Chapter Eleven: Show of Strength | Part 2
“No one’s getting expelled once Grimm is done with her.” Rhea’s eyes glimmered with satisfaction. “We had a little chat with him earlier. He’s furious. If Azirenne still has a job when she leaves the palace, I’ll eat a grimoire.”
“Grimmary doesn’t have enough on his plate with the attacks?” Thirtyx sighed.
Benn raised an eyebrow. “You were tortured, Thirtyx. A minor. By the headmistress of a school.”
Thirtyx shook his head. He didn’t want to dwell on that part. “How is Grimmary doing, by the way?”
“Shaken, but unharmed.” Benn thumbed the edges of his card deck. “The guard who took the sword for him was a Sigraexil trainer of mine. We weren’t close, but still…”
“Then why did you guys come back so quickly? I mean, I’m obviously grateful, but…”
Rhea’s smile was hollow. “He thinks us being here will send the message that this isn’t a big deal. Plus, if he keeps getting attacked, he thinks we’re safer here. And he seems to think this whole business will distract us from our Comps, which I thought was really dumb, until…”
She looked at the floor and pursed her lips like she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue, but even Benn was giving her a puzzled look. After a moment, she inhaled a shuddering breath. “If something does happen to him, we’ll need our sorcerer’s licenses to be taken seriously on the throne.”
Benn gave a frustrated grunt. “We’re 17, Rhea. No one’s going to take us seriously anyway. I get why Grimm has to prepare for the worst, but if the worst happens, we’re going to have way bigger problems than our sorcerer’s licenses.” He lay on his back to stare at the ceiling. “I wonder if that’s why whoever’s doing this waited until now—when we’re old enough to have a viable claim to the throne but not necessarily old enough to defend it.”
“I think we’re old enough to defend it,” Rhea bristled. “We don’t have a choice. Grimm has spent our entire lives preparing us for this, and we owe it to him to be the rulers he needs us to be, no matter how old we are. I’ll have Grimm’s advisers, and you’ll have his army. We’ll make the world trust us. We’ll find a way, because otherwise, what have our lives even been for?”
Thirtyx’s emotions were still too raw to imagine his friends on the front lines of a war for the throne. How much could they truly rely on Grimmary’s advisers and military? Azirenne’s words from the previous night echoed through his mind. It’s cute that you think a single person in this school would hesitate to turn on them if it came to that.
No. He couldn’t worry about that now, or the fear would eat him alive. Desperate to change the subject, Thirtyx launched into another of his pressing questions. “I probably shouldn’t ask this, in case they capture me again, but is there any more word on who’s behind this?”
Benn groaned and pressed against his eyelids with his fingertips. “We do, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Veriths?”
Rhea twirled her hair anxiously around her finger. “The attacker is a Verith, yes, but it’s complicated. He was exiled from Everis over a decade ago and has been living in Athernel ever since, with no known contact with the Verith government. Apparently, he torched his place before he left for the Peace Garden, and now he’s in the wind, so we have no clue who he was working with.”
“But that isn’t how the public will see it,” Thirtyx sighed. “When I so much as hinted at the possibility of Veriths while I was entranced, the headmistress ran away with it.”
Rhea tried for an encouraging smile, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “If it’s any consolation, Arova denies Everis’ knowledge of the suspect’s plans, and she’s prepared to say as much at the press conference today. I know her public opinion ratings aren’t great, but… she’s still in Grimm’s inner circle, right?”Thirtyx wasn’t confident he could pull off a single look that said, Rhea, you sit in the same political science classes I do, and you know that won’t help, but he executed it quite well.
Calley Jones 