The Severance Game, page 4
For the next minute I sat lost in thought. Had I just made a friend? Could it honestly be that easy? This kid hadn’t known me for more than an hour and was offering me his trust like we’d been pals for ages. It was confusing, but if he actually was for real then maybe that’s just what we would end up becoming—pals for ages.
However, the part of me that was always on guard made me think that the odds of this were very, very slim.
I looked up quickly when I saw the tablecloth rustle as a small hand began to lift it anew.
“Jason?” I whispered.
The hand pulled up the tablecloth. It wasn’t Jason.
Snow White Jr.’s head peeked beneath the tablecloth. My mouth hung open with surprise and dread. She stared at me curiously. Her giant gray eyes blinked; her expression showed no signs of emotion. I truly expected her to call out for Lady Agnue or Madame Lisbon or an equivalently responsible adult. But much to my surprise, she didn’t.
She looked over her shoulder—checking to make sure no one was watching her—then without invitation or explanation ducked below the tablecloth and joined me.
Snow White Jr. sat across from me and put down her checklist and the small, sparkly purse she’d been carrying. I watched her elegantly straighten the wrinkles out of her pure silver gown so that its shimmering fabric lay gracefully enough to be painted for a portrait.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Straightening my gown,” she replied. “You never want silk to wrinkle. It would require a steamer to return it to normal.”
“No,” I said more pointedly as I pointed to the spot of ground between us. “What are you doing here?”
“I gathered you could use some company,” she responded.
I crossed my arms. “Even if that were true, why would you want to provide it? I just caused a major catastrophe, took out the orchestra, and ruined the first ball of the semester.”
The increasingly hard-to-read princess shrugged without worry or judgment, as if I’d just told her I collected stamps or something. “That was an accident,” she stated simply. “You are my roommate; I am hardly going to avoid you because of one mistake.”
“Well there are plenty of other reasons to avoid me. Haven’t Mauvrey and the other princesses spoken to you yet? You must’ve heard the rumors about me being a trouble-making, weapons-loving princess who can’t sing, can’t curtsy, and basically doesn’t belong here.”
“I have,” Snow White Jr. nodded.
“Well, don’t you think I’m weird?” I asked.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But who says that is a bad thing?”
Um, pretty much everyone I’ve ever interacted with.
We stared at each other without saying a word. It was like a cat meeting a dog for the first time—two creatures entirely different in nature and perception sizing each other up, deciding whether or not they could accept the other’s dissimilarity.
I crossed my legs and sat up a bit straighter, as uncomfortable in my dress as I was in this situation. The commotion outside continued, so I still couldn’t get out of here. But I wondered if braving a run for the ballroom exit would be less awkward than continuing to sit under this table. I focused on the barricade of tablecloth intensely, like I was trying to see through it.
“Your name is Crisanta Knight, is it not?” Snow White Jr. asked, startling me.
“Um, yeah,” I responded hesitantly. “But I go by Crisa. And you’re Snow White Jr.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “But I go by SJ.”
I raised my eyebrows. “SJ? Really?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s just not what I expected. Kind of . . . unconventional.”
“Says the princess hiding beneath the snack table.”
I allowed myself a slight smirk. “Touché. Although technically you’re hiding under here with me.”
SJ glanced around at the enclosure then let out a slight huff. She got onto her knees and grabbed my wrist with one of her hands. “Not for much longer,” she said. “Come on, no more hiding. We must face Lady Agnue sooner or later, so it might as well be now.”
“I don’t know, later sounds like a pretty compelling option,” I countered, pulling my wrist away. “Besides, what’s all this ‘we’ stuff? I’m the one in trouble. Whatever consequences are out there, I have to face them alone.”
SJ sat back, meeting my gaze. Studying her now, I no longer saw coldness. She may have been polished and proper—an inherently flawless Legacy like Mauvrey—but there was something unique about her. I saw a deep kindness in her eyes, which had been evident the moment she’d popped her head under the table and hadn’t judged me.
For whatever reason, SJ was willing to accept my flaws right out of the gate, no questions asked. Moreover, despite barely having met me five minutes ago, it seemed she was willing to stick her neck out for me too.
“You will not have to face the consequences alone,” she said decidedly. “I shall tell Lady Agnue that the accident was my fault as well. That we are both to blame for what happened.”
Part of me thought I’d heard her incorrectly. Confused words stuck in my throat like cotton wool. I pushed my hair behind my ears and leaned my head on the heels of my hands.
A strange wave of apprehension set in.
Growing up, I had never had any good friends. Not fitting into your designated slot in a world defined by archetypes and stations made your life a study in isolation and spurn—the combination of which taught you to never truly rely on anyone.
This made me tougher in a lot of ways. It also made me unafraid to be bold and take chances. But whether you think this was a character-building way to grow up or a lonely one, it was what I had gotten used to. Which was precisely why SJ’s kind gesture felt as foreign to me as it did unbelievable. Things never worked this way. People never worked this way.
“SJ, I—”
“You can thank me later,” SJ interceded, a little unexpected sass in her tone. “And do not worry. I will not tell anyone about your wand either.”
My heart stopped for a second. I’d forgotten that she’d seen my wand—seen that I had it and seen it transform. Instinctively I tried to scooch away, but my back was already against the wall. I had nowhere to go.
SJ saw my reluctance and sighed. She picked her handbag off the floor and opened it. Within its silver-lined interior I saw a crumpled quill, several wrinkled pieces of parchment covered with scribbled thoughts, and a few small glass vials with cork stoppers. Each of these vials was filled with some kind of colorful liquid. The instruments struck a chord of familiarity, and I realized I’d seen similar (albeit empty) vials on my tour of the school.
“Did you get those from the school’s potions lab?” I asked.
“I did,” SJ responded. “I have a weakness for potions study and sought special permission from the potions professor to work on some experiments in between orientation activities.”
“SJ, schoolwork before school even starts—”
“She said no,” SJ interrupted.
“What?”
“I suppose I understand,” she continued. “Giving a ten-year-old permission to mix chemicals in a laboratory is hardly something a responsible teacher would do. It is not as if I could provide her with proof that I have been studying and practicing potion formulation in the basement of my castle for two years.”
“I don’t understand.”
SJ closed her purse. “I love making potions, Crisa. And I am very good at it. But I have never had the opportunity nor the means to develop my skill without being judged. And while I know students here are not permitted to take potions classes until our second year, being in that potions lab today, I was just so excited that I am afraid I could not help myself. In between tour groups I mixed these anyways. They are harmless—just some height and hair-coloring potions I read about in a book last month. But the chance to use such wonderful equipment and refined ingredients . . . I am ashamed to say it was too great a temptation to pass up.”
“SJ,” I finally said. “That’s some could-totally-get-you-into-trouble stuff and . . . you don’t even know me. Why are you telling me this?”
SJ got back on her hands and knees, scooped up her purse and checklist, and made for the edge of the tablecloth. “Well,” she said, “I suppose I trust you, Crisa. Now the question is, will you trust me too?”
That night I had done something quite opposite my nature. I’d trusted someone. I’d trusted SJ. And as a result, we’d forged the beginnings of a vibrant friendship—one that continued to grow in the years that followed.
It seemed that SJ and Jason had been meant to be my good friends from the beginning. And when Blue eventually enrolled at Lady Agnue’s, she too earned an immediate spot in my heart when on the very night of her arrival the two of us got mixed up in an adventure involving underground troll poker and unicorn vomit.
Over the years the three of them had consistently been true in all aspects of their word and friendship. Even as recently as this afternoon in Century City, they’d demonstrated what an unstoppable team we could be when we worked together.
This made the growing compulsion I felt toward keeping secrets from them pretty conflicting. On the one hand, doing so made no sense. They were my best friends. On the other hand, I didn’t like the idea of increasing the vulnerability I was already feeling by sharing it with other people.
I guess I needed time. I needed to think. I needed . . .
Well, firstly I needed to get off this Pegasus. I was starting to get a serious butt cramp.
Friction
espite my aching backside, we flew on for a few more hours—nothing but chilled air and limited light to occupy our thoughts.
Just as the moon (smiling despite the circumstance) reached the center of the sky, we landed in the kingdom of Harzana. The field we selected was not far from the Forbidden Forest, which most people stayed away from after dark. So it seemed like a decent place to lay low for a while.
I scratched the ear of my Pegasus, Sadie, when we landed—both to thank her for the ride and to apologize for the near-death experience I’d put her through when we’d faced off with the dragon in the skies over our realm’s capital.
Blue swung her leg over her own Pegasus while SJ, Jason, and Daniel jumped out of our levitating carriage. They began to survey the area while I continued to pet Sadie. At least I thought they were surveying the area. When I turned to look at them I realized they’d been surveying me.
“I think we should make camp for the night,” I said, ignoring their stares as I went to unload our sleeping bags from the trunk of the carriage.
Daniel blocked my way. “Is that all you have to say?” he asked.
“It’s all I’m going to say,” I responded, pushing past him with little regard.
While SJ, Blue, and Jason had been my friends for years, I’d only just met Daniel a couple of months ago. And frankly, most of the time it was all I could do not to kick him in the shin.
The moment we’d laid eyes on each other, I’d felt apprehension about the boy’s presence. For while my school nemeses like Mauvrey and Lady Agnue regularly showered me with malice and insults, Daniel made me feel something much worse: doubt.
Despite being the person in our group who knew me the least, he spoke to me with the familiarity of someone who’d known me for ages. And the words that came out of his mouth were nothing short of unsettling.
Since our first meeting Daniel had managed to hone in on my insecurities. He possessed the uncanny ability to read me like a book. And for someone like me, who preferred to keep people at a distance, this was very disconcerting.
Like the rest of us, Daniel was on this mission because he wanted to find the Author and have his fate altered. But even though we shared the same goal, this didn’t make up for the fact that I did not trust him. His prophecy, like pretty much everything else about him, was shrouded in mystery.
The perplexing boy had a naturally aloof demeanor and tended to dodge more questions than I did. Which was really saying something.
In addition, since he was a common before being selected as a protagonist, he had no fairytale lineage to provide context or backstory. He was something completely new and someone completely unreadable. The combination of which made me very uneasy.
“So, we’re not going to talk about what just happened?” Daniel asked, following me to the rear of the carriage.
“What’s there to talk about?” I countered. “It’s called slaying a dragon. I hope you were taking notes.”
“I wasn’t actually, because (a) You didn’t slay a dragon, you froze one with SJ’s portable potions. And (b) You know that’s not what I meant.”
Mental sigh.
I knew it wasn’t what he meant. Between the dragon and fleeing Arian’s antagonists in Century City, we’d been running for most of the day, which had prevented the others from asking me a lot of tough questions. We hadn’t really spoken since leaving the capital. Now that there was nowhere left to run, I had to face them—the questions, my friends, and Daniel too.
In truth, I understood why they thought I might have answers. I was the one who had led them to a bunker beneath Century City’s Capitol Building where we’d discovered files on countless protagonists in our realm—me, Jason, Blue, and Daniel included. And of all the protagonists in those files, I was the only one the antagonists were presently trying to kill.
But the cruel fact remained that I could not explain any of this. Discovering the bunker had been an accident. I’d somehow dreamed about the passage leading up to it, and when I’d seen the markers in the Capitol Building, I’d followed them out of curiosity.
And given that my prophecy was so lackluster, I could see no reason why the antagonists were hunting me, let alone what they wanted with all the other protagonists they weren’t trying to kill but were still interested in.
I released a deep breath and rotated around to speak sincerely. “Look, I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t know anything about that bunker below the Capitol Building with those protagonist records. I have zero idea why all of us except for SJ were mentioned in those files. And I certainly don’t know why those guys we ran into down there were trying to . . . why they wanted to . . .”
“Kill you,” Daniel said bluntly.
“Yeah. That,” I muttered.
Jason cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “Maybe we don’t know why those antagonists were after you, Crisa. But since there were other kids from Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s in those files, we should probably go back to school and find them. Find them and warn them that—”
“That what?” I interrupted. “That on our way to steal a quill that’ll help us break the spell around the Indexlands, we stuck a sword into a dragon statue, discovered a secret bunker beneath the realm’s oldest building, and then broke into a filing cabinet that contained suspicious paperwork for a bunch of protagonists with absolutely no relation to one another?”
Jason rubbed his arm sheepishly. “Well, it sounds crazy when you put it like that.”
“It is crazy. We don’t know why those antagonists are interested in those kids at school, let alone why that girl wants me dead.”
Blue tilted her head. “What girl?”
I stopped short. “What?”
“You said a girl wants you dead,” Blue clarified. “The only girl in that group chasing us was the member of the kitchen staff who I guess ratted us out to those creepy antagonists in the first place. Who are you talking about?”
“I, uh . . .”
Oh, crud.
Earlier today we’d all shared in the fun of being pursued through the Capitol Building by Arian and the armed antagonists set on (to quote that stupid file) “eliminating” me. But when the dragon had appeared and chaos had ensued throughout the city, there had been a short period when my friends and I had been separated. During which time I had suffered the misfortune of being cornered by Arian.
I shuddered just thinking about everything dreadful the boy had come to mean to me since our short period of introduction.
I was never one to feel fear. I just didn’t allow it. I couldn’t if I had any hope of ever being taken seriously as a hero, or at the very least being seen as a non-damsel princess. But when I’d come face to face with Arian I’d felt . . . something. It was a bit of fury, a touch of indignation, and a dose of anxiety. What that amounted to was what I could best describe as troubling intrigue. For while I wanted to keep Arian as far away from me as possible, I also felt the compulsion to dig deeper into the can of worms he’d opened, starting with that girl I’d just mentioned to Blue and the others.
When we were alone Arian had explained the whole “antagonists hunting me because of my prophecy” bit. But he’d also told me that he and his team were acting under the orders of a girl called Nadia.
I had zero idea who this chick was. But anyone who could order the doom of so many protagonists without our realm’s leaders noticing was not a threat to be taken lightly. Given that, I deemed the best thing I could do was bide my time until I learned more.
In the meantime, her existence, like my run-in with Arian, was a topic I didn’t feel comfortable talking about. Not with my friends, and certainly not with Daniel. So in response to Blue’s inquiry I thought fast and evaded the truth like an explosive dodge ball.
“That’s who I was talking about,” I replied quickly. “That kitchen girl clearly had a death wish for me if she ratted us out to those bad guys.”
The others’ expressions were hard to read, the moon casting a ghostly luminescence on their features.
“All right,” Blue finally declared, ending the horrible pause. “Since that’s settled, can we move on to discussing our next move?”
“Yes,” SJ said. Then she turned to face me, crossing her arms with an expectant look on her face. “Unless there is something else you would like to tell us, Crisa.”
I looked my best friend in the eye. It was obvious that she wanted me to tell the others about Natalie Poole. She wanted me to reveal to them that the girl who’d been another recurring character in my nightmares for the past several years was not only a real person who lived in our neighboring realm of Earth, but also the subject of her own elimination file in Arian’s bunker, just like me and Paige Tomkins (a former Fairy Godmother who was a good friend of my godmother, Emma).
