In spite of myself, I laugh. “That’s literally the worst thing you could have…Haven’t you ever heard of telling someone their outfit looks good when it doesn’t? White lies save hearts.”
“Your outfit looks good,” he replies, playfulness dancing in his eyes.
I look down at my rumpled uniform, which consists of a white button-down, black leggings, and black lace-up boots. “It does, doesn’t it?” I say. “I could win a pirate costume contest in this thing.”
Ash’s mouth pulls up into a smile, but his expression seems more than amused. He’s looking at me like I’m the most unusual and interesting person he’s ever met.
“Also, when did you get so worried about danger? Aren’t you usually the one making light of everything? You’re seriously slacking on your duties,” I say, blushing slightly under his admiring gaze.
“I started worrying about danger when I started having feelings for the person involved,” he says, and his answer catches me off guard.
For a moment we’re both silent, sitting only a couple of inches apart, the air between us thick and warm in the firelight. I struggle to come up with a reply; sincerity from Ash is always unexpected.
“Brendan,” Ash starts when I don’t respond, yanking me out of the moment.
“Huh?” I say, trying to catch up.
“Keep an eye on Brendan tomorrow,” he says, his voice low and reasoning. “With Nyx temporarily out of commission and Charles and Dr. Conner dead, I’m not certain what the Lions’ next move will be, but Brendan is one of their last weapons here. There’s no sense in speeding up his timeline by letting him suspect we’re leaving.”
I sigh, my head swimming as I recall the incidents of the last week: Charles dead after trying to kill me, Nyx banished to the dungeon for trying to skewer me with her sword. And now Ash is telling me Brendan might try to pick up where they left off. “Isn’t there a universal rule somewhere that says it’s bad manners to attack people right after they’ve outmaneuvered you?”
Ash leans back into the pillows. “Not when you’re Strategia. In fact, it only makes you a more interesting target.”
His answer reminds me of a twisted version of that old saying: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I grab a gray velvet throw pillow, hugging it to my chest. As I look at Ash, images from my nightmare fill my head once more. I frown. He survived Conner’s poisoning, but only barely. What about the next time? How would I live with myself knowing I got Ash hurt, or even killed? What sounded daring, even romantic, when Ash offered to drop everything to help me find my dad is now tying up my stomach in knots.
I stare at the flames as they get lower in the fireplace. “That’s the thing, I’m the target. But you don’t have to be.”
“What are you suggesting?” Ash asks, unsure.
He waits a moment for my response, but I’m too lost in my tangled worries. He looks me up and down. “You’re leaning away from me, November, which means you’re trying to protect yourself. And you’re rubbing your palm with your thumb—a self-soothing gesture,” he says. “I can keep reading your body language, but it would be easier if you talked to me.”
I shift my gaze from the dancing flames to Layla’s bedroom door, which adjoins the common area of our suite. She generously retreated earlier to give me an opportunity to talk to Ash, her twin brother. “The thing is, I’m unbelievably grateful that you want to come with me to find my dad. But think about the cost, Ash. First, you’re leaving Layla. If something happens to your sister while you’re away, you’ll never forgive yourself—or me. And vice versa with Layla, if something happens to you.”
“Then we had both better come back in one piece,” he says, looking at me curiously.
“Second,” I say without acknowledging Ash’s flippant response, “what is your Family going to say?” Given the power Brendan and the Lions have, I hate to think what backlash there will be for Ash’s Family if he moves against them. “Won’t you be putting yourself in a vulnerable position?”
Ash smiles, but I can tell by his eyes that he’s concerned about this, too. “None of which is a problem if we succeed.”
“I’m serious,” I say. “You just finished telling me how risky this all is and that we could die. We have no idea what we’re going to find out there. We have no idea if the other Strategia even know that I exist—”
“I suspect more know about you than you might think,” he says quietly.
I stare at him, hoping he’s joking.
“Some of the students here—Matteo, for example—recognized you the moment you set foot on campus. We have to be prepared that others may do the same,” he says, answering my unspoken fear. “Then there’s the fact that Aarya told the entire school who your parents are, and even though communication to and from the Academy is monitored and often delayed, it’s possible it’ll get out before we find your father. Not to mention, suspicions will run high after you and I disappear tomorrow. People might assume Blackwood gave us leave to see our Families after what’s happened, but it’s just as likely that they will suspect we’re out for retaliation after how aggressively the Lion Family tried to kill you. So as I said earlier, we don’t want anyone to have information a moment before they absolutely need to.”
“See,” I say with emphasis. “There is no way you won’t be affected by helping me.”
“I’ve already helped you,” he says.
“In here, yes. But we’re insulated, more protected. Out there, you’ll be a member of the Wolf Family, actively attempting to thwart the Lions. You’ve worked your whole life to prove yourself as a potential leader; this crazy mission I’m about to embark on could erode that in a flash,” I reply.
Ash sighs like I’ve completely missed the point. “And if I let you navigate a world you don’t know and confront the most powerful Strategia Family by yourself, I might as well give up my future leadership now, because I will always know that I wasn’t there when it mattered most.”
I stare at him, terrified of what could happen to him and just as desperate to have him with me. “If you join me, you might not live to graduate the Academy, much less lead.”
“And I also might never learn to speak French with an undetectable accent. There are just some things one needs to accept about oneself,” Ash says, and the smile creeps back onto his face.
“Ash—”
“November,” he says, and takes my hand, the warmth of his fingers sending goose bumps up my arm. “I’ve considered the danger; I know very well what kind of risks we’re taking. But my decision remains unchanged. I’m going with you.”
THE EARLY-MORNING LIGHT seeps around the edges of the blackout curtains, and I lie awake in my canopied bed, watching the room slowly come into focus. There was a time, not long ago, when the grayness of this school and the lack of electricity unnerved me. I felt so isolated in this castle in the middle of a forest, away from everything I knew and loved. And it strikes me in this moment that I don’t know when that changed, when I changed, but I don’t feel trapped anymore. I don’t feel out of place the way I once did.
I pull my curtains open, letting in the hazy light. There is a deep chill in the room and my socks aren’t cutting it on the cold stone floor. I make my way over to my antique dresser, which holds a bowl of water and a fresh towel. I splash some water on my face and inspect myself in the mirror. The shadow under my eye where I was punched a couple of weeks ago is barely noticeable anymore, and the cuts on my arms and legs from Felix throwing me out of the tree are red but starting to heal. The bruise along my jawline is darker than it was yesterday and I’m sore, but those seem like infinitesimal worries compared to locating my dad.
I look out the window to the trees; between the branches, the first bits of snow swirl and flutter. “Snow,” I breathe, instantly homesick for Pembrook and Emily and our wintertime antics. And then it occurs to me what da
y it is. “December twentieth,” I say, and my chest constricts.
“Deeeecember tweeeentieth!” Emily and I shout out the back windows of my dad’s truck. There’s six inches of snow on the ground, making the trees sparkle and our town square look like an idyllic scene from a New England holiday card.
“What do you think? Should we go sledding?” Dad asks from the front seat.
“Well…” Emily gives me a mischievous look. “We were thinking we could go over to Eastbury Pond and ice-skate if you don’t mind the drive.”
“Breakfast, ice-skating, hot chocolate, sledding,” I say, seconding Emily’s enthusiasm. “Then we order a large pizza, maybe two large pizzas, and drive around to look at all the holiday decorations in the rich neighborhoods.”
Dad parks his truck in front of Lucille’s diner and turns off the engine. “This is your day, Nova. Whatever you girls want to do, I’m game.”
The winter after my sixth birthday and a couple of months after Mom died, Dad started the December Twentieth Winter Celebration Day—our own made-up holiday, which had no association or nostalgia to remind us of our loss. Emily’s been a part of it every year since. And even though it’s fun if the twentieth falls on a weekend, it’s a million times better when it falls on a school day and our parents let us take the day off.
Emily and I jump out of the truck, our boots crunching the newly fallen snow, with grins on our faces—the particular kind of enthusiasm garnered from knowing we’re doing something awesome while everyone else is in math class.
There’s a knock on my bedroom door and I wipe my face off with the towel. “Come in.”
Pippa, the young maid who attends our suite, walks in with my freshly pressed clothes draped over her arm.
“Good morning,” she says, only it sounds more like a question than a statement. She lays my black leggings and white linen shirt over the trunk at the end of my bed.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to force life into my words, but I just wind up sounding uncomfortable.
Pippa’s eyes drift to my banged-up arms peeking out from the rolled sleeves of my nightgown. Her forehead wrinkles with concern and I quickly pull my sleeves back down, but the gesture only reminds me of my dream last night. I give her what I hope looks like a reassuring smile, but my heart’s not in it. If I can’t make Pippa think I’m okay and that everything’s normal, I’ve got no chance of convincing my deception-expert classmates.
Pippa stops halfway to the door and makes eye contact with me like she wants to say something, but just then Layla walks in and Pippa excuses herself. I fight the urge to blurt out a goodbye, give her a hug, and tell her thanks for taking such good care of me while I was here. No one can know we’re leaving, I remind myself.
“I’ll tell her,” Layla says quietly as the door to the hallway closes. Despite having been locked in the dungeon herself, Layla is as poised and unruffled as always. Her long dark hair is loose and slides over her shoulder in a glossy wave. “While I may find your effusive behavior questionable, Pippa’s a nice person and I know she would appreciate a goodbye from you.” There’s no fanfare in Layla’s voice, as though she believes politeness is simply perfunctory.
I nod at her, grateful.
“Also, since you and Ash are leaving tonight, it’s time to talk about where you think your father is,” she says, and my anxiety comes back full-force. “Is your father the type to go directly after his Family in retribution for killing your aunt? Or will he hide out and gather information, opting for a subtler approach?”
“I want to say he’s not the revenge type,” I say, and bite my thumbnail. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned at this school, it’s how little I actually know about my own father.” I look up at Layla. “I can only assume that whatever he’s planned is dangerous. Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent me here.”
“Okay, that’s a start,” Layla says with her usual studious expression. “If he decided to infiltrate Lion territory, that would certainly qualify as unsafe.”
I sit on the edge of my bed. “That conclusion is exactly what kept me up half the night.”
Layla tucks her hair behind her ear and sits down on the bed next to me. “If he’s going after the Lions, it likely means he’s somewhere in the UK. It’s the seat of their power, it’s where Jag resides, and it’s where their allies are the strongest.” She readjusts her position on the bed to better face me. “Our Family has contacts in the UK. Everyone’s Family does.” She pauses. “I’m just concerned that our Wolf Family contacts may not provide assistance to you and Ash. Not all of our Family dislikes the Lions as much as we do.” She looks at me like she’s just made a decision. “And you’re not going to be able to track down your father without some help.”
I stare back at her, trying to decipher the secondary meaning of her simple statement. “I agree, Lay. But what are you suggesting?”
“That you use your Bear contacts,” she says.
“But I don’t know who they are.”
“Maybe not, but Matteo does,” Layla says, and I wince.
“You don’t really expect me to ask Matteo for help, do you? What are the chances that will go well? He hates me,” I say.
“I didn’t say it would be easy, I said it would be smart,” she replies matter-of-factly.
I exhale. Making it through this one last “normal” day just got more complicated.
I TAKE MY seat next to Layla in poisons class, which is set up like a medieval version of a high school chemistry lab. There’s a large fireplace that warms the room, the flames of which are used to heat and prepare poisonous substances, and a stone basin filled with water. At Academy Absconditi they don’t provide you with safety goggles to protect you from an explosive poisons accident, but they will extinguish you if you set yourself on fire. So that’s nice. The truly shocking part, though, isn’t the school’s lack of safety precautions; it’s that I’ve somehow grown accustomed to its risk-enthusiastic curriculum. I would shake my head at the absurdity of it all, but it wouldn’t go unnoticed by my classmates. Ever since I stepped out of my room this morning, watchful eyes of students and teachers have followed my every step.
I’m certain Aarya made a big show of telling everyone that my parents were the rebel Romeo and Juliet of Strategia—the firstborn daughter of the Bear Family running off with the firstborn son of the Lions, only to be chased by Lion assassins. That, combined with Headmaster Blackwood’s perfunctory announcement that Dr. Conner is dead, and the fact that Ash and I are covered in unexplained cuts and bruises, has made me the subject of a great deal of side-eyed whispering.
“Sit, my beauties,” says Professor Hisakawa, which is the way she addresses us at the beginning of every poisons class. She scans the room from under her blunt-cut bangs, her eyes twinkling. “We have so many wonderful things to discuss. You’re not going to want to miss a minute of it.”
Aarya and Felix sit at the wooden table across from ours. Aarya spins the glass vials and jars in front of her, which are filled with varied horrors, while she whistles. She keeps directing smug looks to Brendan’s back, obviously still gloating about her role in Dr. Conner’s demise. The part that strikes me as unsettling, though, is that if everyone assumes Brendan was involved in the plot to kill me, why doesn’t he suffer any consequences? Does his status as a head Lion really shield him that well, or is there just no evidence to prove it?
I shift my focus to Felix, who, unlike Aarya, is stiff and tensed, causing the long scar on his cheekbone to pull at the skin around it. He looks as banged up as me and Ash, and by the careful way he sits, I’m certain he’s as sore from plummeting through that tree as I am. He’s refused to look in my direction since he walked in the room. I guess it’s hard to look at me knowing he tried to kill me only to later discover that I’d saved his life.
“Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade,” Hisakawa says with a smile
, reveling in her passion for poisons. “The Gothic siren of any good apothecary and one of the most romantic poisons, if I do say so.”
Atropa, I think, and begin my usual analysis, a name that likely pays homage to the Greek goddess Atropos, who was the oldest of the Three Fates and was responsible for choosing the way mortals die—hence the “deadly” bit. And of course bella donna means “pretty woman” in Italian. I glance at Brendan—poison is just about the only thing he and his friends didn’t try to use on me, although I’m sure he would have if he’d had the chance.
Brendan sits at a table by himself, his shock of white-blond hair standing out in stark contrast to the dark wood and stone walls. Nyx hasn’t returned from the dungeon after attacking me with her sword, and it’s obvious Brendan’s aware of her absence by the way his brow furrows when he looks at her empty chair. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, but his eyes narrow and I’m certain he notices. Layla kicks my boot under the table, which I can only assume means: “Don’t be stupid enough to instigate Brendan when all you need to do is make it through one more day.”
I adjust my gaze back to Hisakawa, who stands in front of the large fireplace with her hands clasped behind her back, rocking from the balls of her feet to the heels and back again. “The thing about belladonna that’s fascinating is that there aren’t that many recorded examples of poisoning. However, my personal favorite concerns eighteenth-century poisoner Giulia Tofana. She made Aqua Tofana, a ‘cosmetic’ sold exclusively to women for more than fifty years to help them kill their husbands. Instead of being applied to the skin, this product was poured into soup. When she was caught and executed, it was believed that Tofana had assisted in the poisoning of over six hundred men throughout Italy.” Hisakawa sighs wistfully, the way some people react to a touching poem. “Now, tell me, why would I be excited about something that has so few examples to teach from?”
Aarya leans back in her chair, the picture of ease. “Because belladonna is readily accessible and grows wild all over the world.”
Hunting November Page 2