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“I’m trying to help you!”

“You’re not helping. You’re interrupting.” She tosses her remaining things in her bag and returns the ring to its box before hurrying to the door. I stand in the way.

“Miss Marionne?” It’s Beaulah, standing in the hall just outside the doorway. Adola curtsies, and we all step into the hall. “Shouldn’t you be in the etiquette refreshers this morning?” Beaulah eyes the bag Adola is dangling behind her legs, and I can feel Adola clam up beside me.

“She was showing me some of the morning’s sessions.”

Beaulah’s whole expression brightens. “I won’t keep you two, then. Quell, I’ll see you shortly.”

My heart hammers, but I smile.

When she leaves, Adola cuts me a look that could kill. “Why are you covering for me?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Because I want to help you.”

“I was covering for myself just fine until you showed up.” She storms off and I let her go, torn between throwing her a life raft and leaving her to her fate. She finds a table in a deserted corner of the dining atrium, and I keep my distance. She pulls out a stack of note cards and studies them before emptying the contents of a pouch onto the table. She glances around before rubbing her fingers together, and the faintest whiff of darkness streams through the air toward her, forming tendrils of black in her hand. She works her magic on the items, but the thread of toushana dissolves as quickly as it came. I cringe. It’s worse than I thought. Her stream of magic is far too weak. She is going to suffocate in that grave, and she knows it. She bangs the table before burying her face in her hands.

I join her.

“You’re scared of it; that’s why it’s not obeying you. It isn’t like proper magic. It has an appetite of its own.”

“Would you just leave me be.”

“No, I’m not leaving. I still need your help.”

She shoulders her packed bag. “Don’t follow me this time.”

“Adola, I’m not your enemy.”

“Aren’t you, though? Isn’t that exactly who you decided to be when you arrived here? I know what your kind are like. Ambitious, incensed with self-importance, vengeful, cruel.” Her words cut in a way they shouldn’t. I don’t know this girl. Not really. And yet sometimes it feels like staring at a mirror.

My kind? “A toushana-user?”

She raises a brow. “Toushana-obsessed, more like.”

But her aunt…

Now I get it. Adola doesn’t just fear her aunt. She hates everything about her. After seeing Trials, I can’t say it surprises me.

“Adola, you don’t even know me.”

“Maybe not, but I know what you will become.”

A chill skitters up my arms. “A Darkbearer,” I whisper. Adola narrows her eyes.

“You have me all wrong. I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have blackmailed you to help me. I should have been honest with you from the beginning.”

Adola huffs, but she also doesn’t move, so I keep going.

“Look, I am just here trying to find out the truth. My mother…” I glance over my shoulder before leaning closer to her. “Had a stack of ball invitations people’d thrown away. I found them hidden in her room in the guesthouse. I think it means something. Only, I’m not sure what.” The release feels like a long exhale. “This place unsettles me, too, Adola. At Trials the other night—” But I can’t find the words to rehash what I witnessed. The revelry and horror. “I felt sick to my stomach when I left.”

“It’s revolting,” she says, reclining in her seat.

I let out a big breath. “I won’t ever twist your arm to help me again. I’m really sorry.”

Adola doesn’t respond for several moments. She twists the ends of her long hair around her fingers before saying, “I hope you’re being honest. Time will tell.”

“I mean every word.”