“I’ve failed you, Thetan. I’m deeply sorry.”

Her master pushed his abacus off to the side of his desk and leaned back in his chair. Hidden behind his portal of moonlight drifting down from the hole in his ceiling, Eden could not make out his expression. Maybe it was for the best – to not see his disappointment.

She didn’t dare take a seat herself. That would be far too much of a reward for the likes of her.

“You may apologize if you wish,” Thetan said, “though I do not yet know the level of your failure.”

Eden sank down onto her knees, folded her hands on the floor and bowed. “You will be gravely disappointed in this report.”

Even with eyes closed, she heard him stand. Her blood began roaring in her ears. Her heart drummed painfully as she sensed her master’s movement slip around the desk. His feet stopped close to her head. It wasn’t a matter of if he would strike her, only when.

“My Loon…”

Something touched the bottom of her chin, tilting her head upwards and out of the bow. It was his bamboo stick. She could take a couple hundred strikes from that. She hadn’t seen it in a while. It was used to punish them when they were younger.

“Do you remember this tool?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Why do you suppose I don’t use this on you anymore when you make a mistake?”

“It’s ineffective.”

“Yes. You outgrew it – even though you suffered through twice the amount of hits of any other member due to Roselle. What did I do once the cane was no longer teaching you anything?”

“You began using your hands or feet.”

“And does that hurt?”

“Very much.”

“And does the fact that it hurts change anything?”

Eden looked into his stoic face. She wasn’t familiar with this lesson. “No.”

The stick nicked her chin gently as he jerked it away. She expected a lot of options that involved pain to occur, but what she did not expect was for Thetan to flippantly toss the stick aside. It hit the stone wall and clattered to the floor. She watched it, unable to comprehend what the action meant.

A hand touched her chin, and she nearly flinched away. The touch was gentle. Thetan was never gentle. It somehow felt worse than being beaten.

“Little Loon… look at me.”

Somehow she managed to. But being so close to his face was one of the strangest and most frightening experiences she had ever had. Almost disturbingly intimate – like he was telling her a secret. Wrong. It felt so wrong to be eye to eye as he knelt. She longed to wilt, to crumple, and to fold back down on to her proper rung on the ladder. The one near the bottom.

“Do you remember the most important lesson I taught you?”

Quietly she whispered, “Pain just is.”

He nodded. “Pain is neither here nor there. There is no logic in it. You can’t reason with it. You can only accept it. You’ve learned to accept it, haven’t you? I see it in your eyes.”

“What do you see?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“The greatest wall I’ve ever built. If I struck you now, I’d only bruise myself. Do you think there is any point punching a wall that does not tremble from my blows – furthermore, a wall that I constructed with my own hands?”

Taken aback by the question, Eden moved her chin from his grip and stared at the floor instead. He had never thought twice about striking her before.

“An answer, Eden.”

“Logic would say no,” she replied evasively.

“And what do you say?”

Oh no. Cornered. She licked her lips and furrowed her brows in panic. “I would never question your decision, Thetan.”

A stare. A soft exhale. He stood up. “You’ve matured to be strong and wise, Loon. I do believe we’ve outgrown the need for physical punishment. I doubt it would do either of us any good anymore.”

Eden could not believe what she was hearing. He wasn’t going to punish her?  It was too good to be true. Another lesson would rear up and bite her if she wasn’t careful – never let your hopes get too high.

“Rise,” Thetan ordered, swinging around the desk and back to his chair. “Whatever news you have to share, we will iron the wrinkles out together. I am not under the illusion that this is an easy assignment, and I know the thought of failure weighs heavily on a mind such as yours. You are more skilled at punishing yourself than I could ever be. You’ve surpassed me. ”

Astonished with the turn of events, Eden pushed herself up and said, “Thank you, master.”

He nodded curtly. “Sit now, and start from the beginning.”

***

“Mangradora, you say?”

“Yes,” Eden said, nodding. She had finally sheered enough suspicion away to allow herself to sit, and was currently drawing a map for Thetan with his beautifully feathered pen. “There is an ice box here. That is where he keeps them. He maintains it with his magic. It is one of the only things he sustains with his power.”

Thetan laced his fingers together thoughtfully and looked up at the porthole in his ceiling. “What you discovered makes much sense. There have been fewer and fewer ice boxes to date, inaccessible even to me. In past years the king would extend his magic to the citizens in order to preserve them, but if he is truly sick as you say then he must be hoarding his magic in order to not exert himself.”

“I believe that to be the case,” Eden said. She leaned back and spun his pen between her fingers. “He wasn’t exactly… what I expected.”

Understatement of her life.

“Do elaborate.”

Eden sighed softly, thoughtfully. “He’s kind. I guess I expected him to be a little more…” she searched for the word, “self-righteous.”

“A kind person would not try to feed a young woman mangradora, Eden. If you hadn’t been trained as well as you were, he could have done what he pleased with you for the next hour or two while you remained blissfully comatose.”

“I doubt he would do anything to me,” she said absently.

“That is an incredibly reckless assumption,” Thetan said sharply. It was her first scolding in this entire conversation. “You’re eighteen, and in your prime. A person can estimate intelligence just by observing the things you look at and by the looks of this,” he jerked his chin at the map of the palace she had reconstructed perfectly on paper, “he no doubt knows you’re intelligent. You’re just lucky he didn’t see your face.”

The pen stopped twirling. “I’m actually… not that lucky.”

Thetan leaned forward, his fingers splaying on his desk. “Eden…” he rumbled.

“He saw me,” she admitted. “He gave chase after I fled from the kitchen and nearly cornered me on the roof again. He knocked my hood down with his magic and said something about…” she shook her head at the absurdity, “knowing my secret if I knew his.”

Seeing the rage festering in Thetan’s eyes, she kept talking to try and distract him from the fact that the king now knew her face. “I don’t know what secret he’s talking about. It could be something he said or something I saw. But it’s not like seeing Brontide is anything new to me; I’ve seen him hundreds of times and everything else he mentioned was just—”

“Enough!” he snapped, coming around the desk to her. She stood up quickly, startled, only to be truly startled when his hands cupped her face.

Thetan touched his forehead to hers. “How much did he see, Eden?”

She dared not move. “I—I don’t know. It was brief. Likely noth—”

“Did he see the freckles in your eyes?”

“Impossible,” she breathed. “I was too far away. He was never closer than ten feet after my face was revealed. I swear to you.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve given a greedy man a glimpse of something he’s never seen before. You’ve tempted him. Now you are Roselle’s rival, and he’ll spend precious moments thinking about you, weighing you on his scale when he makes his decision. What did I tell you – what did I teach you was the difference between you and Rose?”

Eden’s eyes fluttered down, submissive. “One exists. One doesn’t.”

“Which are you, Loon?”

Trick question. She pressed her lips together and kept quiet.

Thetan leaned back slightly. “Good answer.”

“He’ll not concern himself with me,” she whispered. “I promise you, master. I am nothing more than a collection of scattered scars and bitterness. I have nothing left that anyone wants.”

“Then why did he chase you?”

“I stole a secret of some sort.”

“So you do have something someone wants.”

Eden frowned, having no reply to that.

Thetan sighed, but still didn’t release her. It was starting to feel uncomfortable. She didn’t know where to look.

“You will not be seen again, do you understand me?”

“Yes master. Clearly.”

Seemingly satisfied, he nodded and pulled away. But Eden hadn’t finished detailing her mission, and her next words would anger him just as much – if not more – than that. There was no way around it. When Rosie returned, her torn dress would be evidence enough, and there would either be a wound or a scar on the Lotus’s hip depending on what the king had chosen to do.

Either was a black smudge across Eden’s record.

She bowed her head to his back. “I cut her.”

“Who?” Thetan asked immediately. His tone wavered with a warning that Eden knew meant he had already guessed.

“Rosie.”

Thetan’s lips pulled back across his teeth into a snarl and his eyes went wild and wide. “You didn’t dare, Loon. You dare mistreat my investm—”

“Eden!” came Rosie’s voice suddenly, overlapping with the bang of the door as she barged into Thetan’s office uninvited and without warning. She was either truly excited or truly protective because she broke that cardinal rule without even a backwards glance at its remains or Thetan’s face.

“Rose!” Eden said in relief, smiling as they clasped into a tight hug.

“You did it!” Roselle squealed, crushing her in the embrace so hard that Eden’s feet rose off the floor. “He asked to see me tomorrow!”

Eden attempted to talk through Rosie’s mane of platinum blond hair. “Really?”

“Yes! You did it you silver-tongued cheekster! I can’t believe it was so easy—”

“Rose,” Thetan cut in sternly. Eden could still hear the danger in his voice. “Are you hurt?”

The Lotus plopped her down onto her feet. “Oh no, I’m great! Eden just gave me a tiny little nick and the king used his magic to heal it. Look!”

She turned, grabbing a dangling piece of fabric from the tear in her dress and pulling it away so they could have a better look. Eden was already shrinking away from the deplorable scar she expected to see engraved into her friend’s skin…

But there was nothing. The tension in her chest released.

“No scar?” Thetan questioned.

“Nothing,” Roselle beamed. “Just a bit of heat and it was over in seconds. How did you know it would be so simple?” she asked Eden sweetly. There was a bit of teasing to the question. Eden kept a tight smile in place and gave her partner a look with her eyes that said, ‘I’ll kill you. Stop embellishing it.’

“So you cut Rose in order to redirect his attention?” Thetan clarified. He seemed to be calming rapidly seeing Rosie’s excitement and obvious delight.

Eden straightened herself. “Yes. He was chasing me so I had no choice. If I hadn’t, his focus would have remained solely on me. I cut her to distract him."

“How did you know he would care for my well-being?” Rosie asked.

Eden furrowed her brows a little and shook her head. “It’s not what we thought. It’s not that he’s heartless. It’s like he’s… adrift.”