Chapter 85: Crown princess

DESIREE

A girl with dirty blonde hair wades over while I'm still adjusting to the heat of the water, hair slicked back, smile easy and open in a way that immediately puts me at ease.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Kami. I was actually your fourth at the garden before the tables decided to ruin everyone's night."

"Oh! Nice to meet you." I return the smile, meaning it. "I'm Desiree."

"I like her,$ Derrie says instantly, doing a slow, approving loop around Kami's head before drifting back to my shoulder. "She has good energy. Real energy, not performance energy."

"Can we be friends?" Kami asks, direct in a way I find refreshing after tonight. "I know that's a very forward thing to ask a stranger in a swimming pool, but I've decided I like forward. Life's too short for the slow version."

"Why not," I say, and I mean that too. "Fair warning, though, I'm apparently a magnet for chaos this week."

"I heard something about a mandrake."

"You heard correctly."

"And a bat attack, and something about icing three separate boys, if the rumors are even half true."

"They're mostly true," I admit, wincing. "It's been a week."

"I like you already," Kami says, laughing.

She glances over her shoulder toward the far side of the pool, and something in her expression flickers before she turns back. "Do you know that girl? Chelly?"

"Not really. We were in the same mandrake group tonight, actually. Why?"

"No reason," Kami says, a little too quickly, and I don't push it, because I don't know either of them well enough yet to know there's anything to push.

We fall into easy conversation after that, drifting through the warm water while Jane and Brittany argue nearby about whether a water shifter cannonballing nearby counts as assault, and Kami tells me about her own rank, her own struggles with control in her first year, small kindnesses that make the whole night feel a little less heavy.

"Everyone acts like control comes naturally if you're strong enough," she says. "It doesn't. It just means the mistakes are bigger when you make them."

"That is deeply unhelpful and also extremely accurate."

"I try."

At some point Derrie starts pestering me from inside my own head.

"Do the ice trick," she says. "The little one. Show her."

"Show her what?"

"Just do it. Let it be small and controlled. You need the practice and she's not going to panic over it."

I cup my hands beneath the surface and let a thin ribbon of frost spiral up between my fingers, delicate this time, deliberate, nothing like the chaos from earlier tonight.

"Okay, that's actually really pretty," Kami says, delighted, watching the ice curl and catch the pool lights.

Encouraged, I let a little more out, a scatter of thin ice shards forming across the water's surface around us like fragile little stars, and Brittany immediately declares war on them, smacking each one with the flat of her hand as they drift close, giggling the whole time.

"Stop breaking my art," I tell her.

"It's very fragile art," she says, smashing another one.

"She's got a point, actually," Kami says. "Very breakable art."

"You're both banned from my next gallery opening."

I'm gathering myself for something bigger — I can feel it building, cooperative for once instead of fighting me, warm instead of jagged — when the announcer's voice booms out over the whole camp, amplified and urgent enough to silence every conversation in the pool at once.

\[All students, return to your dormitories immediately. The camp is under threat. A cyclops unit has breached the outer wards. Air fortification is holding but strained. S-rank students and mages, remain for defense. Everyone else — go, go, go!"\]

The pool erupts into chaos, students scrambling for towels, water shifters hauling themselves out in a hurry, someone screaming about their shoes, another kid trying to climb out with a floatie still stuck around his waist.

Kami grabs my arm for one brief squeeze. "Find me tomorrow. I mean it."

"I will."

Brittany kisses Kami goodbye — quick, easy, the kind of casual affection between them that tells me there's more history there than one conversation in a pool, and something else I file away for later — and then Jane's hand is in mine, and we're running, wet hair freezing almost instantly in the night air, sprinting the whole way back to the hostel while distant shouting rolls down from somewhere higher on the mountain.

The hostel feels too quiet once everyone's finally settled, lights dimmed, roommates asleep or pretending to be. I lie awake listening to distant sounds through the window — shouts, something that might be wingbeats, a low rumble that could be thunder or could be something much worse. Every few minutes the whole building seems to hold its breath, waiting for a sound that doesn't come.

Derrie flickers to life beside my pillow, and this time she doesn't stay small.

She grows, slow and deliberate, green light stretching and reshaping until she's sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed at nearly my own height, wings folded neatly behind her, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

"You can do that?" I whisper, sitting up fast.

"I've always been able to do that," she says. "I was just tired of being a speckle all the time. Do you know how exhausting it is, being tiny? Everything looks so much bigger than it needs to. Doorframes. Shoes. Your roommate's foot, which nearly ended me this morning."

"Derrie, focus. Listen." I nod toward the window, toward the noise. "What do you think is happening out there?"

"Cyclops are attacking. They're big, ugly and not particularly bright. The headmistress and her witches will handle it. Don't worry."

"Don't worry," I repeat. "Derrie, there are actual monsters attacking the camp right now."

"And the headmistress is more than capable of intercepting them, along with every S-rank mage on this mountain," Derrie says, waving a hand like she's swatting the concern away. "The wards are old, but they're strong, and cyclops units are loud and stupid, which is a very forgiving combination if you're the one defending against them. That's not what you should be spending your worry on tonight."

"Then what should I be worrying about?"

She goes still, the playful edge draining out of her expression entirely, replaced by something careful, almost solemn, the most serious I've seen her look since she first burst out of that vent grate.

"The crown princess of the Elven kingdom," she says.

I stare at her. "What crown princess? What are you talking about?"

Derrie doesn't answer right away. She just watches me, wings folded, green light flickering low and steady in the dark room, like she's deciding exactly how much of the truth I'm ready for tonight.