Page 43 of The Art of Exiley

“What if I don’t?” I breathe.

“Little Weed, why are you trying to provoke me? You need better survival instincts.” His silky words waft in the air between us, and his arms cage me against the desk, causing my pulse to quicken.

“I’m not scared of you,” I say, my voice sounding braver than I feel.

He takes one more step, removing the last of the distance between us. He’s so close I can smell him. Of course he smells amazing, like leather and spice and seduction. His eyes bore into mine, unapologetic and calculating. He leans toward me, and I stop breathing as he whispers in my ear, “You should be.”

I feel his breath on my skin with a heat that chills me. A muscle in his neck tightens as he swallows. The gust of his exhale blows a tendril of hair out from behind my ear, and he reaches toward my face as if to tuck it back, but then drops his hand and clenches it into a fist. I see confusion spark in his eyes before he turns and surges out of the room.

He’s out the door before I finally gasp air back into my lungs, my heart pounding so hard it might bruise my chest out of fear… and something else entirely as well.

11

Later when Hypatia comes to drag me to the hover park, I almost don’t go. As cool as hoverjousting sounds, I’m not here to have fun, and I was planning to flip through the anatomy book I’d been given in one of my classes this morning to see if there are any leads for what my next steps in looking for a cure for Grandfather should be. But then I remember Rafe telling me to stay away from Hypatia, and screw him, I’m gonna go learn to hoverjoust with my friend.

I follow Hypatia through the mists of the forest to where Georgie is waiting for us at the entrance to a clearing. Georgie’s holding something that looks a lot like a snowboard, and I rush over to examine it, my excitement rising. I love snowboarding. It’s something I’m actually good at, and—oh, this issomuch cooler than any snowboard. I feel my chest expand with appreciation as I take the hoverboard from her. Of all the things that I have seen since I came to this place—flying origami pigeons and the rearview of hot guys in breeches included—nothing holds a candle to this.

When we enter the clearing, there’s a large flat section with separate lanes, which Hypatia tells me is called a magna-mat. The rest of the area looks likean elaborate skate park built in and around the forest foliage with slopes and bridges and all kinds of obstacles.

I admire the hoverboard in my hands, eager to get my feet on it.

Georgie says, “It’s a great model. My mom got it for me as consolation for my difficulty in adjusting to moving here. It made me feel better for about a minute until I realized I couldn’t ride the thing without—careful! You’re gonna—”

But I’m already on the hoverboard and shooting up one of the ramps. There’s a subtle tension of magnetism that reverberates all around me with a soft but audible hum.

“Whenever I get on that thing, I end up spraining a part of my body and usually someone else’s body too. How are you so good at that?” Georgie calls.

“I’m used to snowboarding,” I reply as I subtly tilt the board to give it the lift it needs to whoosh through a tunnel, and then I easily shift pressure from one hip to the other to swerve through a hedge maze, Georgie, Hypatia, and everyone else now out of sight.

The board is incredibly intuitive. I play around, seeing what it can do and testing its limits. It can’t go more than a few feet off the magnetic surface, but it’ssosmooth.

For the first time in a while, my head is clear. I’m not thinking about my obligations to the Families, or how disappointed Michael will be when I can’t get into a guild, or the fear and humiliation of being stopped and searched by soldiers because a handsome jerk wants to bully me. I’m simply enjoyingbeing. I exit the maze and glide over a bridge. My hair comes loose from its tie and whips in my face, obscuring my vision and getting caught in my mouth. My lungs burn from the sting of the crisp air. As I do an alley-oop off the halfpipe, I hear cheers.

“By the Conductor! Look at her go!”

“She must have done this before—no novice is that good on a hover.”

When I finally slow to a stop in front of Georgie and Hypatia, quite a crowd has gathered. Drawing attention to myself certainly hadn’t been my intention, and it’s the last thing I need. But I don’t have time to worry about it with Georgie and Hypatia fussing over me.

“That was amazing!” Georgie gushes. “You need to teach me some of those tricks. Well, first you need to teach me how to balance and move in a straight line.”

We all laugh.

“You’ll for sure be recruited to your guild’s team after Quorum!” Hypatia’s hazel eyes glitter with excitement. “And then I’ll live vicariously through you.”

Hypatia will also be presenting at the upcoming Quorum as she’s recently come of age to join a guild, but she’d said her family won’t let her hoverjoust because of her health. I’m curious about her mystery illness, especially since sickness seems to be uncommon among the Makers with all their advanced medicine, but I assume that if she wants me to know about it, she’ll tell me eventually.

“Let’s see how you do with a lance,” Georgie says. “I can’t wait to see how you joust. You need to wear a helmet on the magna-mat though.”

The helmet she tosses me is shaped like it belongs on a knight, but it’s no shining armor. The cap is made of spidersilk padding, and the visor is fully transparent glace.

Hypatia grunts with effort as she hands me a lance. It’s longer than I am tall, and it’s heavy and awkward to hold. They set up a target for me in the center of one of the lanes on the magna-mat so I can practice with the lance before attempting an actual match against another person.

I might be good on a hoverboard, but I can barely hold the lance. I drop it on my first and second try. By my third, I make it across the mat still holding the lance, but it doesn’t get anywhere near the target.

After a few more fruitless attempts, I pull off my helmet, ready to give my lance arm a break. Hypatia seems captivated with something over my shoulder, so I turn to look.

Ah. At the edge of the clearing, a sweaty Simon Sanzio is doing shoulder rolls while holding dumbbells. Kaylie is coaching him, helping him isolate a specific muscle in his back.

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