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With everything going on this morning, I even forgot I had no breakfast. Wow. This doesn't happen often.

I spend over an hour in cafeteria, lunching, buying time as long as I can, refilling my glass of juice three times, pretending to choose and tasting different sorts of wine, which nobody stops me from tasting like parents at home usually do. I toy with the food on my plate and glare at the shamans who glare at me for eating for so long, but--my mentor never appears.

Worry swells on my chest.

Could Maricela do something to faer? But I don't know who to ask, so once people start crowding the cafeteria at dinnertime and the place becomes too noisy for the quietness I've got used to in Loretto's apartments, I quietly slip away through the garden bordering the terrace, plucking an orange from the tree on my way.

Whatever spell Loretto uses to lock the door of faer apartments, it is set to let me in and out anytime. I leave the orange on Loretto's desk, then wash, change my clothes, pick one of the textbooks on spell-casting I'm supposed to read, and return to the cool twilight loggia, which all apartments' doors on the second floor face. The sun begins to sink behind the horizon, pinkish light stretching long on the west, heavy clouds bruising the skies on the east. With the book open in my lap, I sit on the floor, cross-legged, the loggia railing behind by back, Loretto's door before me, growing concern inside me. Where the hell are you, Your Cocky Divinity?

Trying to distract myself from another hasty decision of rushing to the empress's quarters to find the answer to that, I flip through the pages. I promised Loretto not to go anywhere near Maricela's rooms, and I don't really wish to test my luck again. The textbook is full of runes, which are kinda fun and remind me of lace patterns my moms adorn the robes they sew.

Every rune works for shaping aura energy, the book says, giving magic different purpose and power: lock doors, melt ice, open portals... The problem is, you need to channel aura first. Fill your mind and body with magic, and then redirect it into a rune, it says. And my body is not made for magic. How unfair.

But I guess I could try drawing runes anyway, once I get the aura ring Ian promised me. What's the difference between performing magic with your hands or by using a charm for it, really? You can eat with a fork or your hands, no difference but etiquette someone made up a long time ago. And who defines etiquette? You can eat like a pig with a fork in your hands, too...

I can even ask Loretto to charge the ring's gem with aura properly, I realize, not by a drop of power as plainbloods usually get--enough to open a quick portal or boil a kettle, but not enough to do real magic, affect nature or people's emotions. I can ask if I dare tell Loretto I'm no shaman.

"Elisey!"

Startled by my own name, my head jerks up. I look around the loggia, but there's no one.

"Look down, dammit." Twisting around, I peer between the railings, down the narrow alley almost hidden between the Great Temple's wall and the grove. Jaya. She's alone, no Yaling I usually see her with, no mentors. And her expression is tense and morose, the lips pressed together. "Get down, I wanna talk."

"You wanna talk, you get up."

Her eyes flash angrily in the sun. "You're a dead man, Elisey."

I blink. "What do you mean?"

"I've heard my mentor talk to your mentor. They want you dead."

I freeze midbreath. This is not what I expected to hear from her. I didn't expect to hear from her today at all, but this is the worst kind of unexpected. Maybe one day I'll start believing I'm immortal if my life hangs by a thread every day, but today is not today. Shutting my textbook, I climb to my feet and hastily cross the loggia, taking the small winding stairs carved in the corner wall, which leads into the grove. The grove is enclosed by the Great Temple walls, which stand like a square of columns and arches and stones, like a giant patio, or an open atrium. Big enough to have a walk after lunch, but not enough to hide. I don't think it's a good place to talk, but Jaya doesn't seem to care.

Jaya is impatiently waiting, her fingers drumming over her arms crossed on her chest. I've spent almost two months among shamans now, but I still can't figure what kind of person Jaya is. Friendly? Sometimes, maybe. Cunning? Doubt it. Straightforward? Definitely. And emotions on her face seem to change every time you look at her, even if it is split seconds, as though she's holding onto too much in her head, wearing whatever mask people around her wear. Unnerving.

"They want you dead," she repeats, unblinking, as I stop under the trees in front of her. "I heard it myself."

My thoughts involuntarily travel back to the sight of Valto's dead body, and I wince inwardly at the memory of the dried blood on my hands. "Bullshit. I don't know about your mentor, Jaya, but mine is...not deadly." That much I've figured. Could she get it all wrong? "What exactly did you hear?"

Instead of answering, Jaya leans forward, peering into my eyes as if reading future in them, her features hardening. "You're not a shaman," she says suddenly.

Her words cover me with a sticky wave of alarm. "I am."

"Don't lie to me. My affinity with aura is empathy, remember? I can sense your evasiveness. Besides, your eyes shoot sideways when you lie, and you start rubbing your neck to draw attention from your face." She looks around, making sure nobody sees us, then grabs my elbow and pulls me into the bushes.

"Don't touch me!" I glance upwards, to the loggia, but there's no sign of Loretto still, so I follow Jaya, hoping we won't be talking too long to miss faer.

"Since when a plainblood is squeamish of touching?" Stopping under the shadow of the foliage, Jaya looks over me again, pensive. "I knew something was up with you, Elisey. Loretto taking a student for no reason? Valto dead? All the rumors about you and your weird behavior. Are you one of them? The insurgents who want to dethrone Empress Ixchel."

This time, I stay silent. No lie. No rubbing my neck. Nothing.

"Look, Elisey. I've been working hard to get a scholarship in Tik'al, I need to become important here, and I won't let you ruin my career," Jaya continues, her voice steadfast. "Do you think a new civil war between shamans and non-shamans will earn you a better life? If you stupidly believe that, go ask my grandfather what it was like back then, during the last war. People were cleaning blood from the streets! Literally. Piles of dead, on both sides."

I stare at her, listening, striving to stay mute, but it's hard. She speaks as though thinks she knows everything. But even Loretto doesn't know everything, and Jaya is not older than me--there's no deceit in her young face. She believes she has something to say? I do, too.

"You suppose I don't understand what war is?" I cross my arms over my chest to mirror her irreconcilable posture. "I'm not admitting anything, Jaya. I might know some insurgents, I might not, but if you ever lived a life of a plainblood, you'd know that people who aren't blessed with magical powers in Cabracan are no better than servants nowadays, the dregs of sorcerous society, working as guards or waiters or cleaners, the dirty jobs shamans never do themselves. Aurabloods get all the best in food and clothes and comfort, while we get what's left." We. I shouldn't have said that.

But Jaya doesn't comment on my choice of words, she only chuckles--cynically. "No, Elisey. It's you who doesn't know what it's like to be a dreg. I'm a more plainblood than you are in this. I grew up in Cabracan, not in Tik'al, and I was the only shaman in my school, bullied constantly because of my powers."

I blink, conflicted, my annoyance fading a fraction. Shamans usually sneer at plainbloods, but...does it work the other way around, too? "Why?" Everyone wants powers, why sneer?

"Why? Because I had no idea how to control my magic! Because I got my textbooks scorched during lessons, and started crying or got angry seemingly for no reason when I sensed a sad person nearby but couldn't even tell who it was. Children in my class could simply take their aura charms off, and the problem was solved, and I was cursed in their eyes." She pauses, a melancholy shine in her brown eyes. "And everyone at my school thought my grandpa was crazy, so it just proved the point of my cursed nature."

"Your grandpa"--I've heard only of one shaman who resides in Cabracan outside Tik'al--"is the crazed shaman who lives in the mansion on the outskirts? Who gets often lost in the streets, asking strangers what his own name is?"

"He has dementia, you moron. He's old, and not as powerful as our mentors so as to stay strong and healthy forever. But--he was in the Civil War, Elisey, and he still wakes up screaming of nightmares." She meets my eyes, her expression a resentful shadow. "I don't want us to wake up screaming too. My grandpa forgets things, but there are things he remembers. Just after the Civil War, when shamans won, plainbloods had no rights at all. No leaving Cabracan, not even with clearance. No magic, not even aura rings. Another war will throw us back for two hundred years, to where we started--all will be for nothing, is that what you want?"

"Of course not, but..." Shamans treat plainbloods like servants, true, but is it the whole truth? After my conversation with Loretto at the library, I'm not so sure.

I've never served anyone, really. And my family has never been considered poor. My moms' dress shop is popular, even disdainful shamans sometimes modestly praise their work; I've never had to go to sleep with my stomach left empty, always had enough gemcoins to pay for a book I needed or I toy I wanted. And shamans...Well, that's unfair that they don't clean the streets themselves, but they do other stuff as I've learned.

They keep the library with thousands of unique books and knowledge, like Loretto, safe. They cast the wards around Cabracan to protect our magic. I never knew all that until I came here. And isn't labeling all shamans tyrannical because the shaman empress is tyrannical just as unfair as when one shaman labels all plainbloods as bloodthirsty as my alleged ancestors once were? Loretto isn't tyrannical. I'm not bloodthirsty.

Now, I hate to admit, I can't even explain myself why I want Maricela's throne. Because it belonged to my ancestors? But it belonged to someone else before that. Because Kofi's father died when shamans refused to treat him? But a war wouldn't bring his father back, only paint the memory in blood.

Cale and Kofi always believed they could make the world better, and I somehow...went along. It was really more like a game to me when I was a kid, a game I could play with my big brothers. It seemed to have a beautiful meaning, a heroic purpose. But who am I to decide what is better for other people? For the entire world?

And who says a war inevitably drenched in blood and death is heroic? Hurting someone in order to save them later is just the opposite.

"Then what do you suggest, Jaya?" I ask, irritated by my own frustration. "The past is bad, the present is not much better, the future...might be worse." Maricela might allow plainbloods to use aura rings now, but she still orders everyone who tries to stand in her way killed. Even if she was a slave once, living under the oppression of old kings and queens, it doesn't give her the right to repeat the same mistakes. Why not teach us to use runes I just read about? Teach us to cast the wards, too. Use us as allies, not second-rate workers.

The evening wind playing with the collar of her shirt, Jaya thinks for a long moment before saying, "Our mentors start suspecting you've no powers, Elisey, which means the empress will soon know that, too, once she returns from her trips to the spirit world."

I'm about to open my mouth, then remember that I'm one of few people who she revealed her secret identity to. And I still don't know why.

"Perhaps you're still alive because she wants you for her leverage, waiting for the right moment to show your severed head on a spike to scare your people away. Perhaps she wants to start another war by that, to win again to prove her undying supremacy and take the scrapes of yours away. But if either way happens, the hell breaks loose."

"Now you almost sound like an insurgent yourself. Like you don't like Mari--" I catch myself. Nobody calls her that in public. "The empress, too."

Panic flickers across Jaya's previously confident face. At last. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. I'm not an empath, but I'm not heartless. I can hear you hesitate with your words." Looking around to make sure nobody's still around, I lower my voice and add, "What if someone else can become the new ruler? Who can change things. Without a war. Playing by the laws."

"Who?"

"Someone who wins the upcoming trials."

"The next in the rating is Tikhon, my mentor and the head councilor, who won't go against Empress Ixchel." I can see the realization dawning on her the next second, her pupils widening. "Loretto? No way can your mentor beat Ixchel."

I try to look composed, but I've always been bad at this, and my left foot starts drumming against the soft ground in rhythm with my spinning thoughts. "You say you listen to the rumors, and those say Loretto was taught by a shaman goddess. Or the First Blood, the oldest shaman alive, who Loretto ran from. Don't you think she taught faer a powerful trick or two before that?"

"Ran from? Nobody runs from a shaman to the city of shamans, Elisey! It's not like Loretto is hard to find here, is it? Ask anyone in Tik'al, and they'll point you at faer apartments." Jaya's lips tighten again at some thought of hers. "And you know what I've heard? I've heard the First Blood is also Ixchel's ancestor who once taught the empress, too. If anything, Loretto is their thrall, a secret weapon bound to serve, a plan B to be thrown into a fight and wasted without regret, not a rival. I've also heard Loretto already stood against Ixchel once when was a small and stupid student, for a lesson, and got rewarded with a terrible scar on faer thigh."

"There're no scars on Loretto's thighs."

Silence falls between us.

"I mean...I think there're no scars?"

After a moment, Jaya sighs. "Maybe. But scars can be healed or masked." She rests a hand on my shoulder, a gesture only a plainblood can find calming and reassuring. "I'm just asking you as a friend, Elisey, leave Tik'al. Now. Run, hide--I don't care. Save your life, and tell your people to back off to save theirs. We can't change shamans in a war, but we can make them want to change. I need to show everyone we all can live in peace, and that's why I'm here--to prove that a plainblood can belong to the shaman society just like a shaman can live side by side with magicless folks. But building stable peace takes time! It takes both sides talking, listening, teaching each other to accept, not judge. Do you know how hard it was for me to get my girlfriend who is not a shaman into Tik'al to visit me? But I managed it. Which mean my plan works, people are changing. Please, change your mind, too. I don't want to see my family hurt, and you don't look like a person who chooses bloodshed over reason, Elisey. Your aura is brighter than that."

"You just said I've no aura."

"I know. It's just a saying."

I don't know if she means it as a cheerful thing, but the light in her eyes seems genuine. I silently watch her take a step back, turn around, and start toward the alley, away from the grove and me without another word. I wonder if she is right. Talking and listening to each other in order to accept and bring peace sounds good--utopian, but still good. Yet if she's right about this, she's also right about Loretto being Maricela's puppet, and I don't believe that.

Don't want to believe.

Loretto hates Maricela. But should a puppet love its master? Or fear is enough to obey? After all, Loretto had plenty of time to find allies and weaken Ixchel's influence since fae came here from St. Daktalion, and has done nothing. Maybe Loretto has been standing up for me so far only because fae was ordered to do so.

Before disappearing between the trees, Jaya glances at me once again, a deep shadow falling over her face so I can't fully read it. "I consider us friends, Elisey, I do, but if you and your rebels destroy my career by starting another war, I'll destroy you. On that, I swear." She pauses, then lets out a stifled laugh. "Oh, and if you see Yaling and she invites you to her speakeasy, don't go. Her family sent her here to study, from Asian Enclave, for starting something like that there, too. It ended up with some obscene scandal. I'm not sure what it means, and I don't wanna know, but another scandal is the last thing you need, right?"

With that, she leaves me alone with my utopian thoughts.

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