Albína has a bath waiting for me, but I have no time to relax because she won't stop knocking on the door, rushing me. Everything hurts. I smell like a barn and want a nap—a long one. As soon as I emerge she guides me to a little table that has a tall, powder-blue, four-armed creature standing next to it.

"This is Freja. She's going to give you a..." Albína pauses, trying to find the right word. After a moment, she gives up and says, "She'll rub your sore muscles. She and you will be working together every day because your training is so intense."

"Massage," I offer.

"Yes. That's it. Massage. Thank you. I'll be staying in the room because Freja doesn't speak English. Let me know if you need anything."

Freja's quite a bit taller than I am and has a thick blue tail peeking from under her long white robes that are so thin they should be transparent. She has no hair and no visible ears or nose. Her only features are two sphere-shaped dark eyes on the sides of her head, a mouth that looks like a sideways beak and two long, wiggly antennae. Her head reminds me of a praying mantis or an alien.

Freja's four warm hands touch my shoulders and I'm out. I wake up some time later lying on my back. I'd been so deeply asleep, I don't remember rolling over. My foggy brain barely manages to communicate with my wobbly legs when I follow Albína to the table with my lunch on it. I feel surprisingly better after I eat. My legs and back are still stiff, but my little nap helped refresh me.

Jonah appears standing near my closet with his back to me. "Jonah!" I run over, but I pass right through him and hit the wall of my closet.

"What are you doing?" Albína yells from across the room.

"Jonah?" I ask weakly. I can see his wide red eyes glowing brightly under his hood but he doesn't acknowledge me.

"Who are you talking to?" she asks calmly.

I point up at Jonah and look at her. "Him."

She looks to where I'm pointing and then at a rectangular blue diamond that's glowing brightly on my nightstand. She picks it up and shrieks.

Jonah's eyes widen with concern when he turns to her. "What's the matter?" he asks.

It hurts my feelings that he doesn't say hello to me.

Albína points in my direction. "She saw you."

He squints his eyes at her. "I don't understand."

She hands me the blue diamond that's the size of my palm and Jonah's image realigns to face me.

"What's going on, Agatha?" He sounds confused and worried.

"I don't know. Why didn't you talk to me, or at least say hello?"

"When?"

"When you showed up. When did you get here?"

His eyes slant like he's angry, but I think he's just confused. "When I showed up? I'm not here. Or there, I mean...I'm using this." He holds up a blue diamond like the one I'm holding.

"I don't understand."

"I don't either. You saw me without holding the pareixer?"

"The what?"

"This is a pareixer semmigag. It's like a phone. I hold it and think of you and yours lights up. You hold it and I appear."

"But I wasn't holding it."

His eyes are dim slits but I can still see his orangey-red pupils sliding back and forth. "I don't understand how you could've seen me. Don't tell anybody about this until we can study it further. Who else is in the room?"

"Just Albína."

"Let me talk to her."

I give the pareixer to her and they engage in a lengthy debate on who should know about what just happened. Albína agrees to keep quiet for now, even though she doesn't like keeping secrets from the Queen. Then she hands me the rectangular blue diamond. It's the width of my palm, but narrow enough for me to close my fingers around it. His image adjusts to face me, and Albína goes to her room.

He smiles at me. All the weirdness is behind us. I'm so happy to have a friend to talk to.

"I was just checking to see how you are doing."

"You know, a lot of people would be freaked out when the Grim Reaper randomly appears in their bedroom," I say with a grin.

"Are you freaked out?"

"Of course not. It's kind of funny because you popped up in a weird place."

Jonah smiles. "I was hoping to catch you at lunch. Just wanted to see how it's going."

The shred of good mood I had vanishes. I press my lips together so I won't complain. I walk back to the table to buy myself some time. I don't want him to see me upset.

Jonah grabs a chair from wherever he is and sits next to me at the table. I smile. "It's like you're here with me."

"I'm always with you."

That makes my smile disappear. I feel like I've let him down by failing so miserably at all this Knight stuff. I feel so guilty I can barely look at him. "Master Sarpedon is waiting. He's going to be mad if I'm late."

"Master Sarpedon is never mad."

I wrinkle my nose at him. "You know what I mean. I don't have time now. I'm going to get in trouble. I'll talk to you later."

I put the pareixer on the table, but Jonah doesn't disappear. And because he knows where I'm sitting, he stares at me with concerned eyes.

I crack and pick up the pareixer. "That's not fair."

He shrugs.

He's going to hound me until I tell him what's going on. Only, I don't know what to tell him because I don't understand it myself. I take a deep breath. "Fine! I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it. I am not a Knight."

He doesn't move. I was hoping for some kind of reaction but he's so still I thought the image froze or something, but then he blinks, which means he's waiting for more.

"You grabbed the wrong girl. I'm sure you've noticed that I can't run, or jump, or hold my arms up for more than a minute. I'm pathetic by average human standards. In fact, it would take a lot of hard work for me to reach the level of average. I should've said something sooner, but I liked being special. I know it was a lie, but I didn't think I was hurting anyone. I'm sorry. I see now how important this is and I shouldn't have been so selfish. But I liked it here. I liked you and Dathid. And all the cool stuff."

I take another breath and whisper, "I'm sorry I lied."

He leans back and folds his arms across his chest. "Are you saying you are lying now, or are you confessing to lying earlier?"

That was like a blast of cold air across my brain. There's nothing like pouring my heart out and then not being understood. "Earlier. I'm telling the truth now."

"You believe you are not a Knight?"

"I think everyone believes I'm not a Knight."

"But you agreed after your voyage."

"I didn't tell you everything about the voyage, though."

"What did you need to tell me?"

Tears form in the corners of my eyes. My voice shakes when I admit, "I'm all doubt and fear. That's it. I had some trust, but she was scrawny and pathetic."

"If you only consisted of doubt and fear you wouldn't be here. What are you leaving out?"

"Nothing. Just fear and doubt."

"Then why did you leave Queens in the first place?"

"Because I was more scared of Auntie and Uncle than I was of you."

Jonah shakes his head. "I think you are lying now because you are beginning to understand how difficult this is going to be."

The tears fall. I can't believe I bared my soul and he just called me a liar. "No, seriously, I'm not the right girl."

"Agatha, not only were you in possession of the Orb, you are one of very few humans who can see me. You were held prisoner by Stratagor Ziras. You were attacked by Lord Duradin. Your mother was a Knight. I'm sorry, but you are a Knight. Now, who else did you see during your voyage?"

I force the tears to stop and stare at the remains of my lunch. "I can't do this, Jonah. I don't know how those things came to be, but I'm not the right one. Some kind of mistake has happened. Maybe my name's not even Agatha. Maybe Auntie lost the real Agatha and replaced her with me. That's why the Orb doesn't work."

"You have doubts and fears, but something else within you is stronger than both. Who else was there?"

I peel a flaky nail then bend it at the weak point. "Courage," I mumble.

Jonah laughs. "I knew it," he says smugly. "Agatha, the fact that you survived as well as you did for as long as you did shows you have a tremendous capability to adapt. You feel the fear and you have the doubts, but your courage pulls you through every time."

I shake my head.

"I'm sorry, Agatha. One of the fundamentals of being a Knight is courage. And everyone has witnessed it. I regret to inform you that you are a Knight. Your training is going to be difficult, but fall back on what you know and you will succeed."

He's smiling at me. He wants me to tell him that he's right. "I don't know anymore," I say with a sigh. "Sometimes I think you guys might be right, but then I try something Knightly and fail miserably. All I've ever known was fear. I was afraid at school and I was afraid at home. No one ever believed in me. No one ever noticed me long enough to form any opinion about me at all. This is so important, and I'm scared. What will happen to me if I fail completely?"

"Agatha," Jonah says, slouching down to put his face close to mine. "You are forgetting something very important. You are not alone. You have supporters you haven't even met yet. Just do your best and everything will happen as it should."

"The Queen is not a supporter. She loves to tell me how bad I am at everything and what a disappointment I am."

"Ekecheiria has her doubts, mainly because you're human and you arrived with Dathid. But just because she's royalty doesn't give her the right to judge you. Prove her wrong. The faeries would love that," he says with a smile.

"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you."

He smiles. "Your resilience is astounding."