Page 6

“Stop it!”

“Cassius, if you don’t—”

“I know!” Furious, I bolt to standing. My mother whimpers before me and I regret the anger. She’s been like this before, crumpled on the ground before the anger of men. My father. My brother. Now me. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Perhaps it’s an anger I have inherited, but it’s no excuse. I sink down to the floor next to her and calm myself. “I’m sorry. I know. I know what I have to do.”

I don’t know, not really. The letter is a threat. Not just for me, about to enter the admission trials, but for our entire family.

London is overcrowding. There are simply too many people riding on the coattails of a single graduate in their family, and London has decided she can only protect her protectors.

Family no longer counts. Thaddeus’ performance as a Hunter is not enough to secure the Jones’ family continued safety. But the dean has offered us amnesty. If I’m admitted. . . if I manage to do this, then our family can remain. But if I fail, only Thaddeus can stay behind London’s wards. The rest of us will be back to roaming England or braving the beast-infested seas to another country.

The letter does mention I’ll have the opportunity to apply for the Working Class—the hereditary caste that services the city. It feels like a jab. My remaining pride wonders if any London-born applicant has the same clause tacked onto the end. But I can’t linger on this for long.

The life of my family rests on me.

The trials are brutal. I know this from Thaddeus, even if I don’t fully understand what they are. Thaddeus has never told me the details. Then again, he didn’t need to: he’d been a different man when he returned and that told me everything.

The University screws with you.

“It’ll be fine,” I say, patting my mother’s head. I try to be casual about it, to smoke at a regular, calm pace on the floor beside her. “I’ll be fine.”

“We can’t go back out there. Your father…” She trails off. The three of us turn to stare at the hollow and catatonic man in that chair.

“Cassius knows what to do,” Thaddeus says, nodding along to convince himself. “He was good out there in Watford. A natural. Takes after me. He’ll be fine, and we can stay.”

Tears gather as the mounting pressure behind my eyes becomes too much. I swallow hard, willing those tears to stay back. Part of me wants to voice how lost I feel. How young. I am nineteen, and my life has been running and reading. Cortisol is permanent in my blood. I don’t think I’ve ever known anything but stress.

I can’t say anything, of course. My mother will weep if she knows there’s any chance I might fail. I had fourteen years in the wild. She had every year until five years past.

I can’t fail. I can’t do that to her.

“It’ll be fine,” I say again. I try for a smile and gesture to the page. “Did you read the end of it?”

She peels away from her hands, staring at me with smudged kohl-lined eyes. Her braided hair is frazzled. I bite my tongue and help her to her feet. She looks down at the crumpled letter in her hand, sniffs back tears, and smooths the letter out.

After a moment, she only shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

I put a pitying hand on her head. “I’m not going to fail. Not when it’s an Open Call.”

Her eyes shoot up at me. The effect of relief is instant. All her limbs unfold and she half collapses onto me, weeping.

“An Open Call!” she cries like a wailed prayer to God. “An Open Call!”

And to her, it might seem like God is smiling on us, like fate has finally been kind and given the Jones family a break. After all her years of praying, after what her husband has been through, what Thaddeus has done for us — maybe in a world where the universe owes us something, she would have been right.

But I know the truth of it. When I lift my eyes to meet my brothers’, it’s clear the older man knows, too.

Thaddeus’ face is hard and solemn. The expression is knitted into his skin, the years-old worry in his brows surfacing now to comment loudly on my future.

An Open Call means anyone can apply for the University. Londoners, xenos, Working Class. Any year the University’s Calling reaches humble doorsteps, it means they’re expecting a bad one. A bloody one. A year filled with a hell of a lot of death.

None of the usual restrictions apply. Usually, you require connections, good words. . . Thaddeus had gotten in because our father had a cousin in London—now dead. To accept xenos outright, those Englanders born outside London’s protection, is rare.

I hold my breath. I know there must be a darker meaning. That hybrid thing I shot in Watford, the number of calls my brother has been dragged to answer recently—some unknowable thing is happening. The teras are growing stronger.

Thaddeus snaps a finger in front of my face. “You train for Hunter. You hear me? Not Healer. Not Artificer. Not a God-damned Scholar.”

Our mother gasps softly. Always shocked by blasphemy. “Thaddeus. . .”