Chapter 40

After PE, I head for lunch, practically pouncing on Lark when I see her.

“So?” she asks.

“How did we end up with opposite schedules?” I grumble. “I mean, really. I know one single person at this school, and somehow you’re in a completely different classroom block than me?”

“Maybe it’ll be good. We’re meeting a lot more people this way. Find anyone interesting yet?”

Before I can respond, Raven pops up behind Lark with a floral decorated paper bag in her hand. “Do you mind?”

Mind what? She sits down at our table before I can ask.

Logan, Noah, and three other people I don’t know drop into the remaining seats a moment later. I introduce Lark to Raven, Logan, and Noah, and she introduces me to the other three kids, two girls and a boy, all as utterly human as Noah.

The rest of the day crawls along, with very few flashes of anything interesting. I could have taught the class in history better than Ms. Fitzgibbons. In American literature, I’ve already read The Scarlett Letter, although the instructor had a lot of insight into humans on the topics of shame and penance that I appreciated. On the way home, I check my phone and discover Inara bombarded me with lots of new video files.

“How was your first day?” Frederick asks.

I shrug, distracted by scanning through the new footage to see how many files she sent. Eleven. “It was different than I imagined.”

“I enjoyed it,” Lark says. “I mean, I didn’t learn much in class, but I learned a lot from watching them.”

“Them?” Bernard tilts his head so he can see us in the rearview mirror.

“You know, humans,” Lark says.

She must be even more curious than I am, since her father was human.

“Not fun?” Frederick asks.

“Not really,” I say. “But no assassination attempts, no coups, and no one stabbed my hand with a fork, so I’d say total boredom is still an improvement over the last week and a half. But I have a question for you.”

Frederick raises his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“There are at least two half-evians attending Trinity in my grade. I think I identified a few more in the halls. And my calculus teacher called me ‘Your Majesty.’ What’s going on there?”

Frederick sighs. “You know Alora enrolled you because she had influence here. You didn’t stop to consider why or how she might have influence?”

I hadn’t, actually. I figured Alora knew everyone important in New York and didn’t go beyond that. “Wait, are they her... kids? Or grandkids, or something?”

Frederick smiles but he doesn’t look happy. “Some of them are. The First Family, and all the other families for that matter, have been exiling evians for millennia. They also kick out half-evians and any parent who chooses to raise an impure child instead of giving it up. Where did you think they would all go?”

“The best prep schools in New York City?”

Bernard clears his throat from the front seat. “Precisely.”

“So which ones are related to Alora, and by extension, to me? And do they know who I am?” I ask.

“Do you know, Bernard?” Frederick asks.

“A few of the teachers know, clearly, but as to the others, you’ll have to ask your sister about that. I’m not positive, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.”

Ugh. Even hiding among humans, I’m knee deep in politics.

“I will tell you this.” Frederick steeples his hands and rests his chin on them. “I have heard that among the human elite aware of our existence, evian blood is prized above all else. Rich and powerful human families will do most anything to bring it into their gene pool. It gives exiled evians some leverage when they leave the family for the cold, cruel world, even when they leave penniless.”

Gross. “Leverage as what? A walking womb? A brood mare?” A queasy feeling in my stomach makes me wonder if this is how humans feel when they’re sick.

“Living with humans might not be the break I was hoping for,” Lark says.

“Even so, time at Trinity might be a great opportunity for you to recruit for my non-existent spy network,” I say. “Keep that in mind.”

I open the first video file on my phone and stick in my headphones to listen. I only watch two before we reach Alora’s brownstone. As if she knew I’d have questions for her, she’s hovering at the top of the stairs.

“How was your first day?” she asks.

“It went okay,” I say, “but I didn’t learn much. Calculus, especially, seems completely useless.”

She laughs. “It’s not so bad, and I’m a ballerina. If I can learn it, you can suffer through it too.”

“I have a test tomorrow, so I better catch up at least.”

“I don’t think I could live it down if my little sister failed out of Trinity.” Alora laughs and starts down the stairs toward me.

“Are all your kids passing? And your grandkids?” I scowl. “You know, the ones I’ve never even met?”

My perfectly graceful sister stumbles. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me the school is crawling with evians?” I ask.

“Half-evians,” she says. “And there are only a handful, all of which I know about and have approved. Only one of them is related to me.”

“Raven?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No, Logan Calvert.”

I nod. I should’ve known. “Why didn’t you tell me? He obviously doesn’t know. What if I’d been flirting with him?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Were you?”

“No.” I scowl. “But he’s cute. I could have. With my own, er, what is he to me, exactly?”

“He’s my grandson.”

“He’s only one quarter evian?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No, his mother is also half-evian.”

“This is strange,” I say. “I had no idea any of this existed.”

Alora sighs. “It’s all far, far beneath you, Chancery. When I left the evian world, I thought I could turn my back on it all. I thought I would leave the messiness, the haves and the have nots, and sink into the anonymity of humanity.”

“But it didn’t happen.”

“No, it didn’t,” Alora says. “Walk into any trailer park in America and you’ll discover a universal truth. Humans, big and small, rich and poor, young and old, they all yearn for whatever they don’t have. Even among people who have virtually nothing, there are haves and have nots. It’s in our nature to want to have the most of something, and it’s the comparison that gets dangerous. When I walked away, it changed the stakes for me. Out here, I’m an eternal have surrounded by terribly outmatched have nots.”

“Is that easier?” I ask.

She leans against the column at the bottom of the stairs and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my sister’s eyes quite so crinkled or her shoulders quite so slumped. “In some ways, but in many ways it’s harder. Running away from Judica won’t eliminate your problems, Chancery. You might be thinking it’ll be a thousand years of laying around at the beach and sipping on piña coladas, but that kind of suspended paradise doesn’t exist. And if it did, you’d hate it before the end of the second week. Life is about how you deal with hurdles, because you’re always jumping them. If you aren’t, you’re dead. Or you may as well be.”

“How many of the half-evians know about us?”

“About a third of the teachers do, and three of them are part evian. Very, very few of the students know, even those with evian blood. Among half-evians it’s tradition not to explain any of it until after high school graduation. Otherwise, they spend all their time second guessing everything they say or do. Logan is an exception since he’s an active athlete. He needed to be told why he has to hold back.”

“What about his friend Noah?” I ask. “Is he part evian?”

“What’s his full name? I can find out.”

“Noah Wen.”

“I’ll let you know.” A part of me wants her to say yes.

“You like him,” Lark whispers with a smirk.

I realize she’s right.

“Edam’s already waiting for you in the ballroom,” Alora says.

I moan, but I take the stairs two steps at a time in my rush to change clothes. I can’t decide if I’m trying to minimize Edam’s irritation by hurrying, or whether I secretly like the training.

I expect him to mock me for attending Trinity, but he doesn’t say a word. In fact, if I hadn’t been completely positive he was there today, I might wonder whether I imagined him as my PE coach.

Fine. If he can pretend, I can too. I’ll never let on that I’m hot for my teacher. I snap my gaze up from his broad shoulders and try to focus on learning something.

He tosses me a sword. “I heard you got more videos.”

I nod.

“Anything good?”

I shrug. “Judica favors her left. Very, very slightly.”

“It’s a weakness. It’s faint, but it’s there. Good. Today we’ll practice a few dozen moves that will target Judica’s weaknesses. We’re going to polish them until they shine.”

He delivers on his promise.

“It would help if you pretended to have any of her weaknesses, so I could see if my moves are working.”

He shakes his head. “Nope. It wouldn’t. You have to assume she won’t mess up and fight accordingly. Then if she ever does, you’ll be ready. If she’s smart, she’s eliminating those liabilities right now. If you count on them, she’ll carve you up for it.”

A pang of guilt hits me. He is really good at this, and I robbed him of his position when I ran. He’ll absolutely hate being exiled if I abdicate. Of course, that guilt fades away over the next two hours as Edam repeats move after move after move endlessly.

“Muscle memory,” Edam says. “It’s your only real advantage in an evian fight. If you don’t know what to do all the way down to your bones, then you can’t do it without thinking, and that means you won’t be fast enough.”

“I guess,” I say.

“You guess?”

“Yeah, I guess. That’s the whole idea of melodics, you know. You learn how to move in a way that correlates with the music that surrounds us, the music most people don’t bother to hear. Then I wouldn’t have to think, just like you’re saying, but not with one move or two or three. I’d move without thinking on every single strike, every single parry, every single slash. Every move would fit into a larger pattern I’d be able to read. I wish I had gotten to that point, I wish Mom had finished my training. But to you, all of it is just nonsense. I find it ironic and sad, that’s all. You’re teaching me the underlying tenets of melodics like it’s some revelation to me.”

He steps back and spears me with a glance. “Is your heart in this, Chancery? Because if it’s not, I’d prefer not to waste my time.”

“What does that even mean?” I ask. “I mention similarities between your method and my former training and suddenly I’m not trying?”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, he raises his sword and comes after me. I grab the first blade my hand reaches on the weapons rack and throw it up to block him. He slams into me like a freight train and I do my best to get off the track. It’s not long before he smashes me to the mat, his sword pressed to my carotid.