“You’re a terrible father, you know that?” he growled, and I quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him back, while Saba shot him a chastising look. “I wish you’d take that amulet off so I could look you in the eye and save her from you.”

“Magnus, stop—”

“Please shut him up,” Jember said, rolling his eyes. “He’s exhausting.” He looked at me. “Be ready to work in two hours.”

“I’ll be ready,” I said, dragging Magnus away. I shoved him into his room, shutting the door behind us. “Jember is here to help. Could you not start fights, please?”

“I hate him like that putrid honey wine,” he said, punching his pillow a few times before sitting on his bed. “He doesn’t deserve you. Or Saba.”

“No one deserves Saba.”

He grinned slightly. “That’s true.”

“Jember has his own set of survival habits. And … he has really bad pain because of his injury.” I probably shouldn’t have revealed Jember’s business, but it was too late now. I sat beside him on the bed. “He doesn’t mean most of what he says.”

“You’re too used to defending him. He doesn’t deserve it, Andromeda.” He huffed and lay back on the bed. “He’s a horrible human.”

“I know he is, but you don’t get to say it.”

Magnus blinked at me curiously, and I realized I had raised my voice.

I stood up quickly. “I should go nap before tonight,” I said, and rushed out of the room.

“Where is everything?” was the first thing Jember asked after we’d walked through the halls a bit. He only needed to talk slightly louder over the wind as he leaned in close.

“I cleansed it all,” I said. “Well, most of it.”

He chewed on his lip for a moment, then headed to the closest room—the library.

I followed, then shut the door and the wind behind us. “This room isn’t the safest. There’s a ghost who likes to hurl books.”

Jember narrowed his eyes, but at the portrait of Magnus’s father instead of me. “Normally, I would applaud your good sense—”

“Would you really?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“—in cleansing the Manifestations in order of strength.” I dodged away as he attempted to flick me in the forehead. “But in this case, you should’ve left all the Manifestations intact and dealt only with the hyena. Cleansing it all first gives the Evil Eye too much opportunity to assess your capability.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” I said with a frustrated shrug. “We never made it to that lesson, remember?”

“That’s because you weren’t supposed to be here.”

A book dropped on the ground and skidded, stopping between us.

“That’s our warning to go,” I said. “Should we work in the game room?”

Jember didn’t move. “Hand me that.”