counterpart, drawn to the sensor inside my pack.
I had no safety contingency now. I clung to the ropes for a moment then found the courage that always seemed to be there and surmounted the remaining distance to the crow’s nest. Daniel offered me a hand up and I accepted.
“Would you like to do the honors?” he asked, gesturing to a big button on the crescent-shaped railing beside us. I slammed my hand down upon it triumphantly.
�
��WINNER!” The mechanical voice echoed from speakers around the gym. The tree trap immediately shut down and the vultures returned to their starting positions.
“Guys in my year have a class in Advanced Obstacle Evasion,” Daniel said. “This tree trap was our midterm this semester, and we were graded on how far we got and how much time it took us to get there.”
“I guess you did well on the test?”
“Second in the class.”
“Oh, Daniel. Is that it?” I replied sarcastically. “I expected more from you.”
Daniel rolled his eyes but shot me a smile. He gestured toward the zipline. “Come on, Lyons practice should be almost over and you need to meet up with Girtha and Divya. If you don’t leave on time they’ll be stuck.
I nodded. To get through Lady Agnue’s In and Out Spell for Twenty-Three Skidd practice, girls without immunity like me and Blue had to use a “time-crack” that opened at the top of the spell and appeared like clockwork on practice days.
I checked my watch. “Aw, crud. We better hustle.”
He grabbed onto the zipline. “There’s only one; come on. Hang on tight and don’t let me go.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Shut up,” he said with a smirk.
I wrapped my arms around him and he pushed off the platform. We sped down the zipline sixty feet to the gym floor. I grabbed my jacket from the sidelines while Daniel turned everything off. Then we exited the tree trap gym and began our way across the grounds.
I could see the back of Lord Channing’s main school building from here. It was the closest I’d ever been to it. While boys came inside the main building of Lady Agnue’s during our monthly balls, we were never invited into their den. I’d always wondered what mysteries lay on this campus. The school and its heroes were like onions in that way—I had to slowly peel back the layers.
We moved into a forested area and the gray stone walls of the main building were taken from view. The whole property had a strong, masculine landscape in contrast to Lady Agnue’s prim and polished one. While we had gardens and orchards and freshly mowed lawns, the boys had mighty trees, wild fields, and even a gorge.
I wondered what would happen to my school’s archetypes—the princesses, the love interests, the female protagonists—if we were exposed to this kind of atmosphere. I didn’t believe any of us needed special equipment or environmental factors to channel what made us strong and heroic, but a combination of nature and nurture could be powerful.
A group of boys rushed through the woods in the distance.
“Hunting & Tracking Club,” Daniel explained before I could ask. “That’s where Jason is right now. They meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time.”
That explained why Jason had never offered to hang out during my hour of campus downtime. It didn’t clarify Daniel’s situation though.
“So what’s the occasion?” I finally asked.
“Occasion?”
“You’re clearly not a part of the Hunting & Tracking Club. Why’d it take you this long to ask me to do this?”
“You know as well as I do that climbing didn’t used to be one of your strengths; the tree trap gym probably wouldn’t have been advisable. Like every other one of your weaknesses though, you’ve smashed it. I figured you could handle the challenge now.”
“Fair point,” I replied. “But that’s not what I meant. How come this is the first time you’ve asked me to hang out after practice?”
“Because we weren’t like this before,” Daniel said simply. “You and I—we’ve always worked well together but . . .” He rubbed a hand against the back of his head. “Again, you know as well as I do that there used to be a lot more awkwardness between us. Now things are easy.”
I mulled on the thought.
Things were easy. We still pushed each other to be better, we served each other sass when it was deserved, and we by no means wore kid-gloves when expressing an honest opinion. But none of that frankness or provocation was marred by tension or discomfort. We coexisted like two halves of the same whole. I guess he felt it as surely as I did, which made him comfortable enough to ask me to spend time with him one-on-one. I was glad for this. We were ready for it.
“I like that,” I said decidedly.
“Me too,” he answered.
ou don’t even know him,” Arian said.
My most intimate foe appeared distorted in my dream. His cruel, handsome face was very close, but the image warbled. His black eyes, black hair, and the scar curving around his right eye—courtesy of me—were wavy like I was looking at him in a watery reflection.
Arian had the honor of being my first real enemy. When the villains learned of my prophecy, he had led the charge to hunt me down. Under the orders of Queen Nadia of Alderon, eliminating protagonists with prophecies that threatened the antagonists’ plans used to be his main job. I didn’t know how many targets there had been, but finding a thick folder in an antagonist hideout labeled “Threat Neutralized” still haunted me. How many people had Arian gotten rid of before any of us were even aware of what was going on?
At least I knew our friend and Jason’s former roommate Mark was okay. Sort of. We had found his name in that folder too, but I’d had dreams of him and so had Liza. As such, we knew he was alive, but we hadn’t seen him in a long time. He hadn’t returned to school with us last fall because of some mysterious illness that he was trying to recover from at home. With him being alive, it made us wonder why our enemies considered him “neutralized,” but regrettably we didn’t have a lot of spare time to look into the topic. Arian made sure of that. The Shadow Guardian boy was a relentless, malignant presence in my life.
The perspective of my dream continued to ripple like the disturbed surface of a lake.
“Crisanta, give in to it,” he said. “You’re strong enough.”
There was a pause, but no response.
“Fine then,” Arian said. He raised his hand and revealed a sword. “Here we go again.”
The blade lunged out of its watery frame toward my face and I woke. It was the middle of the night. The moon’s light soaked the side of the room. Blue lay asleep, but Kai was sitting up in bed, staring at me. Her dark hair and eyes in the nightshade of our room startled me. I scooched to a seated position.
“Hey,” I whispered. “What are you doing up?”
“You woke me,” she explained softly. “You were muttering in your sleep about Arian and Earth and someone named Mary Roberts.”
Mary Roberts?
The only Mary Roberts I knew was Ashlyn’s daughter who my friends and I had met when we’d visited Bermuda.
Kai pulled off her covers and slid out of bed, tilting her head and gesturing to the balcony. I glanced over at Blue and followed Kai. I shut the balcony doors behind us and shivered despite my fluffy lime green pajama pants and sweatshirt. I didn’t know how Kai could be out here in just a tank top and pajama shorts. Trying to avoid shivers, I crossed my arms tightly over the powder blue logo emblazoned on the chest of my sweatshirt—the logo for my kingdom’s Twenty-Three Skidd team, the Midveil Patriots.
We stood in the quietude for a couple of minutes, taking in the night.
“You’ve been dreaming about Arian a lot lately,” Kai eventually commented.
She was right. It seemed like every other night I had a dream about Arian. Although I hadn’t seen him in person for weeks, it made it seem as if he were always nearby. That made me shiver for a different reason.
I leaned against the railing. It was dark out except for the glow of the moon and soft backlight of a thousand stars. “He’s a big part of my life,” I admitted. “As Natalie Poole’s Eternity Gate deadline gets closer and our stories become more intertwined, he’s bound to become more important.”
“Do you ever dream about any of us?”
“Sometimes,” I replied. “Usually they’re just flashes. If it were important, I’d say something.”
“But aren’t all your visions i
mportant? That’s the deal with Pure Magic visions, right? They connect you to the greater In and Out Spells surrounding all realms and let you see things of importance that will happen beneath them?”
I shrugged. “Yes, but I don’t always get the complete picture, so sharing the fragments can do more harm than good. I have to be careful with how I proceed.”
Kai leaned against the railing opposite me. She glanced at the dark forest spread below us. “That’s your whole thing, isn’t it,” she said pensively. “Being careful with how you proceed. Trying to rein in your power so you don’t do more harm than good, which you totally have the potential to.”
My brow furrowed. Kai had a way of expressing herself that never made it clear if she was insulting me or not. I was pretty sure she was just being blunt and saying exactly what was on her mind—not as a judgment but an observation. I didn’t mind that. Blue was direct too. It’s just that Blue didn’t make me feel like I needed to be on guard all the time.
“I have a lot of power,” I responded carefully. “It’s a weird thing to say out loud, especially since I spent so much of my life feeling like I didn’t, but that’s the hand I’ve been dealt. Deciding what to do with it is a huge responsibility. I know you have your doubts about how I’m living up to it, but I’m trying my best. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Kai let the question hang in the air. Then she shrugged, finally shivered, and turned toward the door. “I suppose we’ll find out in the end. I’m gonna head back inside. I’m cold.”
I’ll say.
I immediately scolded myself for the snarky thought. Kai was my friend, mostly. I shouldn’t have been so defensive. Then again, the girl could be a tad chilly. She and I had a lot in common, but whereas I tended to be all fire, she was more ice.
I stared out at the forest. Maybe I just needed to try a little harder. Daniel and I had not meshed well when we’d first met, but now we’d become ridiculously close. If Daniel loved Kai, then she must be a great person too. I only needed to be more patient and work harder to see it.
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