Page 94 of The Princess of Portals

“But—”

“Report to the Citadel immediately.”

Kato and Conner just stood there and stared at me.

“Immediately.”

Kato set his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Seven.” Then he turned and walked away.

“Wait. You can’t go. You swore an oath to the Knights.”

Conner clasped my hands in his. “We swore an oath to the League first.”

Then he hurried to catch up to Kato. They took a few steps, side-by-side, then they faded from sight.

CHAPTER 3

THE TRAITOR

Ijust stood there, for who knows how long, staring at the exact spot where Kato and Conner had been just before they disappeared. I might have continued standing there all night if a squad of commandos hadn’t burst through the door.

“Savannah Winters.”

That snapped me out of it. I looked at the commando who’d spoken. He wore a black beret. He was huge—at least half a meter taller than me. And he had a funny mustache.

I gave him and his fellow commandos a wary look. “Why did you come here?”

“For you.”

The commandos moved to surround me. They had swords, but they didn’t draw them. Instead, they held ropes in their hands. So they were here to capture me, not kill me.

Oh, no. Not this time. Not today. I’d been through far too much crap lately to be captured by a squad of muscle men.

They had ropes. So what? Whoopty-flipping-doo. I had ropes too.

I clicked my tongue. The vines outside the building stirred. They shot through the windows of the library, shattering them. The vines, each one as thick as my arm but far more pliable, snapped around the commandos’ arms, legs, torsos...all the way up their faces. I stopped the vines just short of their eyes.

Then I strode toward the commando with the funny mustache. “Who sent you? Who are you working for?”

He made a few incomprehensible noises. Oops. I’d forgotten to remove the vine around his mouth. I did that now.

Then I met his eyes. “Who sent you? Who are you working for?” I asked again.

The commando’s wide eyes tracked the moving vines. “Melanie Meyer.”

“Governor Meyer sent you to abduct me?” I said, shocked.

“Yes.”

“Governor Meyer is the one who’s been working with Fenris?”

“Yes.”

We’d known there was still a traitor out there, someone high up in the Gaian Government, but Melanie Meyer? No freaking way. I wouldn’t have guessed that, not in a million years. She was just so…nice.

Melanie Meyer had helped Fenris. She’d traded the Apprentices to him in exchange for a few supplies? My brain was having trouble processing that. Melanie Meyer had helped me. She’d protected me from the General.

Or had she? Maybe she’d only kept me from being thrown out of the Apprentice Program in order to maximize the number of Apprentices she could sell to Fenris. Fenris’s mercenaries had tried to abduct us all from the Conference Center. Melanie Meyer must have told them where we were.