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Stockland.”
    “Oh dear.” This day just keeps getting better.
    “Hey, stop stressing about everything. I’m sure the two of you will end up besties.”
    I punch Ryn’s arm. “I’d like to remind you that I have no besties.”
    “So here’s your chance to make one.” Ryn stops and spreads one arm out toward the closed door in front of him. “All the best, baby sister. I’ll see you later.”
    My stomach plummets. “You’re leaving me?”
    “I am.” He gives me a brief hug. “Time for you to do this on your own.”

 
     
    CHAPTER
    FIVE

     
    After clearing my throat and pulling my shoulders back, I knock on Olive Stockland’s door. Ryn is right. He got me into the Guild, he spent all summer training me, he quizzed me before every exam, and he saved me from making an idiot of myself in front of the Head Councilor. So now it’s time to step up and do the rest of this on my own. It’s time to prove I have just as much right to be here as every faerie who’s spent the past four years—
    “Come in!”
    Okay, time to focus.
    I place my hand on the doorknob, then hesitate as it hits me: I’m about to meet my mentor. My guardian mentor . This is really happening! I twist the knob and push the door open.
    Olive’s office is a mess. The desk is invisible beneath piles of reed paper, several knives, some dirty mugs, and a broken crossbow. Her chair is piled with boxes, and the chair on my side of the desk has a plate of something that was probably breakfast sitting on it. On the right side of the room, a tall woman—Olive, presumably—is stacking books on the highest shelf of a cabinet that reaches the ceiling. She flicks her right hand in a repetitive motion, causing the books to fly one by one from her left hand onto the shelf.
    When she’s done, she steps back, pushes stray wisps of short hair away from her face, and looks at me. “Yes?”
    My hand tightens around my bag strap. I clear my throat once more. “Hi. Good morning. I’m Calla.” When she does nothing more than place her hands on her hips and blink at me, I add, “Calla Larkenwood. Um, I’m the new trainee starting with the fifth years. You’re … my mentor?”
    Olive lets out a puff of air and gives me a grim smile. “Wonderful. As if I don’t have enough on my plate already, I now get to mentor yet another trainee. And, to make matters worse, it’s a trainee who thinks she can skip four years of hard work and start at the end.”
    “I …” I pause with my mouth partially open, stunned by her immediate hostility.
    “Well?” she says. “Do you have anything to say, or is that vacant expression something I should get used to?”
    I snap my mouth shut and turn my gaze to the floor in humiliation. Why, why, why did the Council have to give me a mentor who doesn’t think I should even be here? Or do all the mentors feel this way about the new trainee who ‘thinks she can skip four years of hard work’? An ache behind my eyes warns me that tears are on the way. I blink several times until I’m certain the tears won’t surface. I’ve had practice in this department. I’ve dealt with people like this before. And, while it isn’t ideal to have a mentor who thinks I’m nothing but a waste of her time, I can make it work if I have to. It’s what I’ve done at every other school.
    I place my bag on the floor and cross the room. After removing the plate of congealed food and balancing it on top of a pile of reed paper, I sit on the chair. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t like me,” I tell her. “I’m used to people not liking me, or avoiding me at all costs, or looking at me like I’ve got dangerous Unseelie blood running in my veins. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve already proved to the Council I belong here, and it doesn’t change the fact that I am going to become a guardian.”
    She blinks again but recovers quickly. “Well, I don’t know what you’re sitting down for then. Your first lesson started two