“I don’t!” I argued, but that lasted all of five seconds before I let my arm fall back to my side. “Okay, I do, but it’s honestly not as bad as I remembered. I mean, they banned smoking! So that’s something.”

Laughing, Bee rolled her eyes at me. “At least you’re trying,” she acknowledged.

At my other side, Ryan nudged my elbow, nodding toward the shooting gallery amid the carnival games that lined the center of the midway.

“You wanna try out one of those?” he asked.

I almost laughed and shook my head. I had never been a fan of those types of things, and honestly, how many giant stuffed animals does a girl need? But then Ryan grinned down at me and nudged me again. “Come on, I wanna see your Paladin skills in action.”

That was right. Along with increased strength and speed, I had some seriously excellent accuracy now and, like any girl right out of a breakup, I saw the appeal of making things explode.

I approached the booth, going to pull five bucks out of my pocket, but Ryan waved my money away. “No, this is on me. Harper Price, shooting things? Totally worth it.”

Rolling my eyes, I smiled anyway. “Shooting balloons with a bright yellow plastic gun,” I reminded him. “Not exactly superhero stuff.”

He flicked his auburn hair out of his eyes. “I’ll take what I can get.”

So for the next ten minutes or so, I shot the heck out of some balloons with a dart gun. And to be honest, it was fun. Not just the shooting things—although I have to admit that was a lot more enjoyable than I’d ever thought something like that could be—but the joking and laughing with Ryan and Bee. It felt so good not to worry about Oracles or Ephors, or if a vision was suddenly going to come out of nowhere, making me have to lie to everyone around me.

Part of me felt guilty about that, like having fun wasn’t allowed.

But then I reminded myself that David was the one who had broken things off, David was the one who had chosen the Paladin over the girlfriend, and if I wanted to have a good time with my best friend and my ex-boyfriend, I was more than allowed.

After the shooting gallery, we went in search of other games that might test my and Bee’s Paladin skills. That thing where you throw balls into goldfish bowls, more dart games, even an archery booth with foam-tipped arrows—I did them all, grinning at the surprise on the barkers’ faces when I hit target after target, laughing with Bee as she struggled to hold all my stuffed prizes.

Finally, when we’d hit pretty much everything we could, we headed away from the carnival games..