t was a quarter past three on Tuesday. As part of my deal with Madame Alexanders, I was free from my TA work and it was time for my first Twenty-Three Skidd practice.

I should have been over the moon. Divya and Girtha certainly were a minute ago when they took off on their Pegasi for the magical time-crack that had opened at the peak of the In and Out Spell. It was a beautiful, incredible thing to watch—the top of the force field had become visible before peeling back like a blooming flower. Now the edges sparkled so brilliantly that I could see their every line even from way down here.

Alas, my mind was atwitter with anxiety as my pet dragon Lucky plunged through the time-crack driven by Daniel. They landed on the grass in front of me.

I hadn’t seen Daniel since tryouts. I imagined he must’ve been weirded out with us being placed on the same team. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea either, but what could we do?

“Let’s go,” he said, waving me over.

I decided not talking about it was the best plan. Daniel may have been uncomfortable with us being on the same team, but I didn’t just feel uncomfortable. I felt angry, disappointed, and sad. He’d made me open my heart to a world of trust and then slammed the door shut. I would’ve been lying if I said I didn’t hate him a little for it.

“Move back,” I said. “I’m driving.”

He didn’t protest. And we didn’t speak the whole way to Lord Channing’s. After we landed and dismounted, we walked to the arena side by side, but miles apart. When the entrance tunnel opened up onto the field, a sense of deep, overwhelming satisfaction filled my chest and replaced the bitterness I held there. I was going to concentrate on Blue’s advice to avoid extra drama and take joy in the victories the universe gave me. I was a good Twenty-Three Skidd player on my own. I didn’t need Daniel. I would rock this either way and have a great time doing it.

I didn’t know where Divya and Girtha had gone off to, but there were nine other boys waiting for us on the green. I recognized maybe two or three from having seen them at balls. But outside of Jason, Daniel, and Jason’s former roommate Mark, I didn’t socialize with guys much. This was going to be something new.

Two of the older guys separated themselves from the pack and extended their hands. One was about my height. He had a solid tan, curly hair, and a mischievous spark in his coffee eyes. The other guy was taller than Daniel, just over six feet. His hair was blond, but lighter than Jason’s. It was kind of white-ish like Marie Sinclaire’s. Actually, he looked a lot like Marie now that I thought about it.

“Hey, I’m Javier Marcos,” coffee eyes said to me, shaking my hand. “This is Gordon Sinclaire. We’re your team captains. Welcome to the Seven Suns.”

I remembered Marie mentioning she had a brother at Lord Channing’s. I guess this was him. I looked him up and down. The prince was pretty cute in a pale kind of way, but Javier was definitely more rugged.

I shook hands with both of them and Daniel did the same. We were then introduced to the rest of the guys on the team. Daniel already seemed to know a few, but for me, it was a blur of handshakes and heroes. Some of the guys seemed genuinely enthusiastic and welcoming. Four of them definitely didn’t. I sensed coldness, almost a kind of disapproval when they were forced to shake my hand.

I guess I should have expected that. The boys I usually hung out with were civilized; they respected and understood that girls could be just as powerful and strong as guys. But I would’ve been a fool to believe this was a universal acceptance. Just like a lot of people at Lady Agnue’s were old-school and traditional, I imagined plenty of the Lord Channing’s community was the same. There were probably a good number of boys who didn’t believe princesses (or girls) could hack it playing in the same physical arena. I was here to prove them wrong. I had to develop a thick skin and let my skills do the talking.

“Dillain Bardó,” the last boy in the lineup said. He smiled, but his hazel eyes were patronizing. His grip was also a little too tight. I dealt with that by squeezing harder and locking my intense green eyes with his.

“Crisanta Knight,” I replied. “Pleasure.”

“Okay,” Javier said, getting our attention. “Now that everyone knows everyone, let’s go over some of the basics for our new teammates. Every Twenty-Three Skidd team has eleven players—nine first stringers who play in the matches and two alternates. Rosters for who will be starting a match will be decided the week prior to each game. Our first match is in less than three weeks and it will be against the Crusaders. We’re going to start with some warm-up drills, so everybody get armored up, grab a lacrosse sword, and then pick up a Pegasus from Redwood over there.” Javier gestured to the other side of the field where an extremely large, thick-built man was leading a herd of Pegasi onto the green.

“Our groundskeeper,” Daniel whispered to me.

“Javi,” Dillain said. “Are we doing the light warm-up drills or the advanced set?”

“Advanced,” Javier replied.

“Maybe some of us should start with the light drills.” Dillain shot me a look.

A couple of the other guys snickered.

“I can handle anything you throw at me,” I replied, pivoting toward Javier and Gordon. “Just the same as the other guys here. You wouldn’t have picked me if that wasn’t true, right?”

“Right,” Gordon agreed. He wheeled around to the rest of the guys. “Listen up. Let’s get this out in the open now. I know some of you aren’t a fan of Javi and my decision to put a girl, let alone a princess, on the team instead of some of the other guys that tried out. Well, suck it up. She’s here because she deserves to be and she’ll only stay on this team if she keeps deserving to be. So treat her no differently.” He addressed me and Daniel then. “We train hard here. Right now you two are marked as our alternates since these guys are all returning players. If you want that to change, you have to prove yourselves. There’ll be no going slow or special treatment. We clear?”

“Clear,” Daniel and I said in unison.

“Good. Now let’s get started.”

It was one of the most difficult hours I’d ever endured.

The boys on the team were at the peak of athleticism. They were fast, strong, and aggressive. After some intensive warm-ups that involved trying to get past team blockades and swerving our Pegasi to evade arrows launched from mechanisms that rose from beneath the field, the rest of our training was freestyle fighting. What that meant was every man (or woman) for themselves. There was one ball and we had to try and get possession of it and score in either goal to earn points. Regrettably, you also earned points for every player you dismounted from a Pegasus.

With no judges to intervene and no one on your side to swoop in and help you, it was almost scary. I hadn’t feared for my life like that in some time. The net that came out of the ground did not comfort the situation much. Especially since I got sent toward it three times.

In all of my past experiences with Twenty-Three Skidd, I had never hit the net before. I’d never been truly injured in the sport either. Today was a first for both, and I was not happy about it.

The first time I went down was when a boy named Ambrose jabbed me in the side with his lacrosse sword, rammed his steed into mine, and then elbowed me so hard in the head that my skull rattled in my helmet. I plunged two hundred feet and plopped into the net, which promptly bounced me back up several times before settling. It throbbed like the humiliation inside me, and the bruise forming on my head.

A while later a kid called Bailie, who was a Half-Legacy (the nephew to the Frog Prince, I think) was flying over me when he activated the grip function on his lacrosse sword. The staff extended. I saw it happen in my peripheral vision, but couldn’t avoid what I knew was coming. Dillain and another jerk named Mirosavich boxed me in and kept me from flying away. They ganged up on me, and while I was defending myself against their various strikes, Bailie reached down, caught my head in his lacrosse sword’s basket, and sent me flying.

By the time I re-saddled, we only had five minutes left of practice. I kicked my aggression up a notch to move past my bruised ego, and my bruised pride, and somehow managed the ferocity to capture the ball for the first time since we’d started. I darted around one boy after another and headed for the goal, but I never made it. Dillain dove in and slammed his lacrosse sword at my head. The blow caused me to let go of my lacrosse sword and slip off my Pegasus, but grabbed the horn of the saddle at the last second. I didn’t want to go down a third time. Alas, that’s just what Dillain had in mind. He hadn’t gone after the ball when I’d dropped my lacrosse sword. He wanted to earn his point another way. He dove down, reached up, and gripped my foot in the basket of his lacrosse sword. Then he yanked me off forcefully and sent me plummeting.

I crashed into the net a third time and stared up at the sky.

The rest of the week didn’t get any better.

I thought I was great at Twenty-Three Skidd. But I’d never been tested so extremely, nor had I ever played with four guys who clearly wanted to humiliate me. It also didn’t help that it felt like I was completely alone. Whenever I’d played before I’d had Blue, or Daniel, or even Girtha on my side. I didn’t have them now. Blue and Girtha had their own teams. And Daniel may have been on mine, but we weren’t like we once were. Even when we had group exercises that required teamwork, our flow was off. We weren’t in sync and our captains clearly picked up on it.

When practice was over on Saturday, they asked us to stay after for a few minutes. I agreed; I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had another hour before the time-crack in the In and Out Spell opened. I waited while Javier and Gordon finished talking with groundskeeper Redwood. Our other teammates milled around putting away their armor and equipment.

“I’d have that shoulder checked before you accept any dance requests at the ball tonight,” Dillain said snarkily, coming to stand next to me.

I stopped rubbing my shoulder, which ached since Dillain and Bailie had double-teamed me earlier and I’d gotten smacked and dismounted. “Thanks for the concern,” I replied dryly.

“What with you being so popular you probably get dance requests all the time,” Dillain continued. “A pretty, fiery girl like you must be beating them off with a stick. Though you certainly can’t beat anybody off with a stick here, so maybe you’re easier to ensnare than you’d like people to think.”

I felt my fist ball up, but then a hand was brusquely on my arm.

“Knight, he’s baiting you,” Daniel said.

“Obviously,” I said, shaking him off. I readdressed Dillain. “By all means ask me to dance tonight, Dillain. In fact, I dare you. By the end of it I promise your shoulder will be no better off than mine.”

Dillain smirked and sauntered off, ramming into me as he passed. I cocked my head toward Daniel when he’d gone. “I wasn’t going to hit him,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t answer. Gordon and Javier called us over at that point. They didn’t seem happy.

“Look,” Javier said. “You guys are decent as individual players, but Gordon and I have been really underwhelmed with your performance this first week. You’re not the same players we saw in tryouts. What happened to the teamwork, the accountability, the way you moved together?”

“Daniel, you wanna take this one?” I said, shooting him a look.

“Knight and I aren’t a set,” Daniel responded. “We did well together at the tryouts, but we want to be seen as standalone players.”

“If that’s the case, then you’re going to have to work a lot harder,” Gordon said. “You guys are still alternates. Unless a miracle occurs, you’ll stay that way for the rest of the season and won’t see a single game. And if that happens, Javier and I will probably have to kick you off the team. It’s nothing personal, but we want to win and only the best heroes—boy or girl—are going to cut it. You got it?”

It was like being punched in the stomach. I would know. I’d been punched in the stomach several times over the course of my various antagonist face-offs.

“Got it,” I said.

The captains left Daniel and me standing there in sullen quietude.

This is your fault, my eyes said to him.

Maybe, but I’m not sorry, his eyes told me in return.

“Come on, we have a trade to make,” I said. He and I made our way to the storage closet near the dugout where our team stowed our various things during practice. We went inside and I grabbed a backpack that Blue had packed for me earlier while Daniel picked up a black duffel bag. Originally our group had planned to trade Wonderland maps at tonight’s ball, but with us having practice today, we thought this would be a lot easier.

“FYI, I had zero luck mapping Cloud Nine,” Daniel said, holding up his duffel bag. “I searched our whole library and couldn’t find anything other than some references to magic Ravens.”

“Well, I guess we’re even then,” I replied. “Blue was unsuccessful with her attempts at mapping Limbo other than some info about a beaver.”

We exchanged bags. I clutched the duffel. A long silence passed.

“I’ll see you tonight?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, see you.”

We parted ways. I shouldered the duffel bag and headed out of the arena just as Girtha, Divya, and the rest of their teammates on the Lyons were entering. I spotted Chance Darling at the front of the pack. He gave me a conservative smile. I tried my best to return it, but was too preoccupied by Daniel to give him more than a second thought or glance. Despite the look on his face that said he wanted to maybe say hi to me, I hurried past him before he could speak. I didn’t manage to escape Girtha and Divya, though.

“Hey, you doing all right?” Girtha asked as we intersected near the tunnel.

“Yeah, fine,” I said brusquely. “You guys okay?”

“We’re excellent,” Divya replied. “We actually spoke with Redwood when we got here and he had some great news. Lord Channing finally gave us clearance to use the rest of the boys’ training areas in the hour that we’re here and not practicing.”

“That’s fantastic,” I exclaimed. And it was. The boy heroes had so many more advantages for training than we did. This could make a difference.

The news picked up my mood significantly. I bid goodbye to Divya and Girtha as they went to join their team and then trotted outside. I spent the next hour exploring the different sectors of the Lord Channing’s training campus—the combat forums, the fields, the obstacle course and so on. I wanted to familiarize myself with my options. The gears in my brain turned and turned.

When the hour of the time-crack eventually rolled around, I whistled for Lucky. He flew me back to Lady Agnue’s before returning to Lord Channing’s. He was a smart dragon and had gotten used to our routine. I no longer needed Daniel to pick me up or drop me off.

The gears in my brain continued to churn from there. They went on like that for the rest of the weekend—through the ball, which was a blur, through late into the night when I was staring at the ceiling before and in between nightmares, and all day Sunday until the evening when I was in the library sitting in my favorite high-up, candelabra chair. As I perched above the ground, sunk into the squish of the seat with required class reading strewn over my lap, I came to a decision in regards to my spot on the Seven Suns. I was going to fight for it.

I couldn’t control a lot of things that were happening right now—SJ’s problem with me, Jason’s eventual fate, Daniel’s betrayal of my trust. But I could control this. I had a lot of bad eating away at me and I was going to fight for this bright spot. Everyone needed a light in their tunnel, and I was going to protect this one. Because at the moment, it was my only saving grace in a world I was becoming a stranger to.