Two weeks slipped by, and Max still refused to train me.
This was especially frustrating because I wasn’t even asking much of him. I only needed him to tell me what would be on the Orders’ evaluations. Those tests, I figured, were my best chance to prove to Nura and the rest of the Orders that I was capable of membership — and not only that, but to convince them of my cause.
And to do that, I had to do more than pass. I had to be
remarkable.
Max’s books, as he seemed to suspect they would be, were unhelpful. The language was too archaic for me to understand, and more philosophical than instructional.
So, I did what I could. I tried to push my body back into its peak condition, rising at dawn to run as far as my legs would take me, forcing my lungs to the point where each breath came in ragged, shaky gasps. I was so weak. I used to dance for hours without letting my flirtatious smile falter. Now, my body faltered at a fraction of its former strength.
Max would watch me as I stumbled back, gasping for air, usually reclining in a chair with a book in hand or crouched among the gardens. “That looks difficult,” he’d comment, and I’d glare at him while panting and
jamming another pin into my hair (as he had annoyingly been right about the length).
“It’d be less difficult if I knew what to study,” I snapped between gasps.
“Running in circles probably isn’t part of the Order’s evaluation.”
I practiced every bit of magic I knew. Conjuring, bending the breeze around my hands, drawing water from the earth. I even tried sketching some of the circles I’d seen in Max’s study on the ground. I didn’t know what they were supposed to do—which, I realized, could have ended poorly—but for me, they did nothing at all.
Once, while I was copying what had to be my fifteenth circle, Max peered over my shoulder and remarked, “Hm,” tilting his head before wandering off.
That single sound made me want to snap him in half.
At least I was doing something, unlike Max, who seemed dedicated to doing absolutely nothing. On a particularly cold day, he stepped outside, shivered, looked up at the sky, and declared, “I’m not made for this,” before retreating back into the house. I quickly learned that Max was apparently only “made for” a very narrow range of environments, temperatures, activities, and interactions.
I wished Sammerin would return. Maybe he could have offered more help.
But the weeks passed, and it was just me and Max, mostly ignoring each other. I never let him see anything but determined, unwavering confidence. But at night, curled up in my small bed in that ridiculously cluttered room, sleep eluded me. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the betrayal in Esmaris’s dying face. I saw the tenderness in Serel’s goodbye, felt his kiss on my cheek. I heard Nura’s voice reading Zeryth’s letter.
And I had the same dream, over and over.
In a twisted way, it was ironic. When Esmaris beat me, I had vowed to haunt him—cursed him to see my eyes every time he closed his. Now I was the one who saw him in every shadow. *You forgot what you are,* he had spat at me. Well, I never forgot now. Every time I came close, there he was—reminding me of everything I had left behind, and everything I would carry with me forever.
The days passed.
Then, one morning, Willa returned to check my wounds. She was friendly and cheerful as she told me everything was healing nicely. For a while, it was just nice to be around someone who was at least relatively pleasant.
Then I asked her, “Do you have any new letters from Zeryth? About Threll?”
Willa’s silence sent a chill through me.
“He says things are a bit…” Her voice trailed off, losing its usual brightness. “Things are a bit complicated there.”
My fingers clenched around the bedsheets. “Complicated?”
“I suppose with that Lord dead, there’s been some struggles…” Willa coughed. I wanted to pry the words from her. “But it’s just a period of change. Things will settle down.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak.
All I could think about were Serel’s gentle eyes and the sound his sword made as it pierced Esmaris’s chest—a crunch, a squelch, a reminder of how fragile a human body really is. It didn’t matter whether it belonged to the most powerful man in Threll or a slave boy with a kind, gentle smile.
