“And your boyfriend was trapped in the newspaper room,” Headmaster Dunn said on a sigh, and I startled.

“What?”

Reaching for a pen, Headmaster Dunn looked at me over the top of his half-moon glasses and said, “David Stark came to see me this morning, saying that you’d saved his life on Friday.”

“Oh” was all I could manage. I’d been punched and kicked and attacked with knives, but I wasn’t sure any of those things hurt as much as hearing David’s name. When I’d gotten in on Friday afternoon, I’d had my parents’ complete and total freak-out to distract me from the fact that David and I were no longer together. The school had called, of course, and told them about both the punching and the running off, so I’d had to spin a story and fast. It was the same one I’d told Headmaster Dunn during this meeting—freaked out, had a panic attack, acted in a Wildly Inappropriate and Uncharacteristic Manner—and while I was still grounded for the time being, at least they’d stopped yelling.

But later that night, lying in my bed, all I’d been able to think about was David’s face, the way his voice had cracked when he’d said, “Pres?” And then on top of that, there was the worry. Breaking up sucked no matter what. Breaking up with a person who you had a mystical and lifelong bond with? Yeah. I’d been awake most of the night wondering what this would mean for us on the Paladin/Oracle side of things. And would this have any effect on the trials? It wasn’t like I could quit being David’s Paladin, or quit going through with the Peirasmos, but at the moment, I didn’t even want to see David, much less go through more crap like what had happened Friday.

“Harper?”

I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed Headmaster Dunn talking to me.

“Yes, sir?” I asked, sitting forward in my chair a little bit.

He heaved another one of those sighs, his watery green eyes flicking between me and my parents. “I could have had you arrested, you know.” He tapped the end of the pen up and down on the desk. “Charged you with assault.”

My stomach dropped, and I clenched my suddenly sweaty fingers in my lap. “Yes, sir,” I said, as meekly as I could manage.

“At the very least I could have you expelled.” The pen was tapping faster now, and next to me, I heard both of my parents suck in a breath. When I looked over at Mom, she had her legs tightly crossed, fingers linked over her knees. Like me, she was mostly in white, although her pants were houndstooth.