by Megan Crewe
Mom’s face fell. “What are you talking about, Rocío? Why would you be thinking about that?”
My hands twisted together under the table, echoing the tangle of all the things I couldn’t say. The vague threat from that senior official. The plot we were unraveling overseas way too slowly.
I wasn’t totally convinced I’d be able to fix what we were up against, but I could make sure the people I cared about could turn to each other, at least. It was the only other way I could think of to protect them.
“I just… I’ve been hearing a lot at the college about international tensions,” I said. “It seems like things have been getting worse, so it’s hard not to worry.”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, mija,” Dad said, so calmly, despite his confused expression, that I could have cried. If he had any idea what I’d been dragged into, he wouldn’t have sounded that sure. “But of course, if there’s ever a situation where Finn needs help we can offer, we’d be happy to do whatever we can.”
Finn didn’t need to ask what I meant. His mouth had slanted at a crooked angle. He reached out to me under the table and squeezed the hand I offered him. “And the same for me.” He glanced at my parents. “If you’re ever in any trouble, don’t hesitate to reach out.”
Mom and Dad still looked bewildered. Sam’s words popped into my head—his comments about all the baggage that came with our work, the way it pushed you apart from the people back home. It happened so quickly.
I scrambled to recover the conversation. “Okay. Thank you. It might sound silly, but it means a lot to me to hear that.”
“It’s not silly to want to look after the people who matter to you, cariño,” Mom said.
I got up to clear the dishes, and Finn leapt to help, which probably earned him about ten more points in an instant. When I moved to start filling the sink with water, Dad made a shooing motion.
“You only have a few days off, and you’re working hard enough the rest of the time. I made the mess; I can take care of it.” A little of his previous good humor came back into his voice.
I stepped back. Mom and Dad would probably be weird if Finn and I went into my bedroom, and besides, other than the cramped bunk bed, the only decent seating was the chair at my desk. But I did want to have a little more time alone with him. After having my last visit cut short, I wasn’t going to take even one minute for granted.
“Why don’t we go for a little walk before the evening gets any colder,” I said to Finn. “There’s a park near here that’s pretty even at this time of year.”
“Sure,” Finn said, while Mom shot me a knowing look. But she didn’t raise any protest, especially after he thanked her and Dad again for their hospitality. I wasn’t sure anymore why I’d been nervous. If Finn was good at anything, it was endearing himself to people. He’d worked his way into my heart despite my best efforts at keeping up my walls, hadn’t he?
The early December breeze licked over our hair as I led the way to the park. Streetlamps gleamed along the paths between the bare trees. I spotted a free bench near the entrance and nabbed it, scooting close to Finn the second he sat down. He slung his arm around my shoulders, and I nestled my head against the crook of his neck, not minding the faint itch of the wool of his coat. It just made his presence even more real.
“I got the impression that went well,” Finn said. “Although, admittedly, I have only a small amount of meeting-the-parents experience to compare it to.”
“It was good,” I said. “I think they liked you. I’m sure I’ll get the full report after you head home.”
“They didn’t seem bothered about…” He gestured to his mark.
Had he been worried about that? I traced my thumb over the back of his hand. “They wouldn’t be. They know how the Confed works—they know the system isn’t fair.”
He was quiet for a moment, and I thought he might say, like he had before, that in his case the judgment had been fair, that he hadn’t done enough or been enough. I braced myself to argue. Instead he tugged me closer and said, “Is there really something coming that we need to be afraid of?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, struggling to find the right words—words that I could actually say. “I don’t know. I just feel better now that you know them and they know you. Just in case.”
He nodded. “If things get bad, will you be able to say so over the phone, or are they keeping too close an eye on you?”
“I’m sure they monitor those conversations.” But I’d been pondering that problem too. “I think, if there were something really important I needed to tell you that they wouldn’t want me to, I have a casting that would shield the conversation. If I did that a lot, they might catch on, though, so otherwise we’ll still have to be careful.” I paused. “Maybe we should come up with some way for you to signal that you need to tell me something they shouldn’t know.”
“Like a secret code word?” Finn said with a grin.
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” He rubbed my arm. “Something natural sounding, but specific enough that I wouldn’t say it by accident—and nothing to do with the Exam or your real job… Ah. I’ll say I’ve been thinking about the dragon you conjured on the Day of Letters.”
“Perfect.” My embrace tightened around him. “Let’s hope you never need to use that code.”
“In pace ut sapiens aptarit idonea bello,” he said in lilting Latin that sounded almost like a casting. “During the good times you’re wise to prepare for the worst.” I heard him swallow as he tipped his head next to mine. “I’d rather you never needed to face the worst. How long do you have until your ‘break’ is over?”
“A couple days.” I didn’t want to think about that. “Let’s focus on enjoying the time we have.”
His smile came back, a shade mischievous. “What did you have in mind?”
I made a face at him that lasted all of two seconds and then tipped my head for a kiss. For a little while, the warmth we created between us seemed to ward off every distant danger.
Chapter Twenty
Finn
How did you judge a lifetime of friendship against one act of betrayal, especially when you couldn’t even talk about the circumstances of it? I still hadn’t figured that out. The best strategy I’d found for coping with the revelations about my best friend during the Exam was to pretend her indiscretion had never happened.
“Is it weird that I love the Christmas displays even though my family doesn’t celebrate?” Prisha said as we strolled along Fifth Avenue. A jangling melody carried from a doorway we passed before the brisk morning breeze whisked it away.
“What’s not to love?” I said cheerfully. “The garish colors? The incessantly repetitive music? The crass consumerism?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Would I do that?” I asked her, but the truth was, my teasing felt a little stiff to me, so perhaps it wasn’t coming across as fond as I’d meant it to.
The full truth was, Prisha had gone into the Exam as a spy for the examiners and had hidden that from me until I’d stumbled on proof. She might very well be responsible for the faint scars the magimedics hadn’t managed to erase from Mark’s skin, and for the screams of the girl whose name I might never get back, who’d probably died in those horrible vines.
The truth was also that, in the finale, when it had mattered, she’d stood by me and helped Rocío and me put an end to the violence the best way she could.
I might pretend it hadn’t happened, but I couldn’t forget any of it, even if my memories of that time were hazy thanks to the examiners’ attempt to erase them.
I wasn’t even sure I’d rather Prisha hadn’t taken their deal. Her other options had been Dampering or, once she’d made the initial commitment, burning out. The Exam’s overlords might very well have arranged her death to ensure she could never tell anyone about their treachery.
Most of all, I wa
nted to believe that all the years before then, when we’d stood by each other and had each other’s backs, counted for something.
“Ah, I like Christmas too,” I said, peering through one brightly lit store window. “Although I think I’d like it better if it started in December. When you’re hearing carols since the second Halloween is over, by the time you get to the right month, it’s not that special.”
“True,” Prisha said. She tugged her fluffy scarf up to her ears. It was difficult to read the effects of the cold on her brown skin, but I thought she was getting a little pink. “What do you say we duck inside somewhere and grab a hot chocolate?”
“I’d say I’m easily persuaded by warmth and sweet beverages.”
We found a little table in the back of a café on the corner. Prisha leaned over her mug and inhaled the steam as if she were planning to drink the cocoa through osmosis. A dreamy smile came over her face.
“It’s so pathetic. I get… I get on break and all I want to do is eat all the things I haven’t had in weeks.”
“Champions don’t get a very extensive menu in the college cafeteria?” I asked, my tone turning wry. We could talk about what she’d been doing as long as we followed the official story—and didn’t get too close to any real details.
“Not much in the way of desserts, anyway,” Prisha said. “You wouldn’t think that’s the sort of thing you’d fixate on, with the kind of work… and everything going on, but, well, maybe I’m just frivolous.”
That last comment sounded more serious than the mood we’d been keeping up. That, and the thought of the “everything” she and Rocío and the rest of the Champions went through every time they headed back overseas, hit me like a jab in the gut.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Food is comforting. Why wouldn’t you think about that when you’re off doing what you’re doing?”
She shrugged, but she let herself drift back into the worship of her hot chocolate. She’d arrived for her “break” the day after Rocío had departed and tomorrow was heading back to wherever they were stationed.
For what might have been the hundredth time in a week, I found myself designing wild schemes to whisk them away where National Defense’s special ops unit could never find them. None of those schemes had stood up to reality so far.
“How has your family been handling your absences?” I said instead.
Prisha made a sour face. “Daksh is still angling for my room. Technically, I suppose he should have it. I have no idea what sort of salary is in my future. My parents are just happy I apparently won some prestigious position, and they certainly wouldn’t want to jeopardize that by fussing about my time away from home.”
For the Mathurs, the family business came before any other priority. Prisha’s parents assigned the best bedrooms in their brownstone to her and her older siblings based on who’d contributed the most in any given year. With the rest of the family Dull, magic had made Prisha special there. She hadn’t known what kind of a place she could make for herself without it.
That sense of never quite fitting in had been part of what cemented our friendship. It was also at least half of the reason she’d taken the examiners’ offer.
Something Callum had said swam up in my mind. I hesitated and then asked, “Would you do it again?”
Prisha’s gaze jerked back to me. She frowned. “Do what?”
“The Exam,” I said. “If you could go back, before you had to make any decision, but knowing how it would turn out—would you still declare? Or would you have gone for Dampering?”
She cocked her head as she considered the question. “You know, I’ve wondered that a few times. I don’t even know. I’m not happy being Champion, but I wouldn’t have been happy Dampered either, so…” Her voice dropped. “I’d have pushed back harder. Negotiated better. I went along too easily. You have to know I never—the things that happened—I had no idea, and I wouldn’t ever have wanted—”
I touched her arm before she had to stumble on any further. A lump had risen in my throat. This was the only time she had at home, away from the wars she’d been roped into fighting. I’d meant for this to be a more upbeat visit than it was turning into.
“I know,” I said. “I’m not angry anymore, in case that wasn’t already clear. I have a lot of different feelings, but more than anything I’m glad we got through in one piece. You’re still my best friend, Pree.”
“Okay,” she said, with a small smile. She shifted her arm so she could grip my hand for a second. “You’ve never stopped being mine. It means a lot that you’ve been able to at least sort of understand. I was worried… Well.” She shook her head, but I could imagine what she might have said. She’d expressed some of those doubts when we’d talked in the Exam, about how I might react to the choice she made.
As much as we could relate to each other when it came to failure to meet outside expectations, my old-magic insider life had been so different from hers that I could hardly imagine what that situation had been like for her. She might as well have been stuck between Scylla and Charybdis while I’d never even needed to enter the sea. In that way, I couldn’t judge at all.
Prisha gulped more hot chocolate, and her smile dipped. “It’d be nice if we had more time to enjoy the fact that we’re okay, wouldn’t it?”
“We’ll make the best of what we do have,” I said. “What else is there to do?”
After we’d finished our drinks, we wandered around one of the bustling department stores. I bought a cashmere scarf in Mom’s favorite color for her Christmas present, and Prisha gifted herself with a new pair of lambskin gloves. A girl with a wavy black ponytail ambled by. My pulse skipped for a second before my double take confirmed that of course it wasn’t Rocío. Most likely she was an ocean away from me by now.
Prisha followed my gaze. She’d always been able to read me like a book.
“You and Rocío are still… a thing, right?” she said as we headed out onto the street.
“Yes,” I said, perhaps a little sharply. My hand slipped into my pocket instinctively as if to confirm my keychain was still there. I ran my finger over the dragon’s tiny polished scales.
Prisha hadn’t quite approved of my growing feelings for Rocío. Not out of jealousy or anything that petty—Pree was solely interested in girls, herself, when it came to romance—but because she’d known the examiners had an especially close eye on Rocío, and she’d worried I’d get caught up in any punishment they rained down on her.
If Rocío hadn’t been so careful, it might even have been Prisha calling down that punishment.
My best friend scuffed her boot against the sidewalk. “She’s—well, I guess I can admit at this point that she’s really something. I just hope she doesn’t do anything too stupid while she’s making her stand.”
I hadn’t told Prisha about the stands I’d been taking. Possibly because I had the sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t approve of the League either. She’d call my involvement with them putting myself too close to the line of fire.
As if I’d be anywhere near as close as she and Rocío must on a near-daily basis.
“You’ll watch out for her as much as you can, won’t you?” I said. “I know she’ll do the same for you.”
“More because she knows you’d be sad if anything happened to me than because she likes me so much,” Prisha said, without any bitterness. “Yeah. I’ll keep an eye out for her—for you.” She bumped her elbow against mine.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had time to chase after any girls at ‘college’?” I asked, arching my eyebrows.
She grinned. “The pickings are a little slim in my ‘classes.’ But I am hitting the clubs tonight. Making the most of the time I have, like you said.”
Prisha was supposed to meet her grandparents for lunch, so we parted ways a short time later. I’d only walked past a few more stores when footsteps thumped behind me. I looked up to see a familiar blue mohawk.
“Hey,” Mark said. “I saw you walking by.
Out Christmas shopping too?” He held up a Macy’s bag. “I figured I’d better get something good for my aunt to thank her for putting up with me so long.”
“’Tis the season,” I said with a smile, trying to ignore the prickle that had shot up my spine. It wasn’t as if Pree would have revealed anything I didn’t want shared, but it was still a tad unnerving to find myself face-to-face with a fellow League member on my usual turf.
As if he’d sensed my apprehension, Mark glanced the way Prisha had gone. “Who was that girl you were with? She looked like a total old-magic Academy type.” The last words came with a note of derision. He didn’t remember Prisha from our team in the Exam, of course.
“I went to the Academy,” I reminded him. “I still keep in touch with some of my old friends.” I did with that one, anyway.
His gaze rose to my Burnout mark, and his mouth twisted. “From what I hear, you’re lucky they still consider themselves your friends. I guess you can win just about anyone over.” He paused. “What do you make of this new plan of Ary’s?”
I stopped dead in my tracks and turned toward him. “What new plan?” She hadn’t pitched any ideas at our last meeting. I definitely hadn’t been looped into any conversations about some new protest action.
“There’s a mage business ceremony, some big annual thing, at a historic building over there.” Mark waved his hand vaguely to the east. “Tomorrow morning. Ary’s got a Dampered guy with her who’s going to mess with the building. I think she’s hoping to crush a few people.”
My stomach flipped over. “The Recognition of Mages in Business ceremony?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
Callum, I thought instinctively. The ceremony Mark was talking about was the one my mother and Hugh had been named for. Mom had gotten the honor every year for two decades straight—Callum would know that. He must have pointed Ary to the event. After his talk about a truce, he’d found a way to screw me over the first chance he’d gotten.