THE TAMER WHO REWROTE EVOLUTION

Chapter 7

"How long have you been there?" Sera demanded. "Since before you came up. This is my spot." Kaida took a sip. "You walked right past me. Very scary. Very Rank S."

"Go away, Voss." "No." "I'm not in the mood." "I noticed." Kaida tilted her head. "You've got the face. The one people get when someone hands them a prize they didn't ask for."

Sera stiffened. "What would you know about it?"

"Everything." Kaida's smirk did not reach her eyes. "Third generation Voss. My grandfather founded the Western Guild. My mother runs it. They put a fire hound in my arms when I was six, and I've been destined ever since."

She said the word like it tasted bad. "You're not going to tell me you're not proud of it," Sera said. "Oh, I'm proud." Kaida shrugged. 

"That's what makes it so annoying. I'm good at it. I'm really good. And every time I win a duel, there's a little voice that says, Of course you won. You're a Voss. Nobody ever says, Kaida won. They say, "The Voss girl won." Sera blinked. "You're being honest," she said.

"Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation." A small, tired laugh escaped Sera. She hadn't expected it. Kaida studied her for a moment. "Let me guess. They gave you the folder."

"How do you know about the folder?"

"They gave me one too." Kaida's eyes flicked toward the sky. "Mine's thicker. Fancy gold seal. My mother wants me to accept it as soon as I turn twenty." "And will you?"

"I don't know." Kaida finished her drink and set the cup down. "That's the thing no one tells you. You spend your whole life being told what you're going to be, and you never get a single day to find out what you'd choose. So I pretend. I swagger. I win. And I never, ever look at the question."

"What question?" "What would I do if nobody was watching?" The wind tugged at Sera's braid. Something in her chest loosened by an inch. "I'd teach," Sera said.

The word came out before she could stop it. Kaida raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?"

"I'd teach." Sera stared at the city lights. Her voice was very quiet. "Little kids. The ones who can't afford academy tutors. I'd sit in a room with a bad heater and a crooked chalkboard, and I'd show them how to read a beast's body language before they get hurt." She swallowed. "That's all. No titles. No ranks. No cameras. Just a room, and some kids, and a kettle in the corner."

"That's it?" "That's it." Kaida was silent for a long time.

"That's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard you say," she said at last. "Why?" "Because it's so small. And you wanted it so much it made your voice shake." Sera looked down. Her hands were trembling against the railing. "And Elias?" Kaida asked, more gently.

"I want him back," Sera whispered. "I want that more than anything. But I think..." She stopped. Started again. "I think I want him back so he can sit in that room with me. Not so I can march him into a war."

Rime pressed his big warm head into her hip. Kaida 

 nodded slowly. For once, she had no joke ready. "Then don't let them have you," she said. "It isn't that easy."

"I didn't say it was easy. I said, "Don't let them." Dawn was a thin gray stripe on the horizon when Sera finally went back to her dorm.

She was so tired that she almost walked past it. Something white lay on the floor outside her door, thin and square, catching the light from the hallway lamp.

She stopped. Rime growled, low in his throat. It was an envelope. Cream-colored, heavy paper, sealed with a circle of silver wax. Sera knew that seal. The same one on the Dean's folder. The same one on the car.

She crouched and picked it up. Her fingers were steady, though her heart was not. There was one line of neat, elegant handwriting on the front. For Miss Seraphina Linden. The placement interview moved to this morning.

Below it, in smaller letters, someone had added a second line. Please bring Mr. Ethan Cole.

The man from Concord never stopped smiling. He sat behind a plain wooden desk in a borrowed classroom, with one gray-gloved hand resting on a small black slate and the other turning a silver coin over and over between his fingers. His coat was the color of rain. A tiny pin shaped like a closed eye was fixed to his collar.

"Mr. Cole," he said warmly. "Please. Sit. I'm Aldous Vale. I won't bite." Ethan sat. His legs still felt like wet rope from the Rift, and the chair was too small for him. Sera stood by the door with her arms crossed. Professor Brandt leaned on the wall behind them, his chipped mug in hand, looking like a man waiting for a storm to finish.

"This is a placement interview for Miss Linden," Brandt said. "Mr. Cole is not on any list." "Quite right," Vale said, and the coin flipped over his knuckles. "Mr. Cole is a courtesy." "A courtesy to who?" "To my curiosity." Vale smiled wider. "Mr. Cole, I understand you had an interesting morning in the Rift."

Ethan's mouth went dry. Under his collar, Wick pressed himself flat and still. "I got lucky," Ethan said. "Did you?"

"The Stalker slipped. I don't remember much." "Mm." Vale set the coin down. "The proctors say the scorch marks were hot enough to melt rock. Quite lucky." "I fainted right after."

"Of course you did." Vale slid the black slate across the desk. "Would you mind? Just a touch. For the file."

Ethan looked at it. The slate was smooth as a pond at night.

Stay quiet, he thought, and he did not know whether he was talking to Wick, to the mark on his chest, or to himself.

He placed two fingers on the slate. The mark under his shirt prickled once, like a held breath. Ethan pushed his mind down over it the way he would press a lid on a boiling pot.

The slate flickered gray. F-NULL Vale looked at it for a long time. "Remarkable," he said softly. "Truly. Nothing at all."

"I told you," Ethan said. "You did." Vale picked the coin up again. His smile had not moved, but his eyes had gone very still. "And yet somehow, Mr. Cole, you keep surviving things you shouldn't."

He stood and slid a plain white card across the desk. There was only a number on it. "If you ever remember anything else," he said, "call me." Ethan did not touch the card until they were outside, in the hallway, with the door shut behind them.vThen he leaned against the wall and realized his shirt was soaked through with cold sweat.

"You held it back," Sera said quietly. "Barely." "What did it feel like?"