He placed his hand on the top of her crop of pure white hair. It was the one feature that he disliked on her. Her face could stop carriages. She had been a beautiful child, developing into a distressingly stunning young woman. She could have become a member of the aristocracy, flitting about at the Season, looking for a husband like every other brainless debutante. But Father had seen something else in her and employed her skills to assassin craft. She’d taken to it like breathing.

“You may rise,” he said finally. “What is the word?”

“RFA had a huge outpouring at the meeting. Almost exclusively half-Fae and humans. They’re planning a protest against the Society. No details yet, just getting people invested and wanting them to tell their friends. It was much more well attended than the last one I went to.”

“And the girl?”

Isa shook her head. “No, sir. No sign of Kerrigan. Though her friends were there.”

“Which ones?”

“Clover and Hadrian,” she said, plucking their names out of memory. “The blue-haired …”

“I know who they are,” he said dismissively. “You’re sure she wasn’t there?”

“I saw no sign of her. They kept alluding to her involvement, but if she was there, then she was well hidden.”

Even from her. And Isa knew all of Kerrigan’s moves. She’d studied them extensively in the month she tried to kill the girl. Her hands still ached for her knives at the thought. The one who had gotten away.

Father had said she couldn’t finish the job, but Isa hoped he would change his mind before this was all over.

“She’ll be there,” Father said with a nod. His eyes cast past Isa’s head to the window. The promenade of families displaying the goods before the Season began. “And when she is, we’ll be ready.”

20

The Testing

“How’d you do?” Noda asked, panting slightly as she stepped out of the water-magic test.

Kerrigan shot her a thumbs-up because speaking wasn’t in the cards yet. Three weeks had passed since the meeting with the RFA. She’d gone back each Friday night after her training with Tieran to listen to Thea’s inspirational words. And all the while, she’d gotten better and better at all of her training—physical and magical. They’d all spent hours upon hours working on building their stamina so that they could get to this moment—testing.

To move forward at the end of the first four-week boot camp, they all had to pass a series of tests. Otherwise, all of them would spend another four weeks training and not working with their dragons. They’d pushed each other even more after they found that out, improving at alarming rates.

“Same,” she said. “Water was easier than fire.”

“No way,” Kerrigan said, finally recovered. “Water was terrible.”

“You suck at water though,” Noda pointed out.

“Fair.”