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“What?” Gregor balks. “You were in the academy?”

“Infiltrating it?” Jura clarifies.

“Sort of…as a student,” I correct.

Ren scrunches his face in disgust. “I thought you’d be lying low since escaping. Not going straight into the enemy’s lair.”

“Why would you join as a student?” Gregor asks.

“It was safer, at the time.” I don’t know how much I can bear to explain, even though I know I owe them the truth. Unexpectedly, Twino saves me from elaborating.

“ Why would you go back?” Twino focuses on what’s ahead, rather than what’s already happened.

“The last place anyone knows for sure Arina was is the academy. Which means that’s going to be the place I’ll find the start of any trail.” There’s one person who would know the truth, and this time I’m going to make him talk.

“Do not go back there, Clara. You know what your mother said about entering the fortress. Don’t make her memory endure a second daughter ignoring her warnings.

” Bristara says it flatly, but I can hear the hint of scolding in her voice.

She knew Mother. Not overly well. But was close enough to her that Bristara knew of the tunnels in the mountains—where she ultimately found Arina and me one day and offered us a place in the club.

“My mother is dead.” I don’t shout or whine. I’m stating a simple fact. Yet, for some reason, it scatters their gazes—all except Bristara. She continues to stare at me calmly. “Whatever she did or did not want for Arina and me died with her.”

“Honor her wishes and heed her warnings,” Bristara says, like she was the one my mother told those wishes and warnings to.

“Arina is all I have left. I’m not ignoring any chance I have to find her.”

“What about this family?” Bristara motions to everyone seated. None of them looks my way.

My stomach knots. “You all know…I…”

“You must find her,” Twino finishes for me. “We don’t abandon family, by blood or by bond.”

The rest of them nod. But Bristara seems unconvinced. She continues to pierce me with that unyielding expression of hers. I don’t flinch, and I don’t back down. I might have a lot of shortcomings. I can be brash and bold. I can rush in, and I can say too much when emotions run high.

But no one, no one, can ever claim that I am not loyal to those I love.

“I’ll come back,” I say, even though I’m not sure when I’ll be able tokeep that promise…But Arina found a way out of the school, one I’ll eventually find, too, with or without Silas’s help. I start for the door.

“Wait.” Jura stands, rushes into the kitchen, and returns with a bundle of cloth-wrapped cookies. “Be safe, please. We understand you need to find her. But don’t forget we thought we lost both of you. You already came back from the dead. Don’t die on us again.”

“Never.” I kiss both her cheeks and pocket the small bundle of confections. “Don’t weep for an empty coffin,” I remind them all with a final pointed look and depart.

But before the door can close, Bristara slides out behind me. I’d hardly heard her stand, much less move. Now we’re alone in the hallway.

“You think you can trust this Silas?”

“I do.” I keep my voice low so he doesn’t overhear. I assume he’s still in the front study.

“And you trust your own judgment after what happened with your last job?” The words sting, and I look away, balling my hands into fists and relaxing them.

She lets me stew. Then, far gentler, “Clara, I worry for you is all. I worried for you then, and I do now, too. I worry for this home we’ve managed to rebuild.

If we trust the wrong people again…there might not be a second chance for any of us. ”

“I know.” I hang my head. “But I had to get out, somehow. I had to find you all and know if—if…” If I truly lost everyone. I can’t finish it.

“Keep a close eye on him.” It’s half command, half advice.

“Already planned on it.”

Her long, slender fingers settle on my shoulders. It’s the closest thing to an embrace she’s ever given. I always wondered if she knew that I didn’t need her to mother me and respected that. I had a mother. I needed a boss.

“For now, keep lying low. Learn what you can. As much as I hate to admit it, you might be right in that the truth of what happened to Arina is in the academy.”

“It is.” I’m sure of it. “Once I know, I’ll return for good.”

“See that you do.” A brief pause. “And, if you continue ignoring your mother’s will and going to the fortress, at least keep your true name a secret.

” Bristara knowing my true name at all was a sign of her closeness with Mother.

Even if they didn’t know each other well, Mother clearly had trusted her. So I did as well.

“I always do.” With a final nod, I head to the study. Part of me doesn’t want to leave them, but I will find a way back.

And, for now, I have a prince to interrogate.

I find Silas hunched over a desk that overlooks the front walkway.He closes his journal. He must’ve already finished his card. “Time to go.”

A frown briefly passes over his lips as he stares out the front window and up at the sky. It’s still dark, but slivers of dawn are bleeding at the sky’s edges. “I suppose it is.”

“You said you know the back passages of the academy, right?” I slide up beside him.

“As well as anyone can be expected to, given the nature of the place.” He eyes me skeptically.

“Exceptional. I want you to take me as close to Kaelis’s apartments as you’re able.”

He hesitates. “Why?”

“I have some questions for the prince.”

“Kaelis doesn’t take kindly to people showing up unannounced.” Silas slowly puts his inking tools back into his satchel. It’s so obvious he’s stalling.

“So I’ve noticed. But that’ll be between Kaelis and me.

Get me as close as you can without him suspecting you were involved.

” I amend my earlier statement. Silas has been good to me.

The last thing I want is to bring the misfortune of Kaelis’s wrath upon him.

Silas is worth more to me as an unknown ally.

I grab his wrist gently, reassuring him.

“Kaelis won’t know you helped me. I already have some idea of how to get to his apartments, so he won’t suspect a thing.

I appreciate what you’ve done for me tonight; I won’t repay your kindness by putting you in danger. ”

Silas sighs softly and then turns his hand palm up and pulls his arm so my fingers slide up his wrist and into his palm. He holds my hand with a warm and steady presence. “Very well.”

Without another word, he grabs the card he placed into his pocket earlier in the academy.

The world distorts and folds into the magic circle that appears around our feet.

In an instant, the cozy townhome is replaced by the ever-oppressive gloom of the academy.

I don’t recognize the office we’ve appeared into, but judging from the thick curtains of cobwebs that serve as the only window coverings and the layer of dust that blurs the details of two rose motifs at the window’s corners, I’d say that it’s been abandoned for some time.

“I should get back,” Silas says but doesn’t move.

“You should.” Now that I’m here, the simmering rage in my veins at Arina’s disappearance has sparked into a fire threatening to consume me if I don’t unleash it on Kaelis.

Silas moves toward one of two doors in the office, stops, and points at the other. “We’re in the professors’ wing; his apartments are not far. Through there, straight, up the stairs, right, down the hall, and then out to the bridge.”

“Thank you.” I mean it.

He nods, hovering in the frame of the door he’s opened. For a breath, he holds me with an unreadable stare. “If you need me, Clara, you know how to find me.”

The offer startles me. But not so much that I can’t say, “I appreciate that. And much the same to you.”

We both depart in our opposite directions.

My footsteps echo through these familiar yet unwelcoming halls with an agitated and purposeful rhythm.

Just as Silas instructed, I make my way to the bridge that connects the heart of the academy with Kaelis’s tower.

Two Stellis remain positioned at the opposite doorway, and they eye me warily, armor gleaming under the two sconces whose firelight rages against the mountain winds.

I ready excuses, barters, bribes, and even my magic to fight…if that’s what it takes to get me inside. But neither guard tries to stop me.They want to. I can feel it in their stares. The way they hover. Their hands at the ready by swords. But neither even flinches.

The mere idea that Kaelis has told them that I am welcome here—that I may come and go to his chambers as I please—makes me inexplicably angry. This is something I can use to my advantage, eventually…when I have a clearer head.

For now I waste no time retracing the path in reverse that Kaelis led me on the last time I was here. The doors to his bedroom tower before me, massive and imposing. I don’t even bother knocking and push them open, surprised to find them unlocked after Ravin blew them down.

Kaelis lounges on one of the sofas before the fire he’d pinned me next to, facing the doors. The poker is once more taken from its place. He passes it from hand to hand, swinging it to point in my direction.

“I knew you would come.” An air of power clings to him. He is probably trying to seem mysterious. But all I see is arrogance.

“Fuck you.” Not my most eloquent moment. But barely contained, shaking-in-my-boots-because-I’m-one-more-smart-ass-remark-from-murderous rage is rarely eloquent.

“You know, at first, I thought that’d be a punishment worse than Halazar.

But I’ve begun to wonder what you’re like in bed.

Do you bring that same tenacity to your endeavors as a lover?

Are you one to break? Or do you enjoy an opportunity to submit when you strive so hard to control everything around you?

” He looks at me through the shadows cast by his hair falling into his face.

“I’d rather die.”

“Your foreplay could use some work.”