“You’re okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes against the sudden stinging there. “You’re okay, you’re okay... wait.” I pulled back, held her at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”

There were tears in her big brown eyes, but she laughed shakily, nodding. “I am. I totally am.”

“Miss Franklin was never mistreated in our care,” Alexander said, and it was like I’d forgotten he was there. I turned to look over my shoulder.

“That doesn’t exactly make up for kidnapping her,” I said, and he gave another one of those rolling shrugs.

“She was not meant to be taken. That was all Blythe’s doing, and I assure you, she was punished for it.”

Something about the way he said “punished” made my skin crawl, but for right now, Bee was here, and she was fine, and she was smiling at me, and I didn’t care what the Ephors wanted, so long as she was here.

But then I remembered what he had said, about how if I died during the trials, they’d made “provisions.”

The night of Cotillion, David had transformed all the other girls into Paladins, too. He’d undone the spell on everyone else, but Blythe had taken Bee before then. Which meant that Bee—

“Miss Franklin is a Paladin as well,” Alexander said, finishing my thought for me. “She’s been with us, training, being very well cared for, as you can see.” He gestured to Bee, and I had to admit, she didn’t look terrible. Her cheeks were full, her skin was as clear and bright as it had always been, and while there was something in her eyes that I couldn’t quite name, she seemed... fine.

“Should you fail in the trials, Miss Franklin will be here to take your place as the Oracle’s Paladin.” He lifted his shoulders. “Easy as can be.”

It didn’t sound all that easy to me. In fact, it sounded like a lot of BS. There were no Paladin powers racing through me, so I figured the prickling at the back of my neck was good old-fashioned anger.

“So you’re using my best friend as my understudy in case I get killed?” I said.

Alexander sat back behind his desk, taking a sip of his tea. “When you put it that way, it sounds a great deal more mercenary than it actually is. We simply want to... hedge our bets, let us say.” He nodded at Bee. “And Miss Franklin has been very well prepared for this.”

When I turned back to Bee, she was looking at Alexander, but her gaze slid to me. She tried to smile, but it was shaky and I reached out to hold both her hands in mine.

“They did tell me about all this,” she said, taking a deep breath. “That’s why they took me, so that they’d have a... a spare, I guess.”