After a few yards Logan says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I am not a sprinter.” He waves Noah off and drops back to a walk.
By the seventh lap, Noah’s puffing hard and his heart’s beating about a gazillion beats a minute. I’m worried it’ll explode if we don’t slow soon. I glare at Edam and when that doesn’t work, I drop to a walk in protest. Noah slows down, too. Thank goodness.
“Can’t keep up?” Edam calls back.
I ignore him.
“He didn’t run the first four laps, that’s why he still has so much energy.” Noah wheezes. He scowls when Edam flies past us again. Noah’s face is red and his eyes look a little buggy, but his heart slowly decelerates and my fear it will burst fades. “I wonder if Coach is a former Olympic runner. The school board eats that junk up. That’s probably how he got the job.” His heartbeat has finally slowed down into the seventies again.
Logan waves to us and jogs over to where we’re walking. “So new girl, we have a big cross country meet tomorrow. It’s a five mile race. Normally I wouldn’t ask anyone to join the team on their first day, but you must have run cross country back home.”
“Something like that,” I say.
“Any interest? We’re short one girl,” Noah says.
“And you’re better than the two we already have without even training.” Logan lowers his voice. “We’re required to have two to compete and that’s exactly what we have. If anything happens to one of them, we’re disqualified.”
“Sure.” I smile. “Sounds fun.”
Edam jogs up to us. “Did you say there’s a cross country meet tomorrow?”
Noah sighs melodramatically. “We have a parent sponsor taking us, since we were without a coach until today. You don’t need to worry.”
“Oh it’s no worry. If you’ve done okay before, imagine how much you’ll improve with my help.” Edam’s cheesy smile is embarrassing, even though no one realizes we know each other. “Are you recruiting Rebecca? Because as coach, I think that should be my job.”
I glare at Edam, but he just smiles back at me.
“They asked me to go to the meet tomorrow, and I told them I would.”
“I can’t think of any better way to be spending your day.” I ignore Edam’s sarcastic disapproval and shove past him, heading toward the locker room to change before my next class.
20
After PE, I head for lunch, practically pouncing on Lark when I see her.
“So?” she asks.
“How did we end up with opposite schedules?” I grumble. “I mean, really. I know one single person at this school, and somehow you’re in a completely different classroom block than me?”
“Maybe it’ll be good. We’re meeting a lot more people this way. Find anyone interesting yet?”
Before I can respond, Raven pops up behind Lark with a floral decorated paper bag in her hand. “Do you mind?”
Mind what? She sits down at our table before I can ask.
Logan, Noah, and three other people I don’t know drop into the remaining seats a moment later. I introduce Lark to Raven, Logan, and Noah, and she introduces me to the other three kids, two girls and a boy, all as utterly human as Noah.
The rest of the day crawls along, with very few flashes of anything interesting. I could have taught the class in history better than Ms. Fitzgibbons. In American literature, I’ve already read The Scarlett Letter, although the instructor had a lot of insight into humans on the topics of shame and penance that I appreciated. On the way home, I check my phone and discover Inara bombarded me with lots of new video files.
“How was your first day?” Frederick asks.
I shrug, distracted by scanning through the new footage to see how many files she sent. Eleven. “It was different than I imagined.”
“I enjoyed it,” Lark says. “I mean, I didn’t learn much in class, but I learned a lot from watching them.”
“Them?” Bernard tilts his head so he can see us in the rearview mirror.
“You know, humans,” Lark says.
She must be even more curious than I am, since her father was human.
“Not fun?” Frederick asks.
“Not really,” I say. “But no assassination attempts, no coups, and no one stabbed my hand with a fork, so I’d say total boredom is still an improvement over the last week and a half. But I have a question for you.”
Frederick raises his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“There are at least two half-evians attending Trinity in my grade. I think I identified a few more in the halls. And my calculus teacher called me ‘Your Majesty.’ What’s going on there?”
Frederick sighs. “You know Alora enrolled you because she had influence here. You didn’t stop to consider why or how she might have influence?”
I hadn’t, actually. I figured Alora knew everyone important in New York and didn’t go beyond that. “Wait, are they her... kids? Or grandkids, or something?”
Frederick smiles but he doesn’t look happy. “Some of them are. The First Family, and all the other families for that matter, have been exiling evians for millennia. They also kick out half-evians and any parent who chooses to raise an impure child instead of giving it up. Where did you think they would all go?”
“The best prep schools in New York City?”
Bernard clears his throat from the front seat. “Precisely.”
“So which ones are related to Alora, and by extension, to me? And do they know who I am?” I ask.
“Do you know, Bernard?” Frederick asks.
“A few of the teachers know, clearly, but as to the others, you’ll have to ask your sister about that. I’m not positive, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.”
Ugh. Even hiding among humans, I’m knee deep in politics.
“I will tell you this.” Frederick steeples his hands and rests his chin on them. “I have heard that among the human elite aware of our existence, evian blood is prized above all else. Rich and powerful human families will do most anything to bring it into their gene pool. It gives exiled evians some leverage when they leave the family for the cold, cruel world, even when they leave penniless.”
Gross. “Leverage as what? A walking womb? A brood mare?” A queasy feeling in my stomach makes me wonder if this is how humans feel when they’re sick.
“Living with humans might not be the break I was hoping for,” Lark says.
“Even so, time at Trinity might be a great opportunity for you to recruit for my non-existent spy network,” I say. “Keep that in mind.”
I open the first video file on my phone and stick in my headphones to listen. I only watch two before we reach Alora’s brownstone. As if she knew I’d have questions for her, she’s hovering at the top of the stairs.
“How was your first day?” she asks.
“It went okay,” I say, “but I didn’t learn much. Calculus, especially, seems completely useless.”
She laughs. “It’s not so bad, and I’m a ballerina. If I can learn it, you can suffer through it too.”
“I have a test tomorrow, so I better catch up at least.”
“I don’t think I could live it down if my little sister failed out of Trinity.” Alora laughs and starts down the stairs toward me.
“Are all your kids passing? And your grandkids?” I scowl. “You know, the ones I’ve never even met?”
My perfectly graceful sister stumbles. “What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me the school is crawling with evians?” I ask.
“Half-evians,” she says. “And there are only a handful, all of which I know about and have approved. Only one of them is related to me.”
“Raven?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, Logan Calvert.”
I nod. I should’ve known. “Why didn’t you tell me? He obviously doesn’t know. What if I’d been flirting with him?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Were you?”
“No.” I scowl. “But he’s cute. I could h
ave. With my own, er, what is he to me, exactly?”
“He’s my grandson.”
“He’s only one quarter evian?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, his mother is also half-evian.”
“This is strange,” I say. “I had no idea any of this existed.”
Alora sighs. “It’s all far, far beneath you, Chancery. When I left the evian world, I thought I could turn my back on it all. I thought I would leave the messiness, the haves and the have nots, and sink into the anonymity of humanity.”
“But it didn’t happen.”
“No, it didn’t,” Alora says. “Walk into any trailer park in America and you’ll discover a universal truth. Humans, big and small, rich and poor, young and old, they all yearn for whatever they don’t have. Even among people who have virtually nothing, there are haves and have nots. It’s in our nature to want to have the most of something, and it’s the comparison that gets dangerous. When I walked away, it changed the stakes for me. Out here, I’m an eternal have surrounded by terribly outmatched have nots.”
“Is that easier?” I ask.
She leans against the column at the bottom of the stairs and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my sister’s eyes quite so crinkled or her shoulders quite so slumped. “In some ways, but in many ways it’s harder. Running away from Judica won’t eliminate your problems, Chancery. You might be thinking it’ll be a thousand years of laying around at the beach and sipping on piña coladas, but that kind of suspended paradise doesn’t exist. And if it did, you’d hate it before the end of the second week. Life is about how you deal with hurdles, because you’re always jumping them. If you aren’t, you’re dead. Or you may as well be.”
“How many of the half-evians know about us?”
“About a third of the teachers do, and three of them are part evian. Very, very few of the students know, even those with evian blood. Among half-evians it’s tradition not to explain any of it until after high school graduation. Otherwise, they spend all their time second guessing everything they say or do. Logan is an exception since he’s an active athlete. He needed to be told why he has to hold back.”
“What about his friend Noah?” I ask. “Is he part evian?”
“What’s his full name? I can find out.”
“Noah Wen.”
“I’ll let you know.” A part of me wants her to say yes.
“You like him,” Lark whispers with a smirk.
I realize she’s right.
“Edam’s already waiting for you in the ballroom,” Alora says.
I moan, but I take the stairs two steps at a time in my rush to change clothes. I can’t decide if I’m trying to minimize Edam’s irritation by hurrying, or whether I secretly like the training.
I expect him to mock me for attending Trinity, but he doesn’t say a word. In fact, if I hadn’t been completely positive he was there today, I might wonder whether I imagined him as my PE coach.
Fine. If he can pretend, I can too. I’ll never let on that I’m hot for my teacher. I snap my gaze up from his broad shoulders and try to focus on learning something.
He tosses me a sword. “I heard you got more videos.”
I nod.
“Anything good?”
I shrug. “Judica favors her left. Very, very slightly.”
“It’s a weakness. It’s faint, but it’s there. Good. Today we’ll practice a few dozen moves that will target Judica’s weaknesses. We’re going to polish them until they shine.”
He delivers on his promise.
“It would help if you pretended to have any of her weaknesses, so I could see if my moves are working.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. It wouldn’t. You have to assume she won’t mess up and fight accordingly. Then if she ever does, you’ll be ready. If she’s smart, she’s eliminating those liabilities right now. If you count on them, she’ll carve you up for it.”
A pang of guilt hits me. He is really good at this, and I robbed him of his position when I ran. He’ll absolutely hate being exiled if I abdicate. Of course, that guilt fades away over the next two hours as Edam repeats move after move after move endlessly.
“Muscle memory,” Edam says. “It’s your only real advantage in an evian fight. If you don’t know what to do all the way down to your bones, then you can’t do it without thinking, and that means you won’t be fast enough.”
“I guess,” I say.
“You guess?”
“Yeah, I guess. That’s the whole idea of melodics, you know. You learn how to move in a way that correlates with the music that surrounds us, the music most people don’t bother to hear. Then I wouldn’t have to think, just like you’re saying, but not with one move or two or three. I’d move without thinking on every single strike, every single parry, every single slash. Every move would fit into a larger pattern I’d be able to read. I wish I had gotten to that point, I wish Mom hd finished my training. But to you, all of it is just nonsense. I find it ironic and sad, that’s all. You’re teaching me the underlying tenets of melodics like it’s some revelation to me.”
He steps back and spears me with a glance. “Is your heart in this, Chancery? Because if it’s not, I’d prefer not to waste my time.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask. “I mention similarities between your method and my former training and suddenly I’m not trying?”
He doesn’t reply. Instead, he raises his sword and comes after me. I grab the first blade my hand reaches on the weapons rack and throw it up to block him. He slams into me like a freight train and I do my best to get off the track. It’s not long before he smashes me to the mat, his sword pressed to my carotid.
“What were you thinking then?” he whispers.
He decimated me. Obviously I suck at melodics. Or maybe everyone’s right and melodics don’t hold up. “I’m beginning to doubt that there’s any way I could possibly beat her.”
“You probably can’t,” he says.
I shove him off me, ignoring the slice to the side of my neck that results, and healing as I curl onto my side. “Then why bother?”
He rocks back on his heels and stands. “I want you to have a choice. I didn’t have one. But you already know what I think you should do.”
“I just don’t...”
He spins away from me and walks toward the door. “You find me repulsive. I’m your horrid sister’s ex. I know.”
I sit down, deflated by his words. “I don’t. Find you repulsive, I mean. It’s not that.”
He pivots on his heel to face me. “Then what? Why are you considering your only options to be a suicide mission or abdication?”
I meet his eyes, hoping he can understand. “I want to be good enough myself. It’s dumb to pick a ruler like this, but it’s what we do. If I can’t defeat her myself, how will anyone ever see me as anything but an easy target? You might be able to defeat her for me, but how can you protect me from the entire world?”
Muscles in Edam’s jaw contract. After a moment of silence, he nods. “That’s a reason I respect.”
“You think it’s naive.”
“Not naive. Hopeful.”
“Stupidly hopeful?” My heart catches in my throat and I work to swallow. I shouldn’t care this much about what he thinks.
“Not stupid, no. And who knows? Maybe you’ll defeat her.”
I nearly choke on my desperation. “You think I could?”
“If you decide that’s truly what you want and stop pulling all your punches, maybe. But you don’t even want to beat her, not really. I don’t think you want to defeat anyone.”
I close my eyes and envision my sword connecting with Edam’s side or his arm. I shudder. “I don’t know if I can change who I am. I’m not like her, and I never will be. I’m not a conqueror. I’m pretty much the opposite.”
He shakes his head. “You’re whoever you want to be.” He reaches out a hand to pull me back to my feet.
I take his hand and stand up.
“Let’s ma
ke some real progress.” Edam hands me a new sword that gleams beautifully. The hilt is ornamented with fancy Cyrillic letters.
I take it and swing it around a bit. “This blade sucks.”
He grins. “It’s pretty.”
I arch one brow. “The balance is terrible.” When I run my finger down the right edge, it doesn’t even break the skin. “And it’s dull. Like calculus.”
He suppresses his grin, but it reaches his eyes anyway and they sparkle. “And this one?” He hands me the plain sword he just annihilated me with, its hilt wrapped with black cloth.
I shift it in my hand. The balance is much better, but even with my recent accelerated training, it’s far too heavy.
“I can’t use this one.”
“Why not?”
“My arm will tire, which will slow me down. Maybe not a lot, but enough.”
He nods. “Good. Your mother didn’t neglect weapons basics.”
“Oh we analyzed lots of weapons, and even spent a little time doing bladed movements.”
“Bladed movements?” Edam asks. “Do I even want to know?”
“You’d call it dancing with a sword as a prop, probably.”
He mutters so quietly I can’t make out the words. He snatches the black-wrapped hilt of the heavy broadsword back, and our fingers brush.
My shoulder blades twitch and sweat slides down the skin over my sternum. I shiver. Edam’s eyes meet mine and for a moment, for one brief moment, I wonder what he would do if I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his. He proposed to me, but we haven’t even kissed. Doesn’t it bother him?
He gestures gruffly at the weapons rack and grunts. “Pick something else, then.”
The moment evaporates and my heart sinks back into my chest where it belongs.
I select a curved blade, as heavy as I can reasonably handle, but balanced well and honed to a fine edge. It’s clear how little my knowledge of blades matters when Edam comes at me like he’s carving a roasted turkey after a week-long fast. He decimates me, and then when I stand up, he does it again, in a new way. And again, the third time, spraying blood all the way up to the frescoes on the ceiling.
Alora’s not going to like it. In fact, as I look around at the room, I realize that if the producers of Kill Bill and Walking Dead made a cinematic baby, the set would look like Alora’s ballroom. Although, there aren’t any corpses.
Displaced (The Birthright Series Book 1) Page 22