I dressed, checked the result in the mirror, and did a slow squat to test my range of motion. Then a lunge. Then, on an impulse, a clean forward bend with my palms flat on the floor. This body was more flexible than I expected. Lighter, too. Different muscle memory—the real Ava clearly hadn't trained in any physical discipline—but the underlying joints were supple, the spine long and mobile.
I wonder if I can do a somersault.
A knock at the door stopped me mid-thought. "It's Drew. Breakfast."
I opened the door. He was dressed in training clothes—black, silver-trimmed, and already immaculate. He looked at me for a moment with the expression of someone re-calibrating a previous assessment.
"You look different," he said.
"Different good or different bad?"
A pause. He looked away briefly, a faint color rising at the back of his neck. "Good."
"Excellent. Although I'm entirely green. I look like a head of lettuce." I fell into step beside him as we moved toward the dining hall. "A well-tailored lettuce, but still."
He didn't smile, but something in his jaw shifted in a way that I was beginning to recognize as the equivalent.
The dining hall was already half-full, and our arrival was noticed—which I was beginning to accept as an unavoidable feature of existing in this body. I was apparently the kind of person people watched, whether I wanted them to or not. At home, in Maya's life, I had been watched at competitions, but that was deliberate, constructed, performed. This was different. These eyes were calculating.
A young man detached himself from a nearby table and intercepted us before we reached the serving queue. He was handsome in a self-aware way: tall, dark-haired, with the kind of easy smile that comes from years of it working. His green apprentice clothes were cut expensively, the collar embroidered with a small crest.
"Lady Ava," he said, directing the full force of the smile at me and acknowledging Drew with the bare minimum of a glance. "I noticed you slept in your own room last night. As a fellow Wood apprentice, I think we should support one another. I'm offering my room as well, naturally—the Wood element works best in a community, or so I'm told." The smile widened. "I'm Malcolm Crawford, North Arey County. Level Three apprentice."
I looked at him with polite blankness. "And there are five levels total?"
"That's right."
"And there are currently no Level Five Wood apprentices?"
A flicker of surprise—he hadn't expected the question. "Not at the moment."
"I see." I smiled pleasantly. "Goodbye, Malcolm."
I walked past him toward the queue. Drew followed, and I noticed he positioned himself between me and Malcolm's side of the room without making any obvious point of it—just a quiet, physical shift in the geography.
"I didn't know how to warn you about that one," Drew said, once we were out of earshot.
"You handled it."
"I was trying to figure out what to call you," I admitted. "Duke Porter? Lord Drew? Just Drew? I can't call you 'boyfriend' yet; that would be premature—" I stopped. "Although technically we are engaged. Which is strange."
"Call me whatever you want," he said, for the second time in two days.
"How very open-minded of you."