I had slept for four hours, and it was entirely Arthur's fault, and I'd decided to win anyway.
The academy lake lay grey and flat under a winter sky, so still that the far shore hung upside down in it. Mythos had built a hundred and twenty short wooden piers along its western bank for the morning, one for each captain, with a number painted on every post in crimson. Mine was forty-four. The stands had been raised along the eastern shore, three hundred metres across the water, and they were full.
I found him in about two seconds. Front row. Of course.
Ray-Ray was sitting next to him.
She'd seen me looking. She smiled at me across three hundred metres of lake, very sweetly, and waved.
I smiled back. Then I lifted two fingers to my lips and blew a kiss—not to her, past her, to the boy beside her—and watched her smile go fixed at the corners even from that distance.
Library, Ray-Ray. Library.
I felt much better.
