The tension that settled over the room after Lilly spoke was like a blister: agitated, red, and swollen. One poke and the wound would burst into a disgusting mess.

There was quiet and there wasn't quiet; no one spoke and yet her ears were roaring, her heart thundered, she ground her teeth together. She waited for Stevia to burn her alive or to send monsters stampeding into existence, for something, anything. After a slow, syrup-thick ten seconds, Stevia nodded and said, "Everyone out. Except for Lilly and Max."

There was a moment of stunned silence, after which Stevia roared, "OUT!" and the kids scurried from the room like cockroaches running from light, muttering horrified whispers as they went. Lilly glanced at Max. For the first time that day, she saw raw discomfort written all over him. His brows were furrowed, a hand was positioned on his bloody chin, his chest rose and fell with his wretched breaths...based on the way Max was looking at her, Lilly figured she was a sporting a similar disposition.  

Stevia crossed the room to one of the supply closets, opened it to reveal rows of glittering weapons on the glossy black walls—tomahawks, curved blades with red hilts, katanas, double-edged swords—and said simply, "Make it a fair fight," before picking one of the curved blades and bringing it back to Lilly.

Lilly couldn't quite catch her breath.

"I can't," she said, at the same time Max gasped, "She just tried to rip my head off and you're trusting her with a sword? She'll kill me!"

"He's right, I'll kill him," Lilly replied with none of the anger before. Fear steeped in her voice. She weighed the sword in her hand...it was heavy and the hilt was cold, slightly too big for her hands. She could see herself reflected in it, flushed and sweat-soaked. 

"Unlike my fellow instructors, I don't mind bending the rules a little. Kill each other for all I care." 

"You can't be serious," Max griped, raking a hand through his hair. He bit his bloody bottom lip. "Tell me you're not serious."

"Private Ci, get a tight grip on that hilt. Swing using your arms, but move using your wrists, not the muscles in your hands." 

"I think she's serious," Lilly breathed. "Instructor..."

Stevia spread her hands out in front of her. "Thirty seconds. We call this flash-fighting here in Elliott Way. Whoever loses gets their earlobe cut off."

Fire burst forth like a radiant beacon from her hands, and numbers began to form from the flames. 30, the numbers read in twisting red shapes. 29...

Max thrust his clenched fists forward, and the ground beneath Lilly's feet shifted. Mud gurgled out from the ground beneath her boots, pooled around her ankles, and sloshed up to her calves. Lilly jerked to the side. The mud was cold and thick, no doubt an inhibitor to keep her from charging at him again. 

She looked up at Max and said, exasperated, "I'm annoyed." 

"Good," Max snapped. "Give up."

Oh, she was so not getting her earlobe cut off because she lost a fight with this wasp.

Lilly flicked her gaze towards the flames flashing numbers above their heads: 20, 19...

She dug her sword into the quickly hardening mud and pressed it to the ground, using its momentum to wrench herself free. One leg came free, then the other. She jerked the sword out of the mud and raised it above her head.

Max sent an armada of branches from his wrists. Before they had a chance to detach from his skin, Lilly lunged at him. 

She had no earthly idea what she was doing when she tackled him for the second time that day.

They both tumbled, and Lilly's vision was suddenly filled with greenery trying desperately to escape from Max's clenched fists and the wicked gleam of her sword. She pressed the blade flat against his chest and bit out, "I've wanted to do that all day." 

"Time!" Stevia called. Max blinked. Lilly rolled off of him, and Max pulled his knees up to his chest, heaving.

"She surprised me! She totally surprised me. I didn't think she'd get out of the mud. I—"

Lilly set the sword down and reached up to gingerly touch her shoulder, which was still seeping blood from where Stevia had burned it. 

"Private Ci, you're dismissed," Stevia said, the flames vanishing from their poised positions in front of her. "Private Wikkens, come with me, please."

"You're not really going to cut off his earlobe, are you?" Lilly asked. As much as she wanted that to happen, it felt vulgar, primitive somehow.  

"You had him down by the end of the time," Stevia replied simply, softly. "I guess magic doesn't always automatically save us, does it, Private Wikkens?"

The glare Max shot Lilly could've killed monsters.

***

If someone punched Max in the gut, he would not have known the difference between that and the feeling he got when he walked into his dorm room.

His father was sitting on his bed.

The door shut behind him. Max was not a fan of closed doors.

His father, here, in his perfect Bloom Official uniform. His crisp crimson vest was draped in the shining sapphire jewels of a high ranking officer. His chest glittered in bronze and silver badges, and the buttons fastened up to his pale throat had the Bloom's symbol etched in spiderweb-thin lines—a well with a bucket fastened beneath its roof.

"We need to talk," said his father, rising to his feet. "Sit."

Max swallowed. As he crossed the room to sit on the bed, he pressed a subtle hand to his ear—his father probably wouldn't notice the missing earlobe anyway, seeing as Ezra Wikkens was a self-centered man who only noticed things that directly impacted him, but Max decided it best to keep a casually-placed hand tucked over his ear just in case. The pain from the amputation eased ever-so-slightly now that he was facing a much scarier situation.

His father had already stoked a fire in the small hearth; it spread heat through the room and splayed scarlet strands of light across the floor. Something must have been very wrong for his father to be here. His father had sent Max away.

Ezra paced. His shoes, polished and expensive, made loud clicking sounds when they hit the hardwood. "What did you tell people about your face?"

"I got mauled by a bear," Max replied, coming up with the first thing he could think of. No one had asked about his face, but Max knew if he told his father that, he'd get smacked. Lilly's (hilariously terrible) insult from earlier was still fresh on his mind.

Ezra glared at him.

"I'm not kidding. Everyone knows there are ice bears in Balalaika, and everyone at Elliott Way must know by now that I'm stupid enough to get mauled by one."

"Good. I just got out of a meeting with seven other Bloom Officials, the Board Members of Elliott Way, and an idiot. That meeting was about a child that trains here who is not a Shifter."

Max clasped his hands together. Was he talking about Lilly?

Ezra paced the length of the room and Max watched his hands, which clenched and loosened in three-second intervals. Closed doors, unwinding hands. Max's throat was dry.

"This child's guardian—the idiot of the room—argued for the child to stay in Elliott Way despite her lack of magic. Three Bloom Officials and all three of the Board Members argued in her favor. This child gets to stay in Elliott Way."

Ezra's sentences came out in sharp, staccato bursts. Max curled his toes up in his boots, anxiety throbbing in his skull. Whatever Ezra thought he had to do with this was not good. Why him? Why now? Why Lilly?

Max didn't even like Lilly, and sure, he wanted to punch her in the face, but he recoiled against anything his father touched. Everything Ezra touched managed to scream, wilt, and die in a matter of seconds.

"She can't stay," Ezra continued, breathing hard. "I don't want her walking through these halls; half the Bloom doesn't, either. We should have destroyed every race that isn't a Shifter a long time ago. If a girl lacking Shifter abilities is inducted into the army, Shifters will think it's okay to let fairies, psychics, and trolls in as well. And do you know what that means?"

"You're catastrophizing?"

"That's a big word for such a little boy," said Ezra off-handedly. 

Max hunched his shoulders around his ears. Catastrophizing was a word Mallory often used; apparently, she had learned it from her therapist. "It's just...she's one girl. She'll probably get herself kicked out. I mean, um...she's not that great of an athlete anyway. I've...I've seen her do push-ups. She's really bad at push-ups."

"Open your eyes, son! Look at what's happening with the Acids. Shifters have always been the dominant race. Always. Things can't change. When the Acids wanted to be the dominant race, they began bombing Shifter cities. One girl could start a revolution of non-Shifter races that could rise against the government. Remember Storm? I need your help."

Anxiety tore Max's insides apart and melted to its own form of desperation when it hit his bloodstream. For the first time, his father needed his help and Max wanted to be needed by his dad. How could he say no? This need for him...Max wanted it to expand, and last, and be a blessing. This had to be the beginning of a new relationship with him his father. It had to be, it had to be, it had to be, and Max wanted a relationship with his father so badly that he was willing to do whatever it took to get himself in Ezra's good graces.

Even if he hated his father, he wanted his attention.

"How?" Max asked quietly. 

Ezra crouched to so that he was eye-level with Max. He pulled a leather pouch no bigger than his hand from one of the large pockets of his dress pants, unfastened the tiny golden buckles that looped around the cover, and opened it. Inside, placed in small pockets, was a row of glass bottles the size of teeth. The contents of each vial glowed twelve shades of vibrant phosphorescent color that pierced the low-lit dorm. Ezra pulled an orchid-purple one from the lineup and held it out to Max.

"I'll give you everything," his father chided. His voice had gone so low, so soft. "An inheritance so large the money itself would fill a mansion. A high spot on the Bloom when you turn eighteen. Pride. Oh, I'd be so proud."

Max closed his eyes. His hands were sweating. So proud. 

Suddenly, it didn't matter if his father had attended and planned to partake in a party that celebrated the torture of children earlier that week. 

"All of these are medicinal oils to be rubbed on different types of wounds," Ezra continued. "If ingested...there are bad side effects. This purple one makes someone weak. It sends blood pressure plummeting into hypotension. She'd get sent home, and Elliott Way won't be infected with non-Shifters."

"But what about—"

"Ger her out. Make Instructor Amaranth wish she'd never let that child step foot into Elliott Way. All you have to do is pour this into her water at dinner. It's not that hard."

"I...I don't even know her that well."

"You don't have to know her to dump poison into her cup when she isn't looking, son."

Max both hated and feared his father with a burning passion. But a deep, underlying desire seared brighter and deeper than any hate or terror, and that was the hope to please his father with everything he did. When he had blown up the manor, he'd hoped his father would at least be happy the house was destroyed. Before two days ago, before he found out Ezra participated in those parties, Max thought that maybe, just maybe his father was a good person at heart.

Beneath the belt. Beneath the fists.

As it turned out, his father was awful right down to the trillions of atoms that made him up.

And still. Still, Max wanted to impress him. Still, Max wanted his father to look at him with pride glistening in his eyes the way he saw other kids's dads look at them.

The issue with Max Wikkens was that, when he thought about things, those things always circled right back around to his family...and sometimes in very distorted ways. Thoughts about school looped back to calculating the maximum amount of hours he could stay so that he wouldn't have to come home and listen to his mother tell him how he needed to try and be nicer to his dad. Thoughts on friends always went back to creating new excuses he could pull from his neverending arsenal of explanations as to why his face was bruised and scabbed. So on and so on...always and always.

So when he thought about pouring this small concoction into Lilly's water at dinnertime, he did not explore the thought that it may possibly do much more than weaken her body. He didn't entertain the idea that Lilly could get hurt and that medicinal oils worked differently on Shifters than they did on other races. He thought about his dad, and Mallory, and Elias, and his mother.

Oh, I'd be so proud of you.

Max thought about himself. 

What was the harm, really? If Lilly got kicked out of Elliott Way, she wouldn't have to go to war in the long run. She was at risk because she didn't have magic; this would be a way to get her out of the army. He'd be doing her a favor. 

Max took the glass vial and Ezra did something he hadn't done in...in...Max couldn't remember his father ever doing this. He drew Max into a hug. Max gasped, because he hated the feeling of a body against another body, but then breathed through the discomfort and hugged his father back. Everything was going to be okay because this was the beginning of a relationship birthing from ashes. This was a hug. Between Max and his own dad.

But then Ezra squeezed Max so hard that the bones in Max's back popped. Ezra's lips were hot on his uninjured ear. "Don't fail. The consequences will involve belts and your face is already broken enough."