I stayed up well past midnight working on Ashyr's chores and history project. Dragging myself out of bed the next morning was like hiking up a mountain backward, but I kept telling myself that it was only temporary. I could do anything for four more days.

School, work, Ashyr's homework and chores, then repeat it all over again for three painfully long days. When I left school on the fourth day, I was half asleep and struggling to keep up with Tawny's monologue about dragon biology and how it influenced their uniquely draconic instincts. It was okay, though. Even if I fell asleep at work or completely screwed up Ashyr's math homework, it wouldn't matter. Either one of the dragons would choose me tomorrow and I wouldn't be around long enough to suffer the consequences, or none of them would choose me and I would be too dead tired to care about the consequences.

I spotted Ashyr and her friends laughing by a willow tree near the school gate. I kept my head down as we walked towards them, hoping Ashyr wouldn't get 'embarrassed' and then punish me by telling our parents about my work to get me grounded.

"You seem pale. Is something bothering you?" Tawny asked.

I shook my head, fingering my necklace as we came within ten feet of Ashyr's group. We were almost through the gate when I dared to relax a little. Maybe they hadn't noticed me, or-

"Ella!" I'd never properly met the owner of the voice calling my name, but I'd heard her enough times on the family mirror to know she was one of Ashyr's friends.

Reluctantly, I stopped and turned around.

She ran up to me with Ashyr and a couple of other elent girls. They all had their wands behind their ears.

"Yeah?" I asked, forcing myself to relax the death grip I had on my necklace.

The girl who'd called to me flicked raven locks out of her face. "Ashyr says you can do this cool flying thing, like as a bird and stuff?"

Ashyr winced, but she wasn't really looking at me.

Tawny scoffed. "You do not need to flaunt your powers in front of a group of adolescent elents." She tried to take my arm and lead me away.

I brushed her off. If my sister wanted me to entertain her friends, I wasn't going to risk upsetting her and getting grounded tomorrow. "You want me to do it, Ash?"

"Y-yeah."

I let go of my necklace and plumbed the depths of my memory for a hawk's magical name. It took a while for my exhausted brain to dig it up, but I managed it at last. "Hawer Briskeni Telmar." My alabri glowed bright red. In seconds, my limbs resembled large feathered wings and chicken legs. I was starting to shrink when Ashyr's raven-haired friend shouted for me to stop.

I released the magic back into my alabri and turned talme again. "What?"

"That crystal, is it real amillian?"

I touched the red gem. "Yeah." Why did she care about my jewelry? It would disappear as soon as I transformed.

"Ooh, I have to have it. Father won't buy me one until I stop losing prip. Like, who even cares about dumb old school books, anyway?" She elbowed Ashyr. "Come on, tell your servant to give it to me."

Ashyr knew how much this necklace meant to me. There was no way she could seriously expect me to give it up, but she still had the gall to give me a pleading look.

It took every fiber of self control in my body not to strangle her. "I lied. It's fake, but I wanted to sound cool, so I just said it's real. It's not worth stealing."

She smirked like she didn't believe me. "If it isn't worth anything, you'll have no trouble handing it over."

"It has sentimental value."

Rolling her eyes, she poked Ashyr with her wand. "Tell her you'll fire her if she doesn't hand it over."

"You heard her." Ashyr shrugged uncomfortably. "It's fake, why do you even want it?"

"She wouldn't care this much if it was fake. Make her give it to me."

She kicked at the dirt. "Please leave it, Trilla."

"No, I'm not leaving a real life amillian crystal in the hands of a filthy talme servant. Either take it, or I'll take it myself." Trilla flicked her wand at me, sending random sparks in my direction.

Tawny moved closer, hands cupping her alabri. "You cannot take whatever you want solely because you're an arrogant-"

Ashyr drew a quick rune in the air, and a thin vine shot out of the ground to bind my wrists in place. I jerked forward to grab my necklace pendants in both hands. They would have to cut them off if they wanted my necklace.

Tawny pulled at the vine and tried to pry it off my wrists. Ashyr drew another rune that made the vine split in two to worm its way into my clenched fists.

Did she honestly think I'd take this lying down? I kicked her in the shin, hard enough that she dropped her wand. Snatching the wand up with my tail, I ripped my hands from the quickly-dying vines and took off running. At first, I wanted to throw the wand into the road and watch it get run over, but as angry as I was, I wasn't stupid. Wands were way more expensive than alabris, and I didn't want to spend the next ten years repaying her.

So I sprinted toward home in the vain hope that I could hide the wand in Ashyr's room before she got home and pretend it'd been there all along when she inevitably accused me of stealing it.

"They're not pursuing," Tawny said as we ran.

I kept quiet, preferring to conserve my strength for running. She easily kept up with me, and in almost no time at all, we were on my front steps. I charged through the front door, just in time to see Ashyr talking with Father in the living room. How did she possibly get home before me?

"Give that to me," Father shouted, "and go to your room."

For a horrible second, I thought he was talking about my necklace, but then I realized I was still holding Ashyr's wand.

I quickly handed it over. "She was-"

"No excuses!" He raised his hand as if to strike. His gaze flashed to Tawny, and he lowered his hand. "You need to go home."

She gave me a sympathetic look before retreating out the front door.

"Of all the things you could have done," Father continued in the same huge voice, "stealing a wand? What were you going to do with it—burn the house down?" He gave Ashyr's wand to her, but she stuck around to watch the show.

"I'm a talme. How the prip am I supposed to burn the house down with a wand?"

"You would-" His face screwed up in an expression of fury and something else I couldn't quite place. "Don't use that kind of language with me, missy. Go to your room. You're grounded for a month."