Darkness had fallen fully by the time that the Administrator’s verdict had been passed. Faye had no intention of wandering the streets alone, nor of sleeping outside again without her blanket — which she’d left in the house that Arran and the others shared anyway.

She would have to wait for them to emerge from the Hall. She wasn’t sure how bad their punishment would be. Suspension sounded annoying, but it wasn’t permanent, and she hoped that they wouldn’t take it out on her. It was her fault they were being punished, after all.

For a moment, Faye leaned against the low wall surrounding the Guild Hall grounds. She closed her eyes and pictured her mother. That moment inside had come at her cold, and she flushed with guilt at realising how long it had been since she’d really thought about her.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, unbidden.

She would normally call her mum at times like this. When things had been tough at work. When a competition had been really hard that day, or even when university had felt too overwhelming. For years, her mother had still been a positive force in her life, a solid rock. And now…

With everything that had been happening, thoughts of home had come few and far between. As soon as she started thinking about everyone at home, though, she couldn’t stop.

The guilt ate at her. A solid lump in her throat formed and wouldn’t budge, no matter how much she tried to ignore it.

She eventually let the tears fall, silently. She tried to look around the square in front of the Guild Hall to make sure no one would appear and wonder why she was crying. The thought that people would see it and assume she was upset over being kicked out annoyed her.

She thought of her friends, how they would all react to being here. They would probably all relish the chance to live in a medieval world.

She shivered as she looked up to the unfamiliar stars.

I’m not sure I’m relishing my experience so far. Without Gavan’s magic, I would still be in pain.

The doors to the Hall didn’t creak, but the sound of the latch unhooking and slapping against the thick wooden beams was definitely audible enough in the quiet evening air for Faye to know to wipe the remainder of her tears away and stand, waiting for whoever left the building next.

Arran, Ailith, and Gavan left the Hall together. Arran strode forward, his steps angry, his fists clenched. Gavan was as quiet as usual, but he sported a furious scowl. Ailith, on the other hand, was almost cheerful.

“Faye!” she called out. “Glad you waited. I wasn’t sure if you heard me.”

“I didn’t,” Faye called, “but I wasn’t in the mood to go wandering on my own, if I’m honest with you.”

“You can always be honest with us,” Arran said. The frankness of his words was somewhat at odds with his clear anger. He must have noticed something in her expression. He took a breath and tried again. “I’m sorry. What I mean is, I hope you’ll consider us allies.”

Ailith pushed Arran aside with her shoulder. She moved forward and clasped Faye on both shoulders. “Pah, ignore the idiot. We’re your friends, Faye. Don’t forget it. If you need us, we’ll be there. You were there for us.”

Faye blinked rapidly. She didn’t want Ailith to see her tears. The big woman smiled crookedly, didn’t say anything, and then crushed Faye into her chest for a bear hug.

“Thank you,” Faye mumbled around Ailith’s armour. “But this really hurts.”

Ailith let her go, and then draped a heavy hand over her shoulders and began walking.

“Now, let’s go home and get something to eat. I’m famished.”

The door to the Hall opened once more, and a voice called out. “Pathetic, really. You all deserved to be completely stripped of your status.”

Ailith stopped. Faye heard her sigh.

Arran had spun around at the words, bristling. Faye knew that Rían was just a teenager given too much power at too early in his life to be able to deal with it properly… but boy, she wished he’d shut the hell up.

“Look, little lordling, you may think that your family—”

“My family has nothing to do with it,” Rían spat.

Which means it has everything to do with it, Faye thought.

“Everyone knows the great An Bradáin name, of course,” Arran went on, unheeding. “But you’re not your father, your mother, or your grandparents. You’re just some snotty little brat who thinks he’s all that because he recently crested.”

Faye’s eyebrows rose dramatically. She wondered what kind of history the pair had.

Ailith placed a hand on Arran’s shoulder, somewhat carefully, but the clap of armour against armour was loud.

“That’s enough, let’s go.”

“Oh, Faye…” Rían called out, as if he’d just remembered something. “I recall the Administrator saying something about forgetting to tell you something else.”

Faye tensed. Now what?

Before he could gloat over what he’d heard, the doors opened once more. The Administrator herself walked through them. The grand tome she had held inside was missing. In its place, she carried what Faye could only think of as a cane. It was slender, smooth and capped with metal. The Administrator didn’t use it for support as she walked but held it loosely in her left hand.

“Ah, good. You’re still close by,” she said. “This won’t take long, then. Faye Weaver, it is my understanding that you are in possession of a sword.”

Faye’s tense muscles went rigid. Her stomach dropped, and her heart boomed, she heard rushing in her ears. Suddenly, she knew what was coming — a premonition settled on her like a second skin.

“Unfortunately, unclassed individuals are not allowed to carry weapons throughout the town. I am going to have to confiscate it, for safety of course.”

She knew it.

But then, her muscles relaxed, and her belly grew full of fire instead of an empty sense of dread. Fearing the words was enough to make her sick, but actually hearing them made her want to fight.

“It’s my sword. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. If you don’t want me carrying it around the town, that’s fine. You won’t be taking it from me.”

The Administrator cocked her head a little. “You misunderstand me. This is not a request.”

Faye stepped forward. “I’ve already told you what my answer is. I don’t care what you request or tell me.”

Then, the woman raised her right hand and if to grab something from a shelf, and Faye’s training sword appeared as if from nowhere. Faye would have recognised it anywhere. She felt the fire in her veins ignite.

“Give that back.”

“No.” The Administrator’s eyes flashed. “I told you that you misunderstood me. Let me be clearer, this time. I have confiscated this weapon. You are not permitted to own it.”

Faye couldn’t help but lay a hand on the sabre in its scabbard on her hip. The Administrator’s gaze lowered to it. She moved her cane a fraction of an inch, but Faye had already unbuckled it and tossed it, underhand, toward Arran. He caught it without looking.

“Don’t worry, that one was a loan.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded. It seemed that she would follow her rules to the letter. The sabre wasn’t Faye’s, so she wouldn’t take it. She watched as the Administrator lifted her sword and seemingly put it into thin air, where it disappeared as if into an invisible cupboard.

“I think I’ll need a receipt for that,” Faye mused. “Do you have any paper in that magical storage of yours?”

“A receipt?”

“Yes, you took my sword. I want proof that you took it, written proof.”

The Administrator laughed quietly. “What a strange young girl.” Then she turned and vanished back inside the doors of the Adventurer’s Guild.

Not wanting to spend another moment seeing the expression of glee on Rían’s face, Faye turned marched away. Her three friends clustered around her as she went. Each one of them muttering promises under their breath that she could only half hear but wasn’t paying any attention to anyway.

She was only thinking about getting strong enough to stop things like this ever happening to her again. She didn’t care what it took. She hated being this weak.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Arran and Ailith both told her that she’d make it. One day she’d be crested, and she would have the same rights as everyone else.

She nodded along to their words. Wondering if that would be enough. What if someone stronger comes along? There’s always someone stronger that can force you to do something you don’t want to do. She didn’t want to be trampled under the boots of the strong.

Pushing those dark thoughts aside, she followed the others back to their home.

The fire in the hearth crackled merrily, and Faye stared into its depths without really looking. There was something mesmerising about flames. The way they danced as if alive was intriguing. You could never really guess what they would do next.

“What am I going to do?” she asked the flames. “I can’t just stay in the town for years.”

“It’s not that bad here,” Arran said. He was sitting by the table, rolling his mug along its curved edge, watching the wine slosh from side to side. “You might grow to like it, even.”

“They took my sword.”

“Ahh, they’ll give it back. If you’re careful, you’ll get a combat class and you’ll be allowed better equipment.” Ailith was preparing some food at the kitchen bench, but she was happy to chop and talk at the same time. “Don’t worry about it, for now.”

Faye scowled at the flames. She had to worry about it. If she didn’t, then it would take years of living in order to be classed as an adult. And until then, people would treat her as if she had an inability to learn and develop — or that she was a lazy coward.

No.

“I can’t stay level three forever,” she said. She didn’t look at the others, but she felt the way they cringed and heard the soft groans Arran and Ailith let out. Gavan seemed to take voicing her level a little better than the others, though she was certain he was as perturbed as they were.

Just then, a thought that had been floating at the back of her mind popped to the forefront.

“Wait, Gavan…” she said, turning to the mage. He was, as usual, reading a book. This one was a thin, tall, tome that looked as if someone had given a pamphlet a hard back cover. “I don’t have a sword to train my sword skills… but what about magic? That doesn’t need anything, right?”

The adventurers shared a significant glance. She had no idea what they were thinking but that almost didn’t matter. Gavan looked at Arran again, lightly shrugging his shoulders.

Arran sighed. “It’s not quite that easy.”

Faye narrowed her eyes. “Why’s that?”

“We’ve been forbidden from training you.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

The fire had burned low hours before, but none of them wanted to get up and put more logs on lest they disturb the sleep of their newest companion. Their voices were low, unhurried as they discussed the events of the day.

“It’s so hard to remember she’s unclassed.”

“She doesn’t act unclassed. There are plenty of crested that could stand to learn something from her, I’d wager.”

Arran was still swirling his wine in his mug. “True.”

“A good addition to the team,” came the low words of the mage. “We should train her.”

“Ahh, you’re only saying that because you want her to be a healer.”

The mage shrugged. “We always need more healers.”

The embers of the fire popped. They paused a moment, waiting to see if the sleeping woman was disturbed.

She slept on, unaware.

“No, we won’t force her down a path. She will walk her own, just as we all did.”

“Speak for yourselves.”

The trio quietly chuckled. It was an old argument, well-trodden.

“They don’t get it, do they?” the woman said. “They don’t see how different she is.”

“Mmm. No. Not helped by that hot-headed idiot, either.”

“Frustrating.”

“Eh, he has some reason,” the woman said, with a small laugh. “She insulted him when she first arrived.”

“Did she now? Good for her. Would do him some good, too, I would think.”

“Causing problems is good?”

“Of course it is! It’s that spoiled brat.”

“Careful, he’s a fully-fledged member now.”

“Where did she come from?” the mage asked, quietly, a minute later. The others paused. Each of them looked at the sleeping form of the young woman who had dropped into their lives from only the gods knew where.

“Why aren’t the higher ups asking that question?”

“Who knows what they’re thinking?”

The trio fell silent. Each of them absorbed in their own thoughts. They each fell asleep downstairs, that night, keeping their newest friend company.

The office door closed firmly in its frame and as it closed a flare of light around the edges of the wooden frame told the occupants of the room that the privacy ward had activated.

Behind a large desk, a man sat back with his boots on the table. As he leaned back in his chair, he looked out of the window to the side of the room.

The woman who had closed the door set her cane down on the edge of the desk and took a seat of her own. She sighed.

“She has no mental weakness.”

“She must do! She’s over twenty years old and hasn’t even received a class. That’s unheard of.”

“Normally,” the woman said. “I would agree. But there’s something bothering me.”

“When isn’t there?”

“Where did she come from?”

The man took his boots off the desk and sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He picked something off the desk surface and held it up, leaning back once more.

“One of our recall stones.”

“Really?”

“Mmm, yes. Apparently.”

“How did she get her hands on one?”

“The Hells if I know, there are none missing. Where could she have gotten her hands on one but here? I don’t know every unclassed in the town, she could have been amongst them for all we know.”

“I do know every unclassed, uncrested, and crested in this town,” the woman replied, drily. “She did not exist until a few days ago.”

They both mused in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, the woman stirred.

“What about the Mountain Castle?” she asked.

The man’s expression darkened. “Mmhmm. It’s been too long, hasn’t it? I was thinking about that earlier as well.”

“It has. We will have to say something,” she acknowledged, but she frowned. “But, I meant, what if that’s where she got the recall stone?”

“Ah,” he replied.

“Yes, ‘ah’,” she repeated. The stone, and therefore the girl, had clearly come from their own stores. And only one stone was still missing… except that they knew exactly where it should be.

One of the youngest crested in Lóthaven grunted as he moved through strike after strike. His sword whipped from one position to another fast enough to cut a falling leaf.

He knew because he’d trained himself until he could cut one without fail.

But he wasn’t cutting leaves today. He was sparring against his servant. The man was good, very good, but the youth always made sure to defeat the man before the end of a session.

As he whirled around to follow the servant’s footsteps, doggedly ensuring he kept the space advantage in the sparring area, he caught sight of two people watching his progress. His steps faltered.

The servant wasn’t one to let mistakes go unpunished. He stepped into the gap and slammed the pommel of his sword into his master’s face.

The youth grunted and stepped back. Another loss for tonight.

Turning to his parents, he bowed stiffly.

“You were at the Guild.”

It wasn’t a question. He nodded anyway.

“Were we not clear?”

It wasn’t a question they expected an answer to. He said nothing.

“Perhaps not.”

He shivered. Sweat, that had nothing to do with the intense midnight sparring, dripped down his spine.

“Another warning will not be needed. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Mother. Yes, Father,” he whispered. He had bowed his head, lowering his gaze until he stared at his feet.

A few minutes passed before he felt confident enough to raise his head.

The servant’s hand fell on his shoulder. He stiffened in rage.

Spinning and unsheathing his sword in a smooth motion, he slammed the pommel into the man’s solar plexus — the soft part of the chest. An explosion of breath left the manservant’s lungs, and he dropped to the floor. The young man sniffed, turned on his heel, and left the sparring area.

Though the young master of the family prided himself on his powers of observation, he never caught the way his servant’s lips curved into a smile.