Kennet frowned. “So that’s a no?”
“No.” I shook my head. “My place is here.”
“Oh, Bryn.” He let out a sigh, and he reached out to fix a lavender flower that had come loose from my hair. When he finished, he looked down at me sadly. “I don’t think you really know your place at all.”
THIRTY-NINE
conciliation
It was time to get back to reality.
That’s what I told myself after I’d finished getting changed in the locker room. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail and headed out to the gym, determined to head back to work.
With everything going on—Storvatten preparing for war, Viktor and Konstantin, not to mention things with Ridley, and Kennet’s bizarre invitation last night, and Tilda’s wedding, which was a good thing but still out of the ordinary—my life had been completely devoid of routine.
Since I’d joined tracker school when I was twelve, this place and this job had been my one constant. I was sent out on missions where I had to encounter changelings and deal with unique obstacles, but I always came back here.
And right now, when everything felt like it was crumbling down on me, I needed this more than ever. I needed to disappear into my work until I was completely gone.
So when I stepped into the gym, expecting my tiny little haven in the chaos of the world, I was caught off guard to see that things had been completely turned upside down.
All the trackers were training at once—some doing combat or sword fighting, others lifting weights, while still others were running laps—which filled the gym with far more people than I would’ve preferred. On top of all that there was also a group of around twenty-five Markis and Marksinna standing in formation as Ember commanded them.
I recognized a few of them, like Linus Berling, but the rest of them stood out thanks to their designer workout clothes. One girl was even training while wearing a diamond tennis bracelet and chandelier earrings.
“Down!” Ember shouted as I walked over to her, and her ragtag troops dropped to the floor.
Some of them moved more quickly than others, and I wasn’t surprised to see that Marksinna Tennis Bracelet had trouble keeping up. Linus did relatively well, but he relied more on effort than skill. A girl in the front was doing astonishingly well, though, as if she had been training for years.
When she hit the ground, I noticed a subtle change in her skin color—the deep olive darkening to match the black of her workout clothes for a second. Her long dark hair was in a loose braid that bounced when she dropped. Her large eyes were almost almond shaped, and she kept them locked on Ember as she awaited her next order.
“Up!” Ember commanded almost as soon as they hit the floor, and they hurried to get back on their feet. When Ember saw me, she smiled. “Why don’t we all take five? You’ve been working hard.”
“How’s it going?” I asked Ember as her troops took a breather or got something to drink. Linus offered me a quick wave before jogging over to the drinking fountain.
“Good.” She nodded. “They’re shaping up really well.”
“That’s only because we have such a good teacher.” The girl in the front wiped sweat from her brow, and she had a water bottle in her hand.
“Thanks.” Ember smiled, maybe a little too widely, and they looked at each other for what was beginning to feel like an uncomfortable amount of time. “Uh, sorry. Bryn, this is Delilah, I mean, Marksinna Delilah Nylen.”
Delilah rushed to fill the gap between us so she could shake my hand, and I noticed she was a little taller than Ember. “I’ve heard so much about you. You’re a real hero.”
“I’m not even close to being a hero, but thank you,” I said.
“Sorry, sure.” When she released my hand, she stood up straight with her shoulders back, the way I knew Ember had taught her. Then she tapped her water bottle. “I need to refill this, so I should do that before we start up again.”
“Go ahead,” Ember told her, and the second Delilah was out of earshot, Ember turned to me and asked in an excited whisper, “What do you think?”
“Well, she has good posture,” I said.
“That’s it?” Ember stared up at me. “That’s all you’ve got?”
I glanced over to where Delilah was refilling her bottle at the fountain at the edge of the gymnasium. “She’s obviously a hard worker, and she seems to know her stuff.” Ember kept staring at me, so I added, “And she’s very pretty.”
Ember practically beamed. “She’s great, right?”
“She is,” I admitted hesitantly.
But not only was Delilah a Marksinna, she was one who could change her skin color, meaning she had an important bloodline. No one in a position of authority would look kindly on Ember messing with that.
“Just be careful,” I advised.