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Tyler texted Mom and Dad that he was staying late to help me go through boxes, so they wouldn’t wait up for him at the other house, then we got to work.

Ayric and I were still perched on stools at the kitchen island, eating our second slices of pizza, when Tyler and Mav re-entered the kitchen. They’d been tearing open boxes and shoving them around upstairs so furiously for the past few minutes, it had sounded like a herd of elephants upstairs.

The moment we stop fighting, we have already lost.

“I believe you simply write in the book,” Ayric said, “and your words will send me back to fulfill what you have written. The story I was told in childhood was not detailed on the particular process.”

Something twisted in my chest at the way Mav’s eyes were looking at me, but I pushed it aside—now wasn’t the time for those feelings again.

Mav laughed. “You’re kidding, right? One book to rule them all? This guy copied his dramatic story straight from—”

“What have you done?” Ayric leaped for the book, but froze with his fingers inches from it, then stared up at me in horror. “You could have damaged it! Do you not understand what—“ His fingers hovered above the book. “I should not touch it. You are the Guardian. Please... please remove it from the floor.”

My heart lurched. I still didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed bad. Was it bad? Was it my fault?

I gasped as I took in my new surroundings. What the—

Tyler followed me into Gramps’ office.

I packed my unmentionables into a spare gym bag while Tyler and Mav were distracted boxing up my books.

I didn’t feel awkward about holding Mav’s hand until we got closer to the house and Tyler’s eyes caught on our clasped fingers.

Mav stood a few feet away as I stared into the line of trees. The sun was setting beyond them, lighting their branches with a golden glow. The huge cypress I’d noticed earlier stood in this line, a few spots from where Gramps’ hole had been dug. Behind the trees sprawled about twenty feet of grass, edged on the far end by a wooden fence—the back end of Gramps’ property. Of my property, if I accepted it.

Three days later, we were standing on my grandfather’s porch, waiting for the moment to bury his ashes. I didn’t know how my parents had him cremated so quickly, and I didn’t ask.

He unfolded a wrinkled yellow paper, the lined kind from a legal pad. Sloppy, scrawled handwriting showed through the back of the page as he read it aloud. “I, Alpheus Salvador, do hereby bequeath my full estate—including my house, land, and all my possessions therein, to my granddaughter, Nadia Amante. Nadia, the inheritance is fully yours, upon the following conditions...”

I entered the study to find my parents seated on the plush couch by the window, and some random person at Gramps’ desk.

I sat outside for a solid twenty minutes, fighting with myself over whether I wanted to go back in.

My driver and I arrived at my grandfather’s property ten minutes later, and it surprised me how close he lived to campus. It had been so long since I visited him, I hadn’t realized the proximity. My parents lived farther than he did, twenty minutes in the opposite direction, and I visited them every other weekend, but I hadn’t been here in years.

The girl’s high eyebrows drew down and her perfect smile curved into a frown. “Oh, boo. Next time!” She sashayed away, and Mav’s eyes turned back to me.

The empress raised her arm, her cold eyes glaring out across the—