“But,” he went on as I relaxed a bit, “when the duel ended and you vanished with those dragons, I suspected we hadn’t heard the last from you, Sebastian. And I knew if you were to contact the Order again, it would be through St. Anthony. I’ve taken it upon myself to keep him under constant surveillance, so that when you resurfaced, I would know.”

“Then it was you who answered me yesterday,” I said. “You set up this meeting, not Tristan.”

“That I did.”

“Why?”

Martin didn’t answer right away. He stared down at the table with his fingers steepled in front of him, his eyes dark.

“You’re an agent of change, Sebastian,” he said at last. “For good or ill, events happen around you that no one can predict. It’s been that way since you first came to the Academy. Before that, even. Since the day Lucas found you in the Talon compound and took you in as a soldier for the Order. I’ve watched you through the years, and I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Whenever something important happens, something that could shake the very foundations of everything we know, you are always in the middle of it. Now the Patriarch is dead, the Order is in turmoil and Talon grows ever stronger because of it.” He glanced at Ember, sitting silently beside me, and his jaw tightened. “I should kill you, Sebastian,” he went on, making me cringe inside. “For turning your back on the Order and everything it stands for. You betrayed your brothers, and you betrayed me. But worst of all...” His eyes narrowed. “You betrayed Lucas, the man who saved you, who brought you to us and taught you everything you know. He would be ashamed if he could see you now.”

I kept the pain from my face, but if he’d stabbed me with a knife, I doubted it would have hurt as much as those words did right then. I thought of my mentor, remembering his words, the way he’d always pushed me to do better, to try harder. To be the best. The perfect soldier. Lucas Benedict would accept nothing less. After he’d been killed in battle, I’d thrown myself into training with a single-minded determination to become that perfect soldier. If it was Benedict sitting across from me now, and not Gabriel Martin, would my mission be the same? Would I still be the same?