Blackwood shakes her head.

My heart begins to pound. “Well, did he leave any information for me? A message? Anything that would tell me how I can find him?” My voice is rushed.

“No, I’m sorry.”

I stand up, overwhelmed and unsure how to proceed. “But the Lions could be hunting him down right now,” I say emphatically.

“You’ve completed our agreement,” Blackwood says slowly.

I look at her questioningly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you may stay here and continue your education as your father wished, or you may leave if that’s what you feel is necessary.”

“I can go? You’re letting me go?” I say more to myself than to Blackwood.

Blackwood hesitates. “Technically, you can go. However, I must advise you that there is still a great deal for you to learn and your skills are severely lacking in several areas. But more importantly, you know very little about the Strategia world at large.”

“Maybe so, but there’s no way I can stay here while my dad’s out there all alone. Especially knowing what I now know,” I say. “What happened here with Dr. Conner seems to be just a microcosm of what’s happening out there.”

“The school doesn’t involve itself in outside politics,” she says, even though we both know that the situation between her and Conner was completely political. “I’ll just say again that it would be prudent if you made additional alliances here and learned as much as you can before you leave.”

I take a good look at Blackwood. Her hair is pulled as taut as ever, her look as inscrutable as it was on day one, and I now know that her frilly white shirt, spilling out from under her crisp black blazer, is the perfect metaphor for who she is. She’s clearly trying to help me, to tell me what I need to do, but she won’t say it outright.

“Okay,” I reply, even though I’m not sure yet what she means.

WHEN I FINALLY crack my eyes open, my bedroom curtains are drawn and a candle is lit next to my bed. I’m not all that surprised that I slept through the day. I pull back my covers and inspect the bandages on my arms and legs. There are cuts and bruises all over me. As I step out of bed, I wince.

I walk slowly into the common room, everything aching, but the pain is more manageable than I would have thought. Maybe I’ve just fallen out of so many trees at this point that my body has gotten used to it.

The fire is big and bright and the room feels cozy. But I stop dead in my tracks when I spot Ash and Layla playing cards at the table next to the window.

Layla! She puts down her cards and comes right up to me.

We stand there awkwardly for a second and she looks like she wants to give me a hug but doesn’t know how to approach a gesture like that.