Chapter 35

“Excuse me?” I lift one eyebrow. “How will I have any hope of blending in with the humans if I have guards following me around?”

“Alora arranged jobs for us around the school,” Frederick says. “Arlington is the new janitor, and I’m the new head of security.”

“How’d she do that?” I ask.

Frederick grins. “The school appreciates its largest donors.”

“Well, I think there has been plenty of time for any poison to take effect.” I eye the sandwiches greedily.

“How do you feel, Arlington?” Frederick asks.

“Fine. Wonderful.” And finally, the men approve the food and leave my room.

Lark ducks through the closet door a moment later. “Good news,” I tell her. “You’re fine to come and go in the normal hallway and enter the room even when you hear other voices.”

“Huh?” she asks.

“I cleared it with Frederick. My personal guard knows you’re alive, or they soon will.”

She blinks rapidly. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

I nod. “Positive. It’s not like people could really think much less of me than they already do on that regard anyway.”

“What about Edam? He’s Judica’s ex. Are you sure there’s no residual loyalty there?” Lark grabs a sandwich from the platter.

I think about Judica ordering him to the holding cell, and then his anger that I brought him with me. “I don’t think there’s a lot of love lost between the two of them, but he’s still a wild card, that’s for sure.” I don’t mention his offer, and I’m not sure why not.

“Speaking of, he wants me to review videos of Judica fighting.”

“Oh, good idea,” Lark says.

I hold my phone out in front of me so she can see it, too. “Glad you’re here. Maybe you’ll notice something I miss.”

“Doubtful,” she laments. “I’m deficient, remember?”

I eye her sideways. “You’re nothing of the sort, and I appreciate your help.”

The first file is dated just a month ago. February 14. I press play on my phone, and the video springs to life. Judica’s training in the main outdoor courtyard, but the angle of the camera is strange. I can only see the fight in the very corner of the screen.

At the beginning of the match, Judica’s smiling. She even laughs when her partner trips, and she gives him time to recover. Then she freezes, staring at something, people walking by in the main hallway.

Her entire body tenses, and her nostrils flare. She clenches her hands so tightly on the hilt of her sword that her knuckles turn white. Whatever she saw upset her, and everything about the fight shifts. She spins faster, sharper. She’s all lines and angles and spinning blades. At the end of the match, she trips over something, and Death leaps into the edge of the screen. I can’t make out exactly what happens, but there’s incoherent shouting, thanks to the video quality.

It’s clear enough that I see her sever her partner Fesian’s hand at the wrist. Evians can regenerate limbs, but regenerating a hand takes several hours. It’s also agonizing, but Judica doesn’t so much as acknowledge what she’s done. When she walks out of the arena she passes right under the camera, which is the only reason I notice her wipe the tear from her cheek. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I’d have said it was impossible given what I know of her.

Another viewer might not ever understand Judica’s emotions, but with perfect evian recall I can guess exactly what Judica witnessed. She saw me that day. February 14 is Valentine’s Day, my favorite day of the year with my mom. Mom always called me her little lovey dovey, or eventually as I grew older, her little dove. Mom kept me because she loved me and for no other reason. All her other daughters were trained to be her Heir immediately, and she sold her sons to other families so they’d sell their boys to her and her heirs would have a suitable group of options from which to select their consorts.

That February, Mom gave Judica and me both bright sundresses and forced us to eat breakfast together. We had fluffy pink pancakes and bacon, tall glasses of orange juice, and even Judica was reasonably pleasant. She didn’t stab my hand, steal my food, or call me names. It was such perfect weather, the three of us went for a run outside. Judica won the race, because of course what began as a friendly jog quickly turned into a competition. Running is probably one of the few things I could have bested her at, but it was Valentine’s Day.

I let her win.

It wasn’t as pathetic a gift as I gave her in the past, but it was my version of an olive branch. I still remember the width of her grin after beating me—it almost split her face in two. After that, we separated to train. Mom and I headed to our shared private courtyard, and Judica went to the main outdoor courtyard. Mom cut our session short because she had a surprise planned. She and I walked out and into the main courtyard. She told me in the hallway that she had a surprise planned for me.

Her eyes sparkled when she said, ““I thought you might like to do nothing at all today. My gift to you is an afternoon off from meetings, training, and politics.”

I had no idea Judica could see us, much less see us as we walked to the ballroom, which had been redone in honor of Valentine’s Day, roses and lilies covering every table, pink drapes, and bowls of strawberries, watermelon, raspberries and popcorn dyed pink. There was even a large screen set up against the wall.

We watched an animated film I’d never heard of called Brave. We smiled and laughed and didn’t worry about ruling, or politics, or anything else. It was one of my fondest memories with Mom. I can’t help the tears, remembering it.

I wish Judica hadn’t heard about Mom’s gift for me. But I’m even more ashamed that it didn’t even occur to me how left out she might have felt, training alone while we played like that. Mom didn’t exclude her on purpose, but Judica repeatedly said Valentine’s Day was silly. Judica’s horrible, but my heart contracts for her anyway. I make myself watch the whole video again.

“What pissed her off so badly, do you think?” Lark asks.

I jump. I forgot she was there momentarily. I swallow and say, “Mom and I passed by, and Mom had a surprise for me that day. I think it hurt her, seeing us going off together.”

Lark nods. “Maybe. Or she could have seen something else. Either way, her presence would have ruined that day for you, so don’t blame yourself. It sucks she was upset, but her exclusion’s on her, not you.”

“I guess so,” I say.

I don’t want to, but I force myself to watch the others. They start back in October and many of them seem to be normal days, but several others show clips of Judica reacting to my mom and I walking past, and once we even came into the room. Each time she sees us, she fights more viciously afterward, like she’s got the devil himself nipping at her heels.

I notice something else in the moments after she sees Mom and me. There’s a pattern there, a whisper of a dire song I can almost hear as I watch her fight. It’s the beginnings of the melodic line of Judica’s fighting style, but I can’t make any real sense of it, and when I try and play the tune in my mind, it slips away.

I promised Edam I’d train more after dinner, so once we finish with the videos, Lark heads back into hiding. I tell him about the videos I’ve watched, and then I tell him I’ve started to hear a hint of a melody when I watch them.

“You think you can hear her, what? Her fight song?” Edam asks, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t make it sound stupid.”

“I’m not trying to,” he says. “Honestly I’m not.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that I think maybe I should—”

“Should what?” he asks. “Write a song for her? Pick a string quartet as your weapon?”

“Stop making fun of me.”

“I’m not.” He shakes his head. “I get that a lot of masters learned with melodics, but Chancery, you aren’t there yet. You need to do what I’m telling you to do and look for her actual weaknesses. Stop worrying about songs and patterns and look for what’s really there.” He holds out one hand in request.

I pass him my phone. He opens a video and points at Judica on the screen. “See that, there? Did you see how Lucas barely stumbled back when she hit him on this side?” He waits. “But he wasn’t prepared and she annihilated him here?”

I nod. He’s right. I don’t know what I was thinking. The whisper of some kind of glimmer of a song and he’s supposed to do what? Sit on his hands because one day maybe my melodics training might click? Stupid.

Edam and I spend an hour or so reviewing videos together before he taps his watch and says, “Time to implement what you’ve learned.”

I don’t improve much, but at least my healing speed continues to accelerate. I glance down at the tatters of my pants after Edam calls it quits. I’m going to need new clothes if we keep training this often. I’m utterly exhausted when I finally shower for the second time and flop into bed.

Only I can’t sleep. Because tomorrow I’m going to school with scads of humans, and I’m more nervous than the first time I met the President of the United States.

After all, the kids at the high school don’t work for me. Or at least, they don’t know that they do.