I stared back, willing her to tell everyone I attacked her so I could tell them that she’d threatened to kill me.
“I fell. Can you fix it?” she growled.
“Yeah, come on back.” Hayes guided her to a bed in the back, and the rest of the students, seven of us in all, stood around as Hayes healed her. He was a good teacher, I had to admit. He described each thing he did in order. Inflammation first. Then blood vessels. Then tissue damage. Then bone.
“The eyebrow hair is going to have to grow back on its own,” he informed her. “All this from a fall?”
She looked horrified at that but nodded.
After she left, we waited around, but no one else came.
“So, you wait around all day hoping for sick people to come in to train on?” I asked.
Hayes nodded. “Most people on the East Side have tinctures at home, so it’s rare we get cases that aren’t just other students.”
I frowned. “The clinic on the West Side is overflowing with sick people.”
Hayes shrugged. “I didn’t make the rules.”
“But you sure know how to follow them,” I spat.
I didn’t care if he was Ariyon’s best friend. Hayes dumped Eden an hour before the dance. He was dead to me.
He just rolled his eyes and gave me his back.
Jerk.
By the time lunch rolled around, I was super excited to see my bestie. After grabbing a salad from the cafeteria, I met her on the lawn. The second she saw me, she waved a piece of paper in my face and squealed. Yanric sat atop her shoulder, eating crumbs she fed him.
“What?” I tried to peer at the paper, but she was shaking it like crazy.
She handed it to me, heaving in and out, hyperventilating.
Eden Westcourt,
It is with great honor that Queen Solana invites you to be a member of the Junior Royal Brigade next year. She was impressed with your abilities at the midterms, and it is her hope that one day you will serve in her personal Royal Guard.
Secretary to Her Royal Highness,
Maxwell Bishop
I smiled at my friend and handed her back the note. “Congrats!” I’d forgotten that the students who were unable to showcase their skills had already made up their midterm, and the queen was sending out invites to her top choices for Junior Royal Brigade.
Eden took the paper from me, but then the grin was wiped off her face. “Wait, crap. I’m totally excited about serving under the psycho that wants to imprison you. I should say no.”
I waved her off. “Nah, honestly, Solana isn’t that bad. She’s just trying to do what’s best for her people.”
It was true. Although she’d been pretty awful to me, she had reason to be. My mother had killed her brother and sister-in-law, and I’d gotten her heir and nephew stuck in the Realm of Rebirth. She was doing the best she could. I understood that.
Eden opened her mouth to respond when her gaze drew upward, to someone who stood behind me.
She gasped, and I spun to see a member of the Royal Guard. He held a note out to me with my name scrawled on the front.
I plucked it from him with my gloved hand and willed my heart to chill the fae out. It was frantically beating in my chest as I peered at the queen’s wax seal, identical to the one from last night’s letter.
“Fallon, only those invited to the brigade are getting envelopes today,” Eden whispered.
There was no way. She wouldn’t. I didn’t even have my own powers.
