Chapter 147: Take Your Performance Elsewhere

The last day at Jack’s house began at six in the morning with a mock exam.

Jack set it down in front of her without a word. Thirty pages. Three hours. Then he set an identical stack down in front of Daemus, who looked at it the way a man looks at the gallows.

"Begin," Jack said, and turned over an hourglass.

They worked at opposite ends of the dining table. Blair didn’t look up. Neither did Daemus. The only sounds in the house were pencils scratching, the hourglass hissing, and, every so often, Daemus muttering why under his breath at questions.

When the three hours were up, Jack collected both stacks, marked them in red ink at his desk, and handed them back with a fresh mock exam in the same motion.

Blair had scored ninety-eight. Jack had circled one answer and written sloppy in the margin.

Daemus had scored sixty-one. Jack had written improvement in the margin, which Daemus stared at for a long time, as if it might be a trick.

"Begin," Jack said again.

They did three more before lunch. By the fourth, Blair’s hand was cramping, and Daemus had his forehead pressed flat against the table between questions like he was trying to absorb the answers through his skull. Once, when his pencil snapped, Blair slid her spare across the table to him without looking up.

He took it without looking up, either.

It wasn’t much. But it wasn’t nothing.

They were halfway through the fifth exam when the front door burst open.

It slammed back against the wall so hard a picture frame fell off the hook. Cold air swept inside, and with it a tall figure in a long fur-lined coat, silhouetted dramatically against the afternoon sun.

"CLARICE!"

Blair dropped her pencil.

It was Beralt. The Wolf King stood in the doorway with his arms flung wide, his dark hair swept back, his chest heaving as if he had run the whole way from the mountains.

"Clarice!" he boomed. "My mate! My light! I have come to beg for your forgiveness!"

From the kitchen came a gasp. A very loud gasp that had clearly been practiced.

Clarice appeared in the kitchen doorway, one hand pressed flat to her chest. She had changed her dress. Blair was certain she had been wearing a different dress ten minutes ago.

"Beralt!" she cried. "After everything you said? After everything you did?"

"I was a fool! A stubborn old fool! I have not slept a single night since you left!"

"Not one?"

"Not ONE!"

They began to walk toward each other. Slowly. Much too slowly. With their arms outstretched, like two people in a movie running through a field in slow motion, except neither of them was actually running.

Halfway across the living room, Clarice stepped on one of Kael’s toy blocks and wobbled.

Beralt caught her by the elbows. Then, a second too late, as if he had just remembered the next line, he announced, "Can you ever forgive me, my darling?"

Clarice pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. "I... I forgive you!" she declared, and swooned backward into his arms. It was the least convincing faint Blair had ever seen.

And every few lines, Blair noticed, both of them glanced toward the dining table, as if to check that Daemus was watching.

Blair stared.

It was like watching a school play performed by children who had memorized their lines the night before and were now saying them as loudly as possible to make sure the back row could hear. She half expected someone to start clapping.

"DADDY!"

Kael came tearing out of the kitchen and flung himself at Beralt’s legs. Beralt scooped him up and hoisted him high over his head.

"My son!" he bellowed. "My most loyal son!"

He put an unmistakable emphasis on loyal.

At the dining table, Daemus didn’t look up from his exam. He turned a page.

Jack, who had been reading in the armchair, closed his book. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He took a slow, deep breath.

"Beralt," he said. "Clarice."

They both turned to look at him, still frozen in their embrace, Kael dangling over their heads.

"Take your performance elsewhere," Jack said. "My students have examinations on Monday."

Next, someone shot past Beralt and Clarice.

"Where is he?"

Luna. Daemus’s sister was flushed and breathless, her silver eyes wild. She was wearing a dress and full makeup, and her dark blue hair had been curled into perfect ringlets. She checked the living room. The kitchen. She yanked open the hall closet and looked inside. She stuck her head into the pantry.

"Where is he? Mom said he was here!"

"If you mean Prince Killian," Jack said, reopening his book, "he left yesterday."

Luna froze.

For a long moment, she didn’t move at all. Then, slowly, her bottom lip began to tremble. She turned and looked at her mother with an expression of total and complete betrayal.

"I may have been a little behind on the news," Clarice admitted.

Luna let out a wail of despair and collapsed face-first onto the couch.

Through all of it, Daemus and his father never looked at each other.

Not once. Beralt’s gaze swept the room and slid right over his eldest son as if he were a piece of furniture. And Daemus kept his eyes on his exam, his jaw tight, his pencil moving steadily across the page. Blair could feel the silence between them like a pressure in the air, thick enough to choke on.

Then Beralt’s eyes landed on her.

Blair’s stomach dropped.

He set Kael down and adjusted the lapels of his coat. The theatrical grin faded into something smoother, more careful. He crossed the room and stopped in front of the dining table, towering over her.

"Blair Willows," he said.

She shrank into her chair. "Y-yes, sir?"

"You saved my son’s life," Beralt said. His eyes didn’t flick toward Daemus, not even for a moment. "The pack does not forget a debt. I have given it a great deal of thought, and I have decided."

He smiled. It was a warm smile, a generous smile, but it didn’t quite reach his dark eyes.

"The Wintercrest pack will sponsor you."

The room went silent.

Daemus’s pencil stopped moving.

In the armchair, Jack slowly lowered his book.

And Clarice, still standing in the middle of the living room, went very still. For once, she wasn’t smiling at all.

"Your tuition," Beralt went on. "Your books. Your housing. Your protection. All of it, under the Wintercrest name." He spread his hands graciously. "From this day forward, Ms. Willows, you belong to our pack."