Page 87 of The Princess of Portals

“Nothing, as in there’s no magic to see. Because the ball isn’t magical.”

“It’s all lit up.”

“So are the ceiling lights.” Killjoy pointed up at the electrical lights overhead.

I resisted the urge to growl. It wasn’t Killjoy’s fault that the world had gone wonky. “This doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Masked Metamorph go through all the effort to break into the Monolith, a treasure trove of powerful magical objects, just to steal a mundane ball?”

Killjoy shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea, Savannah.”

Ok, moving on to plan B. Or whatever plan we were on by now. Probably plan X.

I held my hand out to Kato. “Could I borrow that?”

Kato looked at the ball in his hand, then at me. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to give it to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to give it to you.” Kato clutched the ball harder.

Why me? Seriously, why me? I took a deep breath and counted down from ten. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help at all.

“I acknowledge that you don’t want to hand me the ball, Kato,” I said. “But sometimes a Knight must make sacrifices for the greater good.”

“And what greater good would that be, Seven? You just want to play with the ball.”

Killjoy chuckled.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Thanks for the assist.”

“I’m not sure how I can assist you, Savannah. If you can’t convince Kato to part with that ball, I fear no one can.”

I took another deep breath, and then, this time when I spoke, instead of soothing, I went for steely. “Hand it over, Kato.”

He didn’t.

So I tried to take it from him. He evaded me easily, then tossed the ball over my head to Conner. I pivoted and tried to take the ball from him. Conner tossed it back to Kato. Again and again, back and forth the ball went between Conner and Kato. They were both in on this together. They were collectively obsessed with holding on to this weird ball, and I hadn’t the faintest idea why. It would be almost comical if they weren’t acting so strangely.

Growling, I marched up Conner, determined to retrieve the ball this time. Magic flared up around him in a fiery halo. Well, that had certainly escalated fast.

“Sorry, Red. We aren’t giving it up.”

Then he and Kato turned and walked out of the room.

I looked at Killjoy. “The Masked Metamorph clearly did something to them. They aren’t themselves. We need to figure out what he did. We need to fix this.”

EPISODE 6

MASQUERADE

CHAPTER 1

THE MASQUERADE BALL

The day had finally come. In a few minutes, I would arrive at the Masquerade Ball. By the end of the evening, I’d be a Knight. I’d come to the Castle three weeks ago, but this journey had begun long before that. I felt like I’d been preparing for this my whole life.