Pennyroyal Academy by M.A. Larson

snarled Liverwort.
    â€œYes, of course, I’m sorry. But I wasn’t really doing anything at all, when this pig started following me. It wouldn’t leave me alone. It started screaming and thrashing about and . . . I don’t know what happened, but suddenly it was a boy.”
    â€œAnd it is your contention that you’d never seen Prince Forbes before that instance.”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œMmm . . .” She moved some sealing wax sticks out of the path of the slow-moving ink. “Although your role in curing a cadet of such respected pedigree was indeed helpful, your astonishing ignorance is not. Perhaps we might consider that curing Prince Forbes was the reason the Fates brought you to us.”
    â€œBut . . . that can’t be right . . .”
    Beatrice stood and swept around her desk, where she picked up a quill and fished through the clutter for a specific parchment. Liverwort took the opportunity to begin sopping up the ink. She found the parchment Beatrice was searching for and handed it to her.
How can someone as poised and impressive as Princess Beatrice have such a mess for an office?
thought Evie.
    â€œCadet, my task this year has been made infinitely more complex by the fact that I must now sift the Warrior Princess from the rest of the silt. You, if you’ll forgive my frankness, are silt. Therefore, I see little reason for you to continue on here at the Academy.”
    â€œThat would’ve been my advice, too, Mum,” said Liverwort.
    Beatrice scrawled her signature across the bottom of the parchment, then looked up as though surprised to see Evie still sitting there. “You have been discharged. You may go.”
    â€œNo!” shouted Evie, surprising even herself as she sprang to her feet. Any thought of caution was viciously drowned in adrenaline. “You can’t send me away!”
    â€œYou little whelp!” snarled Liverwort, creeping forward. Beatrice again raised a hand to stop her. Liverwort glared at Evie, but retreated to her position near the bookcase.
    â€œI understand how difficult this must be,” said Beatrice. “You’ve traveled a great distance to come here and are no doubt intoxicated by what you have so far seen. But once you’re home again, you’ll find that—”
    â€œI don’t care if I’m a bloody Warrior Princess or not, but I can say for certain that I’m not here just to help some poxy prince!” Her green eyes flashed with righteous anger. “I didn’t know what a princess was until I came here, that’s true. I didn’t know until you said it the other night. And had I understood it meant fighting witches, I never would have come in the first place. But if you’re telling me the only reason the Fates brought me here was to turn that pig into a prince, then you’ll stop me from ever knowing the real reason.” She hadn’t expected any of this to come out, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her own future being tied to someone she had only just met, someone who had been walking on four legs only hours earlier.
    Beatrice dropped her quill into an ink-stained cup with a clink. Her lips were pursed, her eyes sharp. Evie couldn’t tell if she was deep in thought or fighting the urge to leap across the desk with strangling fingers.
    â€œPlease, Headmistress,” she continued, softening her tone. “I know I don’t know much, but I do know compassion. And I’ve—” She choked on her words, but forced herself to spit them out. “I’ve seen a witch. I looked into her eyes and I know that fear, and I don’t ever want anyone to feel it again.” The three little girls from Marburg flashed through her mind, dancing with such innocence and joy. If protecting them from the horrors she had felt in that cottage meant staying here to face her greatest fear, then the price was