Page 7 of Mystic Wonderful

My dad was a Rift Walker. He died before I was born.

That night, lying in his stiff new bunk, the wall above it bare, and set to stay that way, because he’d crammed his rolled-up posters deep in the bottom of his new footlocker, Francis blinked stinging eyes against the dark and thought of what he should have said at dinner.

My brothers died in service. But I’m not going to. I joined the Walkers, and I was second, right behind Rose. I know I look young, and too soft; I know I have a baby face. But I’m strong, and I’m smart, and I’m a good shot. I won’t let you down.

Instead, he’d stuttered, and blushed, and stared like an idiot child. Starstruck and adoring.

Tris hadn’t spoken to him for the rest of the meal, and he’d left when he was finished eating, without saying farewell.

Never meet your heroes. That was what people said, wasn’t it?

But what had he expected? That they would strike up an immediate rapport?

Francis had read the magazines, had trolled the gossip sites: he knew that Tris was stern, and unforgiving. It was honestly part of the long-distance appeal.

Tonight had been a wake-up call. One he’d needed. He hadn’t joined up to meet a celebrity crush. He was here to serve; to save lives, and battle back the forces of heaven and hell that threatened humanity.

He had a job to do.

And if he proved that he wasn’t a blushing moron to Tris Mayweather in the process, so be it.

Francis rolled over, closed his eyes, and fell asleep walking through a mental inventory of the weapons he’d carry tomorrow on his first op as a Golden Knight.

iii.

Leave it to Rose to turn everything upside down.

They returned to base with a conduit in tow: a pre-teen girl with pale hair, and huge, glowing blue eyes. One who quite willingly and quietly allowed herself to be cuffed, collared, and led off to a lead-lined cell.

Captain Bedlam, her face a thunderhead, pulled Rose and du Lac – Lance, none of them stood on ceremony, among the Knights – into her office, and Francis could hear the shouting before the door had latched shut.

He winced in sympathy.

“Come on.” Gavin clapped him on the shoulder. “She can shout forever. We might as well clean up.”

Tris already walked ahead of them, his stride as purposeful and ground-eating as it had been in the field – save for when he moved wraith-quiet, up on his toes, sweeping down the stairwells they’d taken to reach the battling conduits.

Save bringing a conduit back to base, Francis thought it had been a successful mission, and he was grateful to not be on the receiving end of Bedlam’s ire.

He followed his new teammates – his fellow Knights, he thought, still with the head-rush ofI’m a Knight now– down to the locker room.

“You’re friends with her, right?” Gavin asked him as they pushed through the swinging door.

Tris had arrived several paces ahead, and went straight to a bench in front of the lockers, dumping his gear into tidy piles, Francis noticed, before he forced his gaze away. No need to give himself away, especially not in front of Gavin, who was appearing to be the sort of jovial, good-time guy his magazine spreads had suggested. His sandy hair stood up in sweat-damp tufts from his helmet, and his handsomeness was of the sharp-featured, lazy-grinning kind. The sort of guy who could meet a stranger and slide easily into a camaraderie, the sort who seemed to already know all your secrets.

“Rose?” Francis asked, choosing a bench well away from Tris and starting on his own buckles and belts. “Yeah, we went through training together.”

“Right, right.” Gavin sat down on the bench opposite and began unlacing his boots. He had an easy, almost negligent way of moving that made him seem, despite quick, sure gestures, lazy. Effortless, maybe. “Is she always like that?”

“Like what?” He bit back a grin when Gavin huffed in annoyance. Gavin, he thought, might turn out to be someone it was fun to play dumb with.

“Well, she disobeyed orders, for one. Thought Lance was gonna have a fucking heart attack.”

Francis nodded as he laid his holsters out beside him.

“And she just…” Gavin made a sequence of hand gestures that conveyed Rose’s knife-wielding, spinning menace quite well.

“Did you think she graduated top of our class for nothing?”

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