Minx Morris knew how to get to us, and how to exploit our very own fears and desires against us. I was sure of that.

Of course, maybe sometimes he was mistaken. Why would Cypress accept to be taken hostage? Unless maybe because he would have loved to see that his relatives cared enough about him to rescue him. That would have been understandable.

However, like in a nightmare, or like one of those old legends where people stroke a deal with a demon, Minx knew what you wanted, but the distorted version of it. So, for example, I never considered for even the smallest moment to join him. I didn't want to be his right-hand-man, if anything because I've never desired power or to be greater than anyone else.

Even in my Heart Task, I had written in my essay that I desired for everyone to be equal. Perhaps if he'd paid more attention to us when he was our teacher, he would have noticed things like that.

But he was right about one thing -- the idea that an adult wanted my help, that a grown man saw me as talented, was something that had made me daze for about a second. It was one of my biggest desires, to be taken seriously by someone older than me. Someone who could erase the way Pablo looked at me, as if I was only good for getting money from the state and working at the market instead of him, and not as a human being.

And my Skill needed honing. The only person who had tried to teach me how to control it before was Minx Morris. So far, I had only tried it once, passing out and seeing a tree, which I guess was not the vision I should have seen. Your Skill works much better if you're a Blood Drinker, but something in my gut told me I wasn't ready to use Knowledge yet.

I'd been lost in my thoughts for about a minute, when Minx drew a weapon, a Katana.

"What?" he asked. "Were you expecting me to fight only with my Skill and my wit? It might have been enough to recruit you, but if you don't join me, you will die. And I can't let the fire do everything."

"I've never known you knew how to wield a Katana efficiently," Mira said, because even though all kind of weapons were thought, most people had an affinity for one or two at the most.

"I can wield a lot of different weapons," Minx said, his eyes glittering manically. "The only way to play a part is to learn how to act differently than yourself, and most of my disguises use weapons I'd never consider. After all, I could never stick to my favorite, and go out of character."

I unsheathed my sword. If Minx wanted to fence, he should have known he was about to fight one of the best.

Well, one of the best thirteen-year-olds. But it was still better than nothing.

"Jonathan," Mira said. "Let me handle this. You can't fight Minx. You're too inexperienced."

"That is the problem with you, Mira, and with most women," Minx replied. "When you have students. You baby them. I was worried at how those new-years would grow up. I have known for a long time how you've always babied Roman, and he's a terrible Speaker, worse than the rest of his people, because he can't even do it well."

Roman flushed a terrible shade of purple.

"Well," Matias pointed out. "We're all better than Jason, and he doesn't like Mira much. He's the only one who's never asked her for advice."

We all looked at him.

"What? It's true. He got the lowest grade in the Blood Tasks."

Minx moved, and pointed his katana straight at my arm before we could even notice. It wasn't fair, but I guessed the teacher was far beyond the comprehension of fair and unfair anymore. Besides, it was theatrical, and it was what he was going far.

"Jonathan!" Cypress shrieked.

I looked down at my sword arm. It was injured, and I was losing a lot of blood. With another strike, Minx could have cut off my arm from the rest of my body, but thankfully he didn't.

"Consider yourself warned," he said. "I do want you as my second-in-command, Jonathan. Your Skill is rare, and powerful, and, even if you refuse to use it for me, I happen to know how to trigger it since I've known your father before you and I've seen him in action. I can, however, cut pieces of you until you decide to come on my side."

"Gee, I wonder why I'd do that," I replied.

"Jonathan," Mira said, and her tone was harsher than Cypress'. "Get yourself to safety! I don't care if you have to run, run away! Now is not the time to die like martyrs. And bring Cypress with you."

"But..." Cypress started to say. He looked at me, and then at Mira, as if he couldn't decide where he'd rather be.

"Jonathan needs help with that arm," Mira said. "He's losing a lot of blood. The wound can become worse if he doesn't take care of it. When you've escorted him outside, you can go back to us."

While Minx was still waiting for his next move -- he apparently wasn't expecting his second-in-command to walk out the door with only one word from Mira, Cypress and I left.

"To hell with everything," I said in the aisle. "Let's find something to bandage my arm with and let's go back to help Mira and the others."

"And what if your wound festers?" Cypress asked. He didn't look particularly upset. I couldn't understand why. He liked fighting. He liked making himself useful.

"Then it was meant to happen," I replied hotly. "I'm nothing, nothing, without this place and without those people. I will not let Minx take control of everything. And maybe we can find a way to trigger my power. I'll give you the permission to do everything you think it would take, I trust you. And then I can ask the universe how to fight our former teacher."

Cypress turned to me.

"I'd hate to miss out on fighting Minx," he said. "But now that he's already let us go, we should leave him to Mira, Matias and Atticus. Roman too, if he can fight. We're needed elsewhere."

I knew how it pained him to say it. Cypress had already made his peace with bringing down Minx, or die trying. It's a weird thing to think about a thirteen-year-old, but it was how I saw Cypress -- he was already a Blood Drinker through and through and, unlike Matias who'd been forced, and me, who I had joined their world only about ten months before, he'd always been.

However, from his words, I realized he'd already came up with a different plan.

"And where are we needed?" I asked. "I realized this doesn't have anything to do with my arm."

"No," he said. "Though I still want somebody to take a look at it, I also want to look for my mother. We should stop her, whatever it takes. She's creating chaos, she was the one who set fire to the building. Somebody needs to be looking out for her, and see she doesn't do anything foolish."

I didn't like the way Cypress had said it, as if he was used to the thought of having an unstable mother, as if her betrayal had caused great suffering, but not the biggest surprise. I thought about Minx Morris. I thought about my father, who left me when I wasn't even born. I thought about my uncle, who couldn't take me in because he drank too much, and of Pablo, who'd pretended to be nice long enough to have the permission to take me in, and then he'd never been nice again.

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I wondered whether all adults were like that, and what my mother would have grown up to be like. I couldn't imagine her doing any of those things, but maybe that was only me.

While we were looking for Cypress' mother, we met Tori from the Court wandering the corridors.

"What are you doing here?" I asked her. I hoped I didn't sound too annoyed. My meaning was, 'more people to save'. But Tori was a member of the Court so she probably knew how to look after herself. It's just that she always looked pale and out of place, with an innocent sort of face, that made her look like a woman out of the legends my mother told, one of those frail, sickly maidens that heroes saved from the Creatures.

"I could ask you the same thing," she replied. "But I was simply going inside to help Mira, we've realized what must have happened to Bertha." Tori bit her lip. "We're not all... like that."

"That's great," Cypress said, and told her where she could find the others. Before she left, Tori made a make-shift bandage for my arm and told me the names of a few herbs I could find that would help the cut heal nicely.

"We'll look for them in the infirmary, if it hasn't burned down," I told Cypress. "Or later, in the village. But first, let's look for your mother."

He looked at my arm, sadly.

"Seriously," I said. "We have no time to waste."

We looked around the school, which wasn't easy since the fire was devastating everything. I looked in Cypress' eyes, and I read in them the same emotions I was feeling. Who knew if our school would have ever got back to the way it was before. Who knew which one of us would have lived to see it.

And was it really going to be the same way it was before, without Minx?

We came across a small room, a broom closet, really. I put one finger in front of my mouth, to warn Cypress to shush and not to make any noise. There was someone inside, I was almost sure. I thought I could hear somebody breathing.

I looked at Cypress, but he was green all-over. I realized he probably didn't like small spaces, but I didn't ask.

I opened the door wide, and a person came out, looking flustered, but only at first.

It was Cypress' mother. Like her son, she looked diminutive and that was the reason why she fit nicely in the closet. Her blond hair was in a mess, and her mouth snarled viciously.

"What..." I had trouble understanding what was going on. "What were you hiding for?"

It was a weak question, but it was all I could manage. Not having known a lot of adults in my life, I couldn't understand why Cypress' mother would want to wreak havoc in her son's school. And what was she gaining by fighting alongside Minx? Did she want to turn Blood Drinkers in a better race too? Or did she only wish for our destruction, and would side with everyone?

Was there anything in the whole world Cypress could have told her to make her side with us?

Finally, she replied to my first question, the only one I'd ask. I felt guilty all of a sudden. Wasn't my Skill supposed to be asking questions to the Universe and receiving the answer? What if all my questions were always going to be the lame ones no one is really interested in?

"I've been wounded," she grimaced, moving her gaze to her chest, where, in fact, there was a small smear of blood. However, it must have hurt her a lot.

I remembered what I'd learnt about her from my friend. She was blind. It was easy to tell, though, that all of her other senses were amplified. Just like a usual Blood Drinker, but with way more deadly agility to compensate.

"Who hurt you?" I asked.

"User, of the Court," she replied, wincing. "I don't believe you really care."

I did, in a way. I didn't like seeing people in pain, and I'd been wondering whether we could get her on our side without shedding too much blood. She was Cypress' mother, for heaven's sake.

"We don't," Cypress said, but it was too easy to see he was lying.

"Does your little friend know something about me, Cypress?" his mother asked him. "I can't believe you would have told someone like him private matters of our life."

"Like him? What do you mean?" Cypress was angry. "You think he's worth less than us because he's not a Macbeth? And maybe, at first, I shouldn't have told him about your accident, which I did, but are you under the impression that I shouldn't have told him who was trying to burn down the school, while we were trying to survive the fire?"

"It's none of his business," she replied. "And you should have known better, though I have come to except nothing from you. My issue with your friend is not with his blood, I am not aware whether his family is influential in Tallya, where he's from. But even I had other standards for you, other than to befriend the inexperienced foreign student who joined this school only because he heard his estranged father used to be a Blood Drinker? Yes, people talk."

Cypress' cheeks flushed, and for once, I wished his mother would go back to being half-dead from her wound more quickly. But then I swallowed, and I tried to think it wouldn't have been the best for my friend if she'd died.

"Get out of the way," I said. "And we won't report you to anyone."

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you implying that you'll let me go pitily instead of putting up a fight? Do you think I would let you go? I don't understand why Cypress is still in the way. I don't care much what he does as of now, but if you get out, I will get to Mira and finish setting this place on fire."

I thought about what she would do to Mira if she would ever get to her, and blood started boiling in my veins. I had finally realized that I knew a decent adult who would have never done the things my father, Cypress' mother, Minx and Pablo had done.

And that person was Mira.

"Why are you so set on burning this school down anyway?" I asked, unable to help myself. "It's not like it changes things for you, if people learn, even if you don't agree with the method. Is it because you would like to go back in time and go back to school yourself, so you learn more than you ever did, and don't make a mistake anymore when you're out hunting a Creature with your partner?"

Her face became a mask of pure anger, and even Cypress recoiled.

I decided to think about that later, even though it had made my chest hurt, and looked at my sword arm. It was heavily injured.

I closed my eyes, and it was like I could hear Pablo's voice inside my mind. It said, 'I won't go easy on you. If you wanted me to go easy on you, you wouldn't have asked.' It was how I had learned to fight with the left hand.

I unsheathed my sword.

Cypress said, "Don't, Jonathan, your arm is too injured."

But I quickly grabbed the hilt with my left hand. Cypress' mother had understood that the sword had changed its placing, and she gave me a determined look.

Good. I didn't want to take her by surprise. It was what cowards did. I simply wanted to back her into a corner, and hope that, unlike Minx, she hadn't mastered the art of the katana.

Or that whatever her weapon was, she didn't have it with her.

I was obviously wrong. As soon as I tried, she took out a knife from the waistband of her trousers. She put it close enough to my throat that I could see it had some weird symbols carved into it.

"Are you staring?" she asked. "I should have known. You haven't been brought up like a real Blood Drinker. Those symbols you see carved here are letters from the old Megleni alphabet. Everyone chooses the letters they feel they represent them best, so I chose Resh, for spiritual guidance, and Tsade for righteousness."

I swallowed. "They're the perfect choices for you."

"This knife," she continued as if she hadn't heard me. "Is an athame. Blood Drinkers used to have them as preferred weapon in ancient times, before we evolved and everyone chose the weapons they liked best. But word on the street is that to dissolve a Creature, this knife is still the very best."

"Obviously," she added, grazing the skin of my throat with the point, "It works on humans as well, just like any regular weapon and any regular knife."

"Stop," Cypress was visibly upset. "Mother. Don't kill Jonathan. Ask me to go out again, and I will. Both of us will."

She laughed at him, and called him a coward.

Seeing as this was her reply, and it was negative, Cypress took his weapon of choice and fired his gun at his mother's leg.

Mira and Minx had tried to teach us a bit about every weapon and I knew how guns worked. A little. I wasn't very good at using anything that wasn't a sword. But even I knew that the bullet had barely grazed his mother's leg and that no serious injury would follow.

However, Cypress' mother was genuinely surprised, as if she'd never expected anything like that. And I do amit that I wasn't expecting it either, especially because the bottom line was simple: he'd done it to protect me.

While she curled on the floor, exhausted, I went to Cypress.

"Let's not talk about it," he said, stiff-lipped. "And don't mention it to anyone."

I nodded. I would have liked to talk about his bravery, but I knew he was withdrawn and didn't like to have all eyes on him. Now, if we'd told the whole Court and all our classmates that he'd shot his own mother to save me, that was something that would have gotten him at least a few stares.

"Got it," I replied. "What do we do, now?"

"We should probably leave," he said.

"What?" I asked, in a high-pitched voice. "You just shot your mother because you didn't want to leave!"

"Well," he still looked green-ish. "I didn't want to leave her alone and unarmed to try and murder Mira while we left. Now she'll be out for a while. But we must go out, because the Court has already left the building."

I nodded. "We should tell someone from the Court about her, so that she can face justice. I was thinking about User, who seems like a good man."

Cypress agreed. "We should also get someone to see your arm."

While we were leaving, I looked behind me to see the whole school engulfed in flames, and my heart couldn't help but break in a milion pieces at the idea that we were leaving Mira, Roman, Matias and Atticus behind.