Dad set his enormous crossbow on the ground and vaulted off the platform, his burly hands in fists. “Briar Rose Mattas, you— I can’t— You just ran right into my line of—”
“Commander Mattas!” A dark-haired woman approached from the doorway, her brow wrinkled. “You let a child use the mage track on the hardest setting? One misstep, and she could have been knocked unconscious. Or worse!” She stopped beside the track where we stood, her hands on her hips. “All due respect, of course,” she added stiffly. “But what were you thinking?”
“She—” Dad looked from the woman to me, his eyes flashing. “She didn’t—”
“I’m not a child!” I drew myself up to my full height. I was shorter than Dad, but even at thirteen, I was almost as tall as this lady.
“Right. She’s not a child.” Dad shook his head and rubbed his beard, looking more bemused than angry now. “I mean, she’s my child. Raven, this is Briar Rose. You haven’t officially met since Zel took down the Crimson Blight, so here you are. She’s my daughter.”
“Bri,” I mumbled, unable to resist, but neither of them acknowledged the correction.
“Mm.” Raven eyed me, then turned back to my dad. “Tell me again why you set it to the hardest setting?”
There it was again. The hardest setting. I liked the sound of that.
“I was going to be the one using it. To show her.” Dad coughed. “And then she wanted to try using a bow herself. And, ah, I didn’t see the harm …”
“Uh-huh.”
Dad plucked my bolts from the track beside the two downed, metal mages and handed them to me, his reproachful frown at odds with the slight glimmer of humor in his eyes. “Put the gear away, kid. And stop smiling. You’re in trouble.”
I hung my head apologetically as I carried the bows and bolts back to the racks where we’d found them, probably looking as dramatic as my twin sister Alba. If only the emotional act worked as well for me as it did for her. But while Alba got her way about everything else, at least I had Dad.
When I returned, my father beckoned me to follow them to the door.
I dragged my feet as we left. It would have been nice to run the track just once more. Was that truly the hardest setting? Maybe Dad would know ways to make it harder.
It would be downright painful to go back to our dim, little room in the Sentinels’ protective custody now that I knew this training hall was just on the other side of the palace.
I hoped we wouldn’t have to live at the palace much longer, but there was no telling when Prince Estevan would be able to get the mage regulations passed, or when the Asylian public would calm down enough to let us move back into our villa without another uproar over Mom’s dangerously absorbent power.
Dad glanced back at the downed mages then clapped Raven on the shoulder as they went through the door. “That was a terrible idea,” he whispered to her, barely loud enough for me to hear. “But did you see her? That’s my girl.”
Chapter 2
The dim, chalk-scented room we entered a month later resembled a dark mountain cave, or what I imagined a mountain cave would be like. The Sentinels team of instructors had carved jagged handholds into the rough, gray stones that lined the walls and ceiling. My feet bounced on the mat-covered floor as Dad and I approached the wall.
A small luminous in the corner provided barely enough light to see the holds. I’d have to go mainly by feel. My specialty. Thanks to Mom’s training, I was no stranger to climbing at night.
I ran my fingers over the nearest hold, itching to get started. Maybe once I’d shown Dad I could handle rough, rocky terrain like that in the Badlands, he’d support my plan to become a Sentinel like him.
“The trick is to stay relaxed,” Dad said over my shoulder. “Don’t tense up your arms, or your strength will wane too quickly.”
“Relaxed. Got it.” I gripped the first hold then reached as high as I could to fix my fingers on a second hold. “What do I do with my feet?”
“You actually need me to answer that?”
I laughed and jumped onto the wall, my feet clinging to the rocky handholds near the floor. “Just trying to be a good student.” I pushed off with my legs and shot upward, releasing my first handhold and snagging