Tristan woke me up at the crack of dawn, wired and excited.
“We have to talk to Rina immediately,” he said, pacing along the side of the bed. “Hopefully she hasn’t said anything to the council members about a traitor yet, and we have to stop her before she does.”
I sat up and stretched, the sheet falling into my lap. “What’s going on?”
Tristan stopped his pacing, and his eyes lingered on my chest, still bare from last night. Then he frowned. I frowned, too, self-consciously pulling the sheet up to cover myself.
“What?” I asked.
“I . . . uh . . . forgot what I was saying.” He picked up his shirt from the floor, the one he’d worn yesterday, and tossed it at me. “You’re too sexy for my own good.”
I smiled to myself as I pulled his shirt on. “Better?”
He grinned beautifully, which made me lose my train of thought. “Yes. Thank you. So what was I saying?”
“Um . . . something about Rina, I think.”
“Right. She wants to start an investigation outside of the council, which means notifying the members of her message about the traitor. She can’t do it yet. I had an idea this morning. She needs to let you have a chance with the rest of them.”
“I doubt she’ll do it. She wants to move on. I’ve already wasted her time, remember?”
“We have to convince her, Alexis. You need to do this before you lose that protection. Right now, with your shield so tight, you couldn’t expose your power if you wanted to.” He dropped onto the bed in front of me and held my eyes with his. “There’s a lot of discord and not only on the council. Rina does need to expand the investigation, but it’d be in her best interest—all of ours—if you can feel out the council members first. Find out who’s fueling the fire.”
As soon as we finished breakfast, Tristan and I went straight to Rina’s office, but she wasn’t there. He asked me to mentally find her, but it only took me a moment to notice her mind signature was nowhere in the mansion.
“She’s not here, but Char’s about to—”
A faint pop was followed by Charlotte’s appearance at the other end of the hall. Her fists rested on her hips, and her eyebrows lifted high.
“Do you plan on training this morning, or were you going to ditch me?” she asked.
One hand shot up, and her wrist flicked, then something sailed through the air at us. Just as they trained me, I eyed the object, identified it, and timed my movement to pluck it safely out of the air. I held the knife by the hilt and stared at the gleaming blade that could have done some serious damage.
“We start weapons training today. Are you coming?”
I tilted my head at Tristan.
“You go,” he said. “I’ll find Rina. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Tristan disappeared with a pop, leaving me to explain his abrupt exit to Charlotte without telling her too much. Not one to waste time, Charlotte flashed to the gym, and I followed. With her announcement about weapons training, I expected to find the full gamut of practice weapons spread out in the main training room, but only glinting discs, some star shaped and others round with razor-sharp edges, waited for me. At the other end of the room stood various sized dummies. She taught me the different ways to throw the discs, and I practiced with the dummies, Char correcting my form whenever necessary. Which was embarrassingly often.
“Has Owen taught you everything about mages?” she asked after a while.
I glanced at her as I let go of the disc I was about to throw, and it went wild, bouncing off the stone wall. She lifted an eyebrow.
“It should have cut the stone, not bounce like a rubber ball. You’re still not putting the right amount of power into your twist.” She clasped my hand in hers and demonstrated—again—how to hold the disc and how to flick my wrist. The motion felt unnatural, but I kept trying. “Sophia says you’ve been working on learning all about the Amadis, but you haven’t asked me anything about mages. So has Owen told you everything you need to know, or do you have questions?”
“Actually, I haven’t seen Owen much since we’ve been here.”
She made a noise in her throat. “Yes, I’m afraid Martin has kept him busy.”
“Are they close?”
“They used to be, when Owen was a kid. Martin made him stay in school longer than he should have, though. First primary school to learn his ABCs and 123s, then mage school—”
“Mage school?” I interrupted, surprised to hear such a thing existed.
“Of course. The kids have to learn how to use their magic. They start at twelve years old, and it’s another ten years. Then Martin made Owen attend mainstream high school and university for many more years than necessary so he could learn as much as possible about norms and their ways. Stefan finally said he’d had enough, that Owen needed more hands-on practice.”
“No wonder he hates school so much.”
Charlotte sighed. “I think he resents his father, and now Martin is trying to make up for it. It’s good for them to have this opportunity to spend some time together.”
“Mom says Martin is the most powerful warlock we have, and Owen’s a close second.”
“It’s very true, but I’m not too far behind,” she said with a wink. “Actually, Martin is surprisingly powerful. I tease him that his parents must have been sorcerers.”
“But Owen said his grandparents were all warlocks, converted by Rina’s mother.”
“The ones he knows of—my parents and Martin’s adopted parents.”
I threw her a look. “Adopted?”
“After completing their conversion to Amadis, they took their first tour of mainstreaming and found a baby by a stream near Martinstown, Ireland. They sensed his powerful magic, even as little as he was. What could they do? They couldn’t leave him for norms to find. And definitely not for the Daemoni. So they took him and raised him as their own.”
“So could Martin’s parents be sorcerers?”
She chuckled. “It would explain a lot, but I highly doubt it. He’s not powerful enough to be full-blooded, and sorcerers have become too arrogant to mate with anyone less than themselves. In fact, in my 106 years, I’ve never heard of any leaving their lairs. As far as I know, it’s been centuries since they’ve reproduced at all.”
“No sex for centuries? That sucks for them.”
Charlotte laughed. “I guess they’re even beyond that. Their earlier children diluted their blood and magic by breeding with norms, which is probably the worst thing possible in their eyes. I imagine they’ve given up on everyone by now, including each other, hiding out in their caverns and castles.”
“Unless . . .” I remembered some of what Owen had told me on the long flights, while he kept my mind busy, and an idea occurred to me. “Owen did have a chance to tell me a little, and he said there are legends that sorcerers can shape-shift, even into other people. So maybe—”
Charlotte’s odd expression cut me off. I was about to ask her what was wrong when she shook herself and let out a chuckle that sounded forced before plastering on her normal don’t-screw-with-me expression.
“Impossible. Those are just legends, Alexis,” she said, her voice firm and deliberate as she handed me another disc. “Very old legends.”