We sat in silence for a while as we finished our entrées. Conversation picked up again when our desserts came, but we stuck to lighter topics — the quality of the gym downstairs, what sort of books and movies the library had, and so forth.

Graham and I parted ways awkwardly at the dining room doors. I was glad I’d made the effort to sit with him but relieved he didn’t offer to walk me back to my room.

I reminded myself that even if betraying Cordus wasn’t a bad thing, Graham’s way of doing it had put Kara and the others at risk. That was no good. Furthermore, he’d physically attacked me.

I did feel bad, though. Nothing he’d done struck me as deserving capital punishment, and that was probably what he was going to get. I imagined Cordus doing to Graham what he’d done to the green man. It was an unbearable thought.

Chapter 16

A week or so passed. Every day followed the same schedule, so it was easy to lose track of which day it was. Each morning I got dressed and headed down to breakfast by 7:00, often with Gwen, Andy, and Theo, who seemed to be on the same schedule. Then I had a half-hour lesson with Cordus, followed by a workout. Then lunch, several hours of personal time, an hour of combat training, a shower, and dinner.

The personal time was mixed. I spent a little of it browsing the lending library, which was fun. I found plenty of good books and a bunch of movies I’d like to watch, if I ever had a couple free hours. A few times I hung out with Kara, which was nice, or poked around the stables.

On the other hand, I also used my personal time to visit Justine, who’d been given a first-floor suite not far from my room. Those visits were the opposite of fun. She still seemed unaware that she was anything but human. She swung irrationally back and forth between accusing me of kidnapping her and begging me to protect her from some unspecified threat.

She also mooned over Ben and the girls. That grated on me. Why had she gone and married a human man, anyway? Just to make her cover more convincing? It wasn’t fair to Ben or to the half-human children she’d borne.

Several times, Cordus came to see Justine while I was there. Her reaction to him was weird. She claimed not to have met him before the previous week, yet she clearly found his presence comforting.

She flirted with him shamelessly, which annoyed me. She was married to my brother, for god’s sake. Couldn’t she at least save it for when I wasn’t around?