“Five levels?” Thio’s fingers throb on mine. “I’ve only heard of four.”
My lips pull up, but it isn’t a smile. I wonder if he can feel the way my heart kicks into overdrive, the thudding of my pulse in my fingertips.
“That’s what my father said.Sebastian, the Walshes have been going to Camp Merethyl for generations,” I mimic his deep voice. “We’d know if there was a secret fifth level you claim to have gotten placed in. Don’t make up stories.”
Thio’s head tips. “The camp didn’t inform your parents of your progress? You were a minor. Don’t they have to get approval for things?”
“At Camp Merethyl, I wasn’t a minor. I was a soldier. My parents signed the same waivers as everyone else’s. And in those waivers, there’s a whole lot of legalese about safeguarding the proprietarytraining programs that Camp Merethyl uses, blah blah blah; basically, you sign away your right to know what they’re doing to your kid.”
“How—” Thio hesitates. “How are people okay with that?”
I drop back against the chair, shoulders hitting it hard. Thio doesn’t let go of my hand; he adjusts to the edge of his seat so he can stay in contact.
“The people who graduate from Camp Merethyl go on to be some of the most powerful wizards in the world. So what if they come home at the end of the summer with scars and stories of abuse and neglect? It’s all in the name oftoughening them up. That’s how soldiers are made. Even atfourteen.”
My voice gets too loud, knee bouncing, rattling the table.
Thio squeezes my hand. “Sebastian. You don’t have to—”
“I do.” My eyes lock on his. “I really do.”
He studies me, my wide eyes, my quivering tension.
I scrub a hand down my face, willing the words to uproot with the least pain. “My family all graduated from Camp Merethyl. Well, not my mom, but my siblings, my dad; his side. None of them believed me when I told them Orok and I had been selected for an elite training level. I was also, well,me; scrawnier then than I am now, and I was always good at spells, but the physical side of things? No way. Why wouldIhave been chosen?”
My throat closes. I clear it, try again.
“There were ten of us in that fifth level. The camp dropped us in the middle of the Appalachians, no supplies. Told us we had two days to get back to camp, or we’d forfeit all meal tickets for a week. They’d refuse us food and water regularly, in an effort to train us not to need it. Sleep, too; we’d get woken up every hour for two days straight, one day off, and repeat. They taught us fighting styles, hands and fists, and with weapons, too, but padding? Blunted training weapons? No. If you bled, no meal tickets. That wasn’t far off from what thenormaltraining levels endured; wilderness training, combat. Just not as… brutal as what we had in that fifth level. I told my parents what they were doing to us, and my dad said I was exaggerating.”
Thio’s watching me. I can feel it. But my gaze isn’t here anymore, I’m only grounded in his touch.
“Orok and I were paired up from the start. We were all in pairs. Anything we did, we had to do together, or fail and lose meal tickets, water tickets, sleep tickets—yeah, after the second summer, we had those. They controlled everything we did at every moment of the day, all in an effort tohone our skills. But these tests, the things they taught us and had us do—they were about how far we could push magic. How much we could test the limits of spells on the elements, on our situations. On ourselves.
“The only reason I got through those summers was because of Orok. He was there, enduring it with me.” My lungs quake, hurting. “He made me feel like I wasn’t crazy. The things I told my father were being done to uswerehappening, and Iwasn’tlying. It was real.”
I’m up and pacing in a tight line behind the chair before I realize that means releasing Thio’s hand, but I’m in motion already.
“The last summer.” My fingers go to my arms under my sleeves, scratching. The pain flares, centers me. “We knew it’d be bad. We’d spent the previous summers getting screamed at, doused in freezing water, beaten when we complained, left for nearly dead in all manner of places, starved and driven to insanity with sleep deprivation, all while doing things with magic that left us drained emotionally, physically—but we knew, this summer? It’d be worse. Orok and I promised we’d watch out for each other. But we still—gods.” I shove my glasses up my nose. It doesn’t clear my vision. “We still wanted to make our families proud, ya know? Orok’s were pushing the doctrine of strength; mine were impatiently waiting for the last Walsh to prove he wasn’t a whiny little bitch. My brother’s words, not mine.”
Thio’s standing. I don’t know when he moved. His arms are loose at his sides and his head shifts as he tracks me across his dining room.
“Somewhere during the first weeks,” I say to the floor as I walk, turn, walk, turn, “the other pairs of fifth-level students—soldiers—vanished. I don’t know what happened to them. If they dropped out, or if they… but it was just me and Orok. In that mythical fifth-leveltraining program. The instructors focused all their attention on us. Said we were the future of wizardry and a whole lot of other bullshit as they pushed us and pushed us and we obeyed, because—because we werekids,we were scaredkids,and no one ever believed us anyway.”
I stop. Stop walking. Stop digging at my arms; they ache, feel bruised.
“Our final test,” I whisper, “was before graduation. Before alltheirhard work paid off—the instructors’. We were an experiment; that was why no one had ever heard of a fifth level. There hadn’t been one. We were the first. A test of an elite type of training, pairing up wizards for remote, risky missions. The program had been about testing the limits of magic and forging a bond between us. Well, Orok and I had certainly bonded. We thought we could handle whatever final thing they threw at us, then it’d be over,it’d be over.”
My hand goes to my forehead, and I take a couple of deep, steadying gulps of air. Get it out. Get the words out.
Get out get out GET OUT—
“They put us in a sealed, empty room. Used scrying magic to communicate with us. Told us there was a ward on the door. Told us to break it.” My eyes meet Thio’s. He hasn’t moved, watches me, hands still loose, ready. I’m not. “We didn’t have any components. They’d yanked us out of bed in the middle of the night. We were sleep-deprived, hadn’t eaten in two days. But they told us to get out of that room. How do you do a spell when you have no components?”
I’m asking him.
Thio frowns. “You don’t.”
“Wrong. To break a ward, what do you need?”
