Page 55 of The Black Table
“Is that clear?” my father asks. “Do you understand? Do you truly understand?”
I don’t answer. I look anywhere but him, around, at the massive expanse of this office, if it can even be called that, the platform and the massive desk, the pebbled glass of the windows, the way the light seems to warp around my father’s silhouette.
For a moment, I consider telling him.
Revealing the truth.
If this star student is a woman, there’s no way he’d encourage me to stay this close.
But as long as he doesn’t know…
“I have no arguments against it,” I say at last.
The truth—a version of it. I’ve learned this is the only way to address Luther Pendragon—litigious logic the only language he speaks.
“That’s right,” my father affirms. “You don’t.”
There’s nothing more to say. Both of us know it. I give the barest nod and turn, heat seething under the surface of my chest,anger, constriction, all of it unproductive, all of it needing to be banished and worked out of me through prayer or exercise or study.
Yet when I get to the door, it doesn’t open. Won’t open.
I stay there, waiting, at attention, as I hear my father make his way to his desk, settle in, and carefully press the locking mechanism.
With a sigh and a click, it opens again.
Freedom.
“I’ll be looking forward to you fencing Sainte-Odile,” my father’s voice says from behind me.
Or the closest to freedom I’ll ever know.
Once more, I have nothing to say.
So I leave. Nothing but echoes behind me, and no time to waste. Practice comes soon, and the captain of the team cannot be late.
I pick up the pace as I take my leave of the building, the chill wind like a whip at my skin.
I tug my coat collar up, its protection minimal, and try to turn my attentions to the next matter at hand: footwork drills and equipment maintenance. Practice spars and strategizing.
But I can’t master my own thoughts. Can’t look away from the stark truth of what faces me now. My father may not have said it in so many words, but he never has to. I took his meaning all the same.
Gwenna Vale is no longer simply a problem.
She’s my problem.
FIFTEEN
GWENNA
“And howareyou doing, Gwenna?”
Dr. Riggs peers at me from the tiny rectangle of my phone screen. It’s a wonder the WiFi even reaches down to my little library nook, but Caliburn seems to have top-of-the-line networking even if the vast majority of its systems are paper-based. I was half-hoping the call wouldn’t go through, half-hoping I’d have a good excuse not to show up to this “check-in” appointment.
But here we are.
I clutch my scarf in my hands, out of frame so he can’t see how tense I am. It was still there, undisturbed, waiting for me, when I returned to the library the next day. So I’ve mentally claimed the alcove as mine. Enough evidence that it won’t be disturbed, and neither will I.
“Fine,” I say. “Great.”
