“The moment I arrived here, the Peirasmos began. It’s not a choice you get to make, but rather a duty you must fulfill.”

If I hadn’t been so tired and rattled, I probably could’ve managed something better than “That’s not fair!” But that’s exactly what I said, and I sounded petulant even to myself.

Alexander only shrugged. “Has any part of this been fair to anyone?” he asked, and I realized I couldn’t argue with that. Everything about this had been unfair from day one, but this seemed particularly awful. I was getting sick of not being offered a freaking choice in things.

“The Peirasmos have begun,” Alexander continued. “And either you will pass, or you will die.”

That seemed like a pretty steep grading curve, and for the first time in a long time, I felt something like real fear. Not the adrenaline spike I got when I was fighting bad guys or keeping David safe, but the scary kind. It was a cold, kind of sick feeling that made me want to go home and put my head under the covers, maybe forever.

But I couldn’t do that right now, so instead, I stared Alexander down and said, “That seems kind of stupid. If I fail the trials, I die, and then David doesn’t have any kind of Paladin, official or not, and how—”

“Ah,” Alexander interrupted as he drummed his long, elegant fingers on the desk. “That actually brings me to my next point.”

“I wasn’t finished,” I said, turning a glare on him, but he was already rising from the desk.

“We’ve made provisions for those circumstances.” He lifted a hand and nodded at the doorway behind him. “Thanks to you, David, we have a spare.”

I turned, my heart in my throat.

There, in the doorway of Alexander’s study, was Bee.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I’D THOUGHT ABOUT seeing Bee again for so long, but now that she was actually there, standing right in front of me, I felt frozen. Paralyzed.

I think I was afraid to believe she was actually there.

Ryan apparently did not have that fear, though, because he crossed the room in a few strides, swooping her up into a big hug. “Holy crap,” I heard him say, and her hands came up to rest on his shoulder blades, hugging him back. Bee was only a few inches shorter than Ryan, so I could clearly see her heart-shaped face over his shoulder. Long blond hair pulled back in a braid, dressed in a simple black T-shirt and jeans, she looked so... normal.

“Easy there,” she said, and her voice sounded exactly the same. “I like my ribs.”

That’s what did it for me, hearing her sound so normal, so Bee, and then I was across the room, too, shamelessly using my Paladin strength to push Ryan out of the way and throw my arms around her.