Page 4 of The Princess of Portals

I took the train to the Castle. By the time I made it to the dining hall, the Castle staff had already cleared away the food trays. Fortunately for me and my empty stomach, my friends had saved some lunch for me.

Dante snickered at me as I grabbed my salad and proceeded to devour it. “Nice of you to finally join us, Princess Polymage. Nevada told us you were going to miss lunch.”

I glanced at my best friend. “I didn’t say that I’d miss lunch.”

Nevada shrugged. “I knew you’d be late. You get distracted when you work.”

“Work, Savi?” Mischief twinkled in Dante’s eyes. “Really? You didn’t get your fill of work this morning, loading up supplies for the Watchers?”

“I was helping someone in need.”

“A girl came to her, begging for help,” Nevada told him.

“So it was an act of mercy.”

“You could say that,” I said cautiously.

Dante jumped onto his chair, waved a dramatic hand in the air, and lifted his voice to the ceiling. “The noble Savannah Winters, Apprentice extraordinaire and my dear sister! Not even a Knight, and already she’s embarking on grand adventures!”

Everyone in the dining hall was looking at us, which was, of course, exactly why Dante had done it. Like all brothers, he just loved mortifying his sister. I was tempted to throw a cherry tomato at his head in retaliation, but he’d probably just catch it in his mouth. So I simply endured in silence, quietly plotting my revenge. It would be sweet. And he’d never see it coming.

“What kind of grand adventures are you embarking on this time, Savannah?”

Ansel’s quiet question was a welcome distraction from my brother’s shenanigans. Dante was still standing on his chair, conjuring up a storm of melodrama. In that way, he was the exact opposite of me. He loved being the center of attention. I hated it.

“I’m looking for a girl’s lost father,” I said.

“A missing person’s Quest? Isn’t that a little too boring for you?” Ansel chuckled.

“It’s not as boring as you’d think. Yara’s dad was dead. And then he wasn’t.”

Dante jumped down, his bottom landing smoothly in his chair. “So it’s a missing zombie Quest? That is interesting. Maybe I’ll come along and help you after all.”

“There’s no evidence that Yara’s dad is a zombie.”

“Is there evidence that he’s not a zombie?”

“No.”

Dante grinned. I rolled my eyes at him. Only Dante would be excited at the prospect of hunting down zombies.

“You know, most people run away from danger, not toward it,” I told him.

An amused chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Not people in our family, Savi.”

He was right. I chased down Cursed Ones. Dante dreamt of hunting zombies. There was something seriously weird about our family.

“You are so brave, Dante.”

I blinked. While I’d been daydreaming about reckless adventures, one of the Apprentices had materialized on the other side of Dante, and she was giving him the biggest pair of googly eyes that I’d ever seen. Oh, boy.

“Does anything scare you?” The Apprentice added some eyelash flutters to the googly eyes.

I was pretty sure her name was Sophia. I always mixed her up with her best friend Sophie. They were both tall, blonde, tan, and sporty.

“Of course not. Dante’s a Metamorph.”

Oh, there was Sophie now. She was serenading my brother with the same googly-eye-eyelash-flutters as Sophia.