“It felt personal,” I said, not quite ready to let her off the hook so easily. “You would have killed me.”
“It was a job,” Hagar insisted. “Like the one the elders offered to you.”
“A job,” I said. “Lots of people have done horrible things for a job. That doesn’t make it all right.”
“I know,” Hagar said. She raked her fingers through her crimson Mohawk. “I want you to know I’m sorry about what happened. It turns out you were right, and we were all wrong. Even the elders admitted that.”
While it was nice that Hagar and the rest of the clan no longer blamed me for everything that had ever gone wrong, it was hard to shake the anger at what had happened. My Eclipse nature wanted them to all pay for hurting me. It wanted to smash the coffeepot into Hagar’s face and—I took a deep breath and shoved those dark thoughts aside. It hurt to deny the urge, but it was the right thing to do. Hagar and the elders had gone after me because they wanted to protect Empyreal society, not to hurt me in particular. Revenge would gain me nothing, while cooperating with them might help a lot of people.
Including my mind.
“Okay,” I said. “I accept your apology. Is that the only reason you came to see me?”
“I also wanted to be sure you were okay,” Hagar said. “Word spread fast about what happened in Professor Song’s dojo.”
“I’m fine.” I didn’t want to talk about that. “Anything else?”
“I wanted to discuss the elders’ offer,” Hagar said. “Before you made your decision.”
“I don’t even really know what the job is.” I checked the temperature on the gooseneck kettle and saw there were still a few minutes left before the coffee would be ready. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Hagar said. She opened and closed the cabinets until she found a couple of mugs, then came over to rest against the counter next to me. “I’ve been working with the elders since I was an initiate. They knew there was something going on at the school, they just didn’t know what. I kept an eye on things for them, did a little snooping.”
“And assassinations?” I said with a grin I hoped would take some of the sting out of my pointed question.
“Just you,” she said, her cheeks glowing red.
I never thought I’d see Hagar blush.
“And this is what, your fourth year?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she said. “I spent almost four years looking for heretics, and you found them in one.”
“They found me,” I corrected her. “If Grayson hadn’t come after me so hard, I probably would’ve never figured out what was going on.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why did he hate you so much?”
“My mother and father knew him before I was born,” I said. “Honestly, that’s all I know about it.”
I didn’t feel the need to tell Hagar about my family’s disgraced past, the fact that my father had been exiled before his death. That was personal, and I still didn’t completely trust the warden.
“Family stuff,” she said with a sigh. “I know how that goes. My parents were both Resplendent Suns. They weren’t very happy when Mama Weaver made me a Shadow Phoenix.”
I’d never considered the fact that Hagar might not have been born a Shadow Phoenix. The Resplendent Suns were the exact opposite of my clan—proud and noble, well-respected and treated like royalty pretty much everywhere they went. To have a kid ripped out of that sort of privilege and dumped into the lowliest group of misfits in Empyreal society had to have stung.
“It’s not like you had a choice,” I said.
“Well, sort of.” Hagar frowned. “I could have—”
The kettle’s shrill whistle interrupted her. She stepped back to give me space to pull it off the stove top and pour the water into the French press.
“You’re right that I didn’t get to pick my clan, no one does. But, if I’d been a little more like my parents and maybe less nosy and skeptical about everything, who knows where I might’ve ended up.” She handed me a mug, and I filled it with coffee. I handed it back, and she gave me the empty one, which I also filled.
“There’s cream in the refrigerator, and I saw some sugar with the rest of the coffee gear.” I put the kettle on a cold burner. “If you want anything in your coffee, that is.”
“Black is fine,” Hagar said with a wink. “It matches our robes.”
“True,” I said and took a sip of some truly excellent coffee. I’d gotten used to having the finer things on the challenge tour, but I had to admit that this brew was something special. I’d have to find out where the beans came from and make some for my mom. Whenever I found her again.
“Anyway,” Hagar said in a sudden rush, “I just wanted you to know that working with the elders is important. There’s a lot of bad people out there who aren’t what they seem on the surface. The Empyrean Flame has a lot more enemies than you might think.”
“How is that even possible?” I asked, suddenly skeptical. “The Flame is the source of all our power. Why would anybody endanger that?”
“Because some fools believe the Empyrean Flame is blocking our true source of power,” Hagar confided. “And, because the Flame didn’t do a great job of protecting us during the Utter War. If it hadn’t been for...”
She left the half-finished thought between us, and I didn’t pick it up. Most Empyreals knew nothing about the Eclipse Warriors, or at least pretended they didn’t. I guess when you blow up an entire clan, it’s easier for everyone to pretend that it never happened than to own up to what felt like a dangerously dishonorable act.
I hid my thinking face behind another drink from my oversized
