Charting out the early stages of planning for the “carnival” was work, but it was the kind of work that Adah found fun. The next task on her schedule, however, was one she needed to psyche herself up for. And unlike the carnival with its committee, she’d be taking on this duty alone.

  It was time for her second visit to Ekki’s hospital room.

  Finding a time to visit when he would be alone—or, at least, with only Iris around—proved difficult. News stations both locally and nationally had taken an interest in Ekki’s recovery, and apparently he was feeling well enough to field all their questions. It seemed whenever the media wasn’t around, DreamRise’s other industry connections were visiting to wish him well. Eventually, Iris sent Adah a message that read: “He’s free today, if you’d like to speak with us in private.”

  Notably, she hadn’t offered an option to speak with him in private.

  All the same, Adah seized the opportunity and stopped by the hospital later that day with a box of chocolates in hand. She didn’t know what kind of gift to bring someone who had just woken up from a coma, but since she’d already brought flowers, she figured chocolate was a safe second choice.

  The scene in Ekki’s room was much the same as it had been the last time Adah visited, only the lineup of flowers had been partially replaced with balloons and gift bags. Presumably everyone else had found themselves in Adah’s shoes, thinking they ought to bring another gift but unsure what fit the bill.

  The other difference in the room was Ekki himself. Instead of laying motionless on his bed, he was sitting upright. He even greeted Adah with a smile.

  His face was still gaunt, though some color had returned to it. Most of his body was covered by a blanket, but the top of his hospital gown still hung clearly from his shoulder bones rather than a proper layer of muscle. Though the Cruelties had not taken his life in the end, their parasitic effect was apparent throughout his weakened body. The worst of the damage they inflicted would remain—Ekki’s right arm was still gone.

  “I thought you’d be a one-and-done,” Ekki said as she set her chocolates down beside the other gifts.

  “It doesn’t count as visiting if you’re not even awake when I stop by,” Adah said. “How are you feeling?”

  He shrugged and said, “Eighty percent normal, ten percent tired, and ten percent… off, I guess?”

  “It’s like part of you is still missing, right?” Adah said, and a moment later her eyes went wide. She looked at his bandaged shoulder involuntarily and stammered, “T-That’s not what I meant. Like, with Emi, she said it was like part of her mind—or something—was lagging behind. I wasn’t…”

  “It’s true,” Ekki said, smiling still and moving graciously past her slip-up. “There are memories I can’t find, or thoughts that slip through my fingers. It’s getting better every day, but I still feel like I’m standing with my back to a bottomless pit. My heels are hanging over the edge and, if I let my mind wander away from me, I feel like I might topple backward and fall in.”

  “It sounds terrifying,” Adah said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Having people visit helps keep me grounded. More importantly, I wanted to thank you. I saw the footage of the rest of the battle. You were the reason we all got out of there alive.”

  Adah shook her head and said, “I screwed up. I panicked. If I’d been thinking straight during that fight, you never would have gotten hurt. None of us would’ve been in danger.”

  Ekki began to say, “That’s not—”

  “You’re wrong, Heartbreak,” Iris spoke over him. “I brought us to that mission. I promised my team we would succeed, and then I failed to deliver on my promise. I made the mistake. Accept my apology the first time because I won’t ever repeat it. I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. Both of you.”

  Iris made sure to make eye contact with both Adah and Ekki before turning her head away in a hurry. Without facing them again, she immediately changed the topic of conversation.

  “Enough of the pleasantries,” she said. “Ekki has a PT session soon. The real reason you came today is to talk business, is it not? Let’s get it over with.”

  Adah looked over at Ekki, who appeared to take no offense to Iris’s implication. Adah hadn’t visited only to talk business, but she couldn’t deny that she intended to pitch her plan to Iris and Ekki before leaving today.

  “Talking about work is good,” he said. “That’ll keep my mind busier than anything else. I’ve heard you’ve been quite busy while I was out.”

  “I’ve been causing a little bit of trouble,” Adah admitted.

  “Tell me all about it,” Ekki said with a smile.

  Adah recounted her recent series of altercations with Thibault, leading naturally into an explanation of her plan for the carnival, for representing the magic users of Region 4, and for ultimately replacing Thibault.

  Ekki asked her to pause a few times throughout her explanation, when some of the light fell away from his face. He’d squeeze his eyes tight and Iris would squeeze his hand even tighter. After a minute or so, he’d return to the present and give Adah another small smile. Each time, she asked if she should come back when he was feeling better, but he always insisted she finish.

  At the end of it all, Ekki answered without hesitation.

  “Count us in,” he said. “Right, Iris?”

  “I can’t find a proper reason to reject the idea yet,” she said, which was as close to an agreement as Adah felt she could get.

  “What about Clair?” Adah asked. “You don’t need to loop her in first?”

  Iris and Ekki shared a look and even made the same kind of face, twisting their lips and raising their eyebrows. Adah wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Clair is…” Ekki began to say. “Well, let’s just say I’m sure she won’t have any issue with this.

  “She’ll participate,” Iris agreed.

  If that was the case, this whole conversation had gone much easier than Adah had expected. There was a hint of some unease in Iris’s eyes, some discomfort she was holding back in front of Ekki, but Adah was happy to let sleeping dogs lie.

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  Since they had been so receptive to her original idea, Adah worked up the nerve to ask something else of them as well.

  “I’m sorry to ask this kind of question right now,” she said, “but something still bothers me about this whole situation. Iris, you told me before that you didn’t know anything about who’s pulling Thibault’s strings. What about his adviser, though?”

  “Elise?” Iris said. “What about her? She’s good at collecting data. Certainly, she’s much smarter than Roland himself. He needs someone like her by his side, otherwise he’d spend most of his day tripping over his shoelaces, so to speak.”

  “Yeah, he does need someone like her with him,” Adah said. “I was thinking that as well. That’s why I started getting interested in her.”

  If someone was pulling Thibault’s strings, they wouldn’t be entirely disconnected from him. The man was too fallible to be left to his own devices. Inevitably, he’d screw up their plans or even fail to maintain the bare minimum standard of operations for the Department of Magic. At the end of the day, the puppet master’s goal wasn’t to undermine the Department, but to control it by proxy. Who better than Thibault’s assistant to keep an eye on him?

  It was just a theory, but it was the best lead Adah had to go on.

  “I’m not so sure,” Ekki said, shaking his head. “Thibault appeared out of nowhere, but Elise has been with the Department for a few years, albeit in a different role. Her involvement with him seems more like a case of someone capable being promoted. She might have been chosen because Thibault needed someone to help him handle the real business of the Department, but I think that’s all there was to it.”

  “What was her role before?” Adah asked. “What kind of promotion are we talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Ekki said. “It’s not like we were that much closer to her than we were to Thibault. Besides, if you’re looking to replace him, then you’ll be replacing her, too. Whoever comes in can pick their own adviser.”

  He had a point, but Adah was worried about what came after replacing Thibault. Perhaps she’d been thinking too conspiratorially about this whole situation. Maybe Thibault was just a pawn in some standard issue government corruption, serving the interests of some businesses looking to make an easy buck off a burgeoning scene of magic users. Yet, like when fighting a Cruelty, Adah had no intention of underestimating her opponents.

  Besides, Ekki’s comment about Thibault’s replacement reminded Adah of a more pressing issue than her suspicions about Elise.

  She still needed to find a replacement.

  “A while back,” she said, “you told me you wanted to run the Department of Magic someday, Ekki. Do you still feel that way now?”

  The question gave Ekki pause. He looked toward Iris, who was still sitting beside his bed holding his hand.

  “That’s still my goal,” he said, “but I’m only at the start of my journey. If I took that job—if you could even convince the governor to nominate me in the first place—I’d have to leave DreamRise. There’s a lot left unfinished for our team, and I want to earn the right to all the responsibility that comes with being Secretary.”

  “You’re still planning to fight?” Adah asked. “You’ve proved yourself against the Cruelties more than most magic users. Way more than any other Secretary.”

  Ekki raised his right shoulder and said, “This isn’t going to stop me. Our enemy fights back no matter how badly you chop them up. Humanity needs guardians who are just as driven as that.”

  “I’m not trying to say you can’t make a difference on the battlefield, but can’t you make an even bigger difference in a position of power?”

  Adah knew it’d be a challenge to convince the bureaucrats of Ekki’s qualifications, but she hadn’t expected to face resistance from the boy himself.

  “We have a similar objective when it comes to the Cruelties, don’t we?” Ekki asked. “I don’t want to lead humanity through another period of complacent equilibrium like we have now. I want to bring us out of this war entirely. So, let’s say the Cruelties start throwing more A-Ranks at us. Or S-Ranks. Or variants we’ve never seen before. If they see they’re on the verge of extinction, won’t they pull out all the stops? I’m aware of my limits. I’m not ready to lead us through something like that when I haven’t even faced an A-Rank myself.”

  “None of these Secretaries have fought any Cruelties,” Adah argued. “You’d be better than all of them.”

  “Would I?” Ekki said. “Some of them probably have skills I don’t yet. Maybe they don’t understand the Cruelty threat as well as we do, but that’s not their only responsibility. The one thing Thibault got right is that we need more magic users who are capable of fighting the most dangerous Cruelties. That’s what you should be searching for: someone who can nurture the up-and-coming talent we need to win this war.”

  As he finished speaking, his head drifted back and fell against his pillow. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. Things are getting cloudier again. We can talk more later, but I hope I answered your question.”

  Iris stood up and started to walk toward the door. Adah got the message.

  “Yeah,” she said to Ekki as she rose out of her own seat. “I understand. I’ll visit you again soon. I’ve got to keep you updated on our planning, after all.”

  Ekki smiled with his eyes still closed and said, “Thanks, Adah.”

  Iris stopped beside Adah for a moment and said, “I’ll walk you out.”

  Adah tried to tell Iris she didn’t need to do that, but the girl paid her no mind and left Ekki’s room without another word. As obvious as her intentions were, Adah had no choice but to go along with them.

  Out in the hospital hallway, Iris was leaning against a wall as she waited for Adah. She glanced down both ends of the hall as if to see if anyone was nearby.

  “I dislike you,” she said.

  Adah shrugged and said, “You could’ve just told me that back in the room.”

  “But I’m willing to admit it may be a problem with me rather than you,” Iris continued. “When I think about what you’re asking us to do, I can’t deny it’s in our best interest. I can even respect the audacity of it. But when I think of working together with you again, I loathe the whole concept. Without any logical reason.”

  “You’ve always had a healthy mentality toward competition,” Adah said, glancing away for a moment. Really, she didn’t know how else to respond to what Iris had said. Both she and Ekki gave so much preamble to their real point, yet always paused midway through as if expecting a response. Maybe that was a habit they’d picked up from one another.

  “It’s not something I plan to correct,” Iris went on. “What I wanted to say is that I understand I’m being unreasonable. What’s more important than how I feel is that Ekki needs to be a part of this plan of yours. When he’s ready to take his own next step, to chase after his own dreams, he needs to be able to say he did the right thing here. He can’t become the kind of leader he wants to be if he sits this out.”

  “I think I get what you’re saying, but what about you? Why don’t you put aside your irrational feelings and do the right thing for its own sake?”

  Maybe there was no point in trying to reason with a girl who had just said she was knowingly being unreasonable. If anyone was going to change Iris’s mindset, it probably wouldn’t be Adah. With how well her interactions with Apex Vox and Fifty Flip had been going, Adah had grown a little more optimistic about the possibility of salvaging at least a neutral relationship with DreamRise.

  For now, though, Iris simply frowned at Adah.

  “Doing the right thing isn’t of concern to me,” she said. “I know what I want, and I’ll take whatever path is necessary to get it. If people like Roland Thibault are willing to do wicked things to get what they want, then I have no intention of handicapping myself in the pursuit of my own desires.”

  “Usually I’d cut my losses here,” Adah said, “but for some reason I feel like I should say something today. If it’s important for Ekki to do the right thing, why should it be any different for you? None of us should want to act like Thibault. That’s why I came to help you against the hydra.”

  “Ekki needs someone fighting on his side who is willing to do what he can’t,” Iris answered. “After what he’s sacrificed for me, there is no question that I will be such a weapon for him.”

  “But he saved you by being your shield, not your weapon. Can’t you help him in the same way?”

  With Ekki awake and on the road to recovery, all the vigor had returned to Iris’s face. She stared daggers at Adah.

  “For the sake of our future cooperation,” Iris said, pushing herself off the wall and standing upright, “this conversation should end now. Contact us with what you need us to do, and we will help make your plan a success. We may cook up a scheme of our own, but you have my word it won’t interfere with yours. Goodbye, Heartbreak.”

  In the same wordless way she had left Ekki’s room, Iris left Adah behind now. Adah couldn’t tell if she had grown more or less cooperative lately, but one truth remained clear.

  The two of them couldn’t get along.