Page 12 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)

THE WOLF'S DEN

A fter Lord Zeryck’s humiliating arrest by giant bronze panther sculptures, the Apprentices scurried back to the kitchen.

Zoe looked blissfully ready to taunt me for being a walking disaster.

Before she got the chance, however, a Watcher marched into the room and declared that the General wanted a word with me.

That elicited a few gasps—some worried, some delighted—from my fellow Apprentices.

When I entered the General’s office in the Black Obelisk, he was sitting behind his massive desk, his hands folded neatly on top.

He motioned me forward. “Take a seat, Miss Winters.”

The Watcher left the office and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with the General.

“Sit,” he repeated in his usual sharp, cutting tone. “I will not ask again.”

I took the chair and sat down. For a few seconds, the General merely watched me across the expanse of soulless desk. I squeezed my hands together and tried not to look intimidated.

I totally failed.

“Look at the Scoreboard, Miss Winters.” The General’s words struck like a fist punching through a mirror, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Uncomfortable on my end, anyway. The Iron Wolf looked completely at ease in his cold, concrete den.

“What do you see?”

I glanced at the large monitor hanging on the wall. “The names of this year’s Apprentices.”

“And where is your name on the Scoreboard, Miss Winters?”

My name had always hovered near the bottom of the Scoreboard. The highest I’d ever made it was twenty-fifth place—out of thirty-one. I didn’t expect I would ever go higher. I checked anyway, just in case.

“It’s at the bottom,” I told him, totally unsurprised that I was back in last place.

“And do you know why your name is at the bottom of the Scoreboard?”

“Because you don’t like me.”

“No, Miss Winters.”

There was a big, industrial office lamp stuck to the ceiling over the General’s desk, and when he shook his head, its ugly artificial light rippled across his crisp, spiky lawn of hair. It was an even mixture of blond and grey—and so closely-cropped that he must have mowed it recently.

“You’re at the bottom of the Scoreboard because Kato intervened on your behalf.” The General scraped his hands down his jacket, smoothing out wrinkles no one but he could see. “Without Kato, you would have been off the Scoreboard.”

I didn’t doubt it. Like a pair of unmatched socks, the General considered me a clearcut example of everything that was wrong with the universe.

“Your offenses are many,” he continued. “Consorting with Rebels?—”

“Conner helped me and Kato save the Spirit Trees!” I protested.

The General shot me an icy glare. “Yes, thank you for reminding me that you roped my best Knight into your schemes.”

Wow, the General understood sarcasm? If I weren’t so nervous, I might have actually been impressed.

“I didn’t rope Kato into anything,” I told him.

“Of course you did. You’ve obviously bewitched him.”

“I’d never do that to him! He’s my friend!”

“I’ve seen how you treat your friends, Miss Winters. Just a few days ago, you lied to them to lure everyone into the basement of the conference center.”

I scowled at him. “You’re taking that totally out of context.

The Templars burst through the wall and took us all prisoner.

I had to make up a lie to lure those fiends into the basement.

And I couldn’t tell my friends because I knew the Templars were listening to every word that we said.

Everything I did, General, I did to save the Apprentices. ”

“You have always been an impossibly arrogant girl,” he scoffed. “You always think you know best. First, it was stealing magic. And now it’s bewitching my White Knight.”

Anger flushed my cheeks. “I didn’t bewitch Kato. And I couldn’t. He is way too powerful.”

The General considered me coolly over the tops of his braided fingers. “Don’t sell yourself short, Miss Winters. You bewitched an entire room of supernaturals today. That took an enormous amount of power.”

“I’m curious, General. Are you trying to punish me?” I raised one eyebrow. “Or recruit me?”

His laugh was sardonic—and short-lived. “You are a loose cannon. Out of control. You don’t care about the rules, and you are not a team player. In short, Miss Winters, you are a danger to Gaia’s bid to join the Many Realms Court.”

The General’s stone-cold glare made me nervous, and when I got nervous, I fidgeted. Right now, I was fidgeting with a paper clip that had spilled out of its tray, onto the General’s desk.

I cleared my throat. “As I see it, General, the Court was ignoring you, the President, and everyone else from Gaia. It was I who got them all to stop and listen to what you had to say. So instead of branding me a danger to Gaia’s bid to join the Many Realms Court, maybe you should be thanking me for helping you get noticed. ”

The General’s gaze snapped to my hands, and I hastily deposited the wayward paper clip into its tray.

“You might think you helped, Miss Winters, but that’s only because you don’t understand how things work,” he told me.

“Gaia does not need this kind of attention. You outed yourself as a Polymage in front of the entire Court. Think about what that means. Now everyone knows Gaia has another Polymage—and not just any Polymage. A Polymage who has the power to bewitch each and every one of them, all at once. Now how do you think the all-powerful members of the Court feel about a little girl usurping their freewill?”

“Well, they probably don’t like it, but I’m sure if they considered?—”

“They are furious,” the General cut me off. “And playing Little Miss Detective did nothing to quell their anger. You made the most influential people in all the Many Realms look weak, and then you revealed there’s a traitor in their midst.”

I jumped out of my seat. “What was I supposed to do!” I demanded. “Just let the vampires take me away and lock me up for a crime I did not commit?”

The General pointed at my chair. “Sit down.” He waited until I’d done it. “What you were supposed to do was show some restraint, Miss Winters. Instead, you decided you’d rather show off how cool you are, and now look where that’s got us.”

“I wasn’t showing off,” I muttered.

The General ignored my objection. “Of course this will all come back to me . As far as the Court is concerned, either I have you under control, and it was I who ordered you to bewitch them…or you acted alone, meaning I’ve lost control of yet another Polymage, thereby demonstrating Gaia can’t handle the magic we have, no matter how great and powerful we are.

Either way, this entire situation is bad for Gaia. ”

“Hey, it’s not like it’s my fault that Zeryck enchanted those knives to kill Seriana and Fenris.”

The General continued to ignore my objections like they didn’t matter.

“It appears I have no choice but to take responsibility for your actions. I will tell the Court I commanded you to bewitch them, but only to prove Gaia is powerful. It’s the lesser of two evils.

” His annoyance cut deep, sharp furrows into his forehead.

His gaze shot back to me. “But you are to cast no further spells on any member of the Court, Miss Winters. Is that understood?”

“Uh…”

“Is that understood?” he snapped.

“Well, the thing is…” I looked at my feet. “Ok, so, I didn’t actually mean to cast that spell on the Court. It just sort of came out.” My gaze lifted, and I met his eyes with a tentative smile.

The General did not return the gesture. “What do you mean by ‘just sort of came out’? Are you saying you have absolutely no control over your magic?”

“I wouldn’t say I have no control over my magic. But it is a work in progress.”

“That is unacceptable,” he barked.

“Yeah, well, I’m an Apprentice, so isn’t it also kind of normal? There is a learning curve to magic, you know.”

I fully realized that I was trying to appeal to a man who’d probably popped into existence as the fully-grown, decidedly ill-tempered soldier who sat opposite me now, but I had to try anyway.

“Isn’t it normal to fail and learn from one’s mistakes?”

“Normal for normal Apprentices, perhaps, but no less inconvenient. And you are not normal , Miss Winters. You don’t have the luxury to make mistakes.”

“But—”

“Because with your powers, your mistakes could have catastrophic consequences. So get a handle on your magic and get it quick, Miss Winters. Because if you don’t, you will have far greater problems than where your name sits on the Scoreboard.”

And with that stellar pep talk delivered, the General dismissed me from his office.