The Great Hall filled with applause as Julienne, Nori, Akando, and Oliver took the stage.

  “The top of this year’s class,” Aubergine announced as he walked up to Julienne, holding a little brown bowl of yellow goop. “Julienne Allard.”

  Julienne bowed to Aubergine and took a spoonful. By the third and final spoonful, the orange kalypo fibers of his jacket started to soften like a rising sun. The color shimmered, becoming increasingly yellow with each wave. Finally, once it settled on a pale yellow, the great hall filled with twice as much applause. He turned to face the crowd, bowing to his uncle and great aunt. Uncle Julienne didn’t clap—he only nodded his approval. Meanwhile, Great Aunt Julienne whooped and hollered.

  “Nori Harper,” Aubergine announced.

  Nori’s parents might not have been there, but Archie’s parents produced more noise and cheer than the Harpers ever would. Adelaide led the applause, standing up and filling the great hall with her thunderous claps.

  “I didn’t know a Harper was here,” Prince Waldorf grumbled.

  “Congratulations on second place,” Julienne chided as Nori ate from her bowl.

  “Count up all five sections and then talk to me,” she growled back through a performative smile. She bowed to the rest of the great hall as her jacket turned yellow. Somewhere in the back of the room, unseen by anyone, Tataki slipped outside.

  “Akando,” Aubergine announced. Archie waited for a last name that never came.

  Akando ate from the bowl and bowed to a warm, controlled applause.

  And then…

  “And our final Yellow Jacket, Oliver Durtnell.”

  Oliver emptied the entire contents of the bowl in one bite, got halfway through eating, and yelled with his mouth full, “Oliver, baby!”

  Those who knew Oliver clapped. Those who really knew him booed. Even Colby joined in.

  “Another round of applause for our Yellow Jackets!” Aubergine declared. Everyone clapped. He waited until the crowd died down before proceeding. “Now, those who have earned two stripes, please come up.”

  The students lined up in order of their scores, Archie standing next to Barley. As Aubergine rambled on about how proud he was of the improvements everyone made, Archie nudged Barley and whispered to him.

  “Going back to Khala, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Barley adjusted his jacket and softly winced. “It’ll be weird. I feel like I’m going back as a different person.”

  Archie nodded and smiled, considering the words.

  “Wait, you’re going back?” Blanche asked from the other side of Barley.

  “Just for the summer,” Barley answered.

  “Wait, I might want to go,” Blanche said as Aubergine awarded Yarrow.

  “Really?” Archie asked. From what he knew, Khala was cold and quiet and full of hiking and covered in pastures and rocky ground and made for hard living. It was everything Blanche wasn’t.

  Blanche nodded. “Well, you know each academy has one exam section that’s unique to it. So like ours is the assigned cooking one. Well, you can choose to take another academy’s section. Khala does foraging. I might actually be able to do that one.”

  Barley smiled. “You’re more than welcome to come.”

  The crowd applauded Mindy as Archie had a strange, strange thought. He opened his mouth to speak it, but before he could start, Aubergine stepped in front of him.

  “Archie Kent!” he declared as he held up a tray.

  Archie took two little bars that looked like chocolate but tasted like dirt and wondered why they couldn’t have made them more palatable. He swallowed, and two black lines appeared on his right sleeve.

  At the start of the year, the thought of not earning a yellow jacket would have sent him spiraling. But looking down at all of his friends and his parents, he thought of it only as a minor setback. He had a lot of life left to live, and he knew he’d achieve his own kind of greatness with it.

  He smiled and bowed.

  The festivities took them late into the night before Aubergine finally called the feast over, but that didn’t stop the party. Everyone in the great hall migrated down to the lounge, and while they ate and drank and laughed, Archie found himself alone with his father out on the balcony. They talked for a while about nothing, then they got quiet. The silence became deliberate, the two Kents reflecting on everything that had happened.

  And then, Arty broke the silence.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about…identity. How troubling it can be to try to define yourself. How false. Isn’t it funny how many versions of us there are? I mean, take you, for example. You are one person, yes, but how many yous are there? Is the you that Nori sees the same as the you that I see? That your mom sees? That you see?”

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  Arty leaned back and looked up at the night sky. Distant stars cast dim light and dark shadows across his face, but Archie could read his every expression.

  “To Nori, you’re a friend. Maybe more.”

  Archie shifted in his seat.

  “To Chandler, you’re a hero. To Rowan, you’re an unmanageable teenager—”

  “He said that?”

  “I told you, he told me everything.” They shared a quick laugh. “To one teacher, you might be an unmotivated student who needs to apply himself. To another, you might be a young man burning with determination and all the talent in the world. To one of your classmates, you might be the quiet one. To another, you’re the funny one. And then there’s another, perhaps one that you hardly notice, that thinks of you as the mean one. All of these different shades, all coming together to form your true color. But none of us can grasp it.”

  He took a long, quiet breath.

  “And then there’s the version of you in your own mind. The way you’ve defined yourself. You might think that’s the real you, but it only exists from your perspective. Oftentimes, it might be the most untrue version of yourself. It can be so hard to know yourself when you’re shackled down by who you thought you were. You might change and never realize it.”

  Arty rubbed his eyebrow in a brief moment of reflection.

  “That’s how I was. I thought I was one way and that I would always be that way. I thought my entire life was predetermined. I put myself into a box and told myself there were no pastures to roam. No worlds to explore. Just the definition of myself that had been preordained.”

  “Predestination,” Archie interrupted. He thought back to his birthday so long ago in Ambrosia City. “You said you didn’t believe in it!”

  Arty shook his head and laughed. “What kind of father would I be if I told my son that nothing he did mattered? That someone had decided long ago how his life would go—and it probably wouldn’t go well—and that he should just go along for the ride? Of course I told you I didn’t believe in it. Even if I really did. I thought all of the terrible things that happened were just the way my life was and always would be.”

  Arty took a deep breath and smiled, full of life. “And then you manifested. I saw a divine kindness in that. It was your manifestation, but it was my sign. A reminder of the grand possibilities of life. An undeniably good thing in a life that I thought had little good left to be lived. It revived me. You revived me, Archie.”

  He snapped a finger, producing a foot-tall twirling pillar of flame that burned as he spoke. Archie flinched with amazement. Fire conjuration wasn’t just advanced for an Orange Jacket. There were Black Jackets that had never mastered the feat.

  “Twenty years without being able to do much with essence at all. I had defined a version of myself in my mind, made of all my worries and shames and nightmares. I never thought to try to move past it. Now look at me.”

  He snapped his finger, extinguishing the flame.

  “You know, I think we aren’t meant to be defined. I think we’re meant to be discovered. Explored through the actions we take. We are beings of infinite possibilities. Those fragments of us that others hold in their minds…even if you put them all together, you wouldn’t find your true self. Because your true self is something that can change in a single moment. In a single action. And that’s a beautiful thing.”

  There was a brief, warm silence. Starlight glistened on Arty’s cheeks.

  “You were that moment, Archie. You gave me that.”

  Archie reached through the darkness of night to grab his father’s forearm. Arty clasped his other hand around Archie’s.

  “I’m so excited for you to come home for the summer,” Arty said. He sniffed and brought the energy of excitement into his voice. “Everyone’s excited. Everyone in Sain can’t wait to try your cooking. It’ll be like the good old days. The ones me and you never got. Everyone in Sain coming down to Petrichor to see what the Kents are cooking.”

  Archie smiled at the thought.

  But he didn’t smile as much as he thought he would. For years, it was all he wanted. But now, faced with what he had always assumed was his destiny, he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t more enthusiastic.

  They sat in silence for a bit, Archie considering his father’s words. And then he realized something.

  The definition of him that his father saw wasn’t the true definition. It might have been true at one point, but over the last year, Archie’s life had changed in ways he could have never imagined. He had changed. He had formed friendships and tackled hardships and developed talents and desires that had been missing all of his life.

  He wasn’t Archie Kent, the legacy-obsessed boy who yearned for a past that he had never gotten to experience. Whose only ambition was the restoration of the family name.

  He was just Archie. A boy that had much to figure out about life, but knew enough to know that he was one of the luckiest people in the world. He had been blessed with magic. A riches of friends. A world of opportunity.

  He had been given a gift, and he wanted to give it back.

  He leaned back and looked up at the moon.

  “I’m not coming home this summer,” he said.

  Arty turned. The dim starlight provided just enough light for Archie to recognize his father’s signature gaze. Serious, but not stern. Comforting, but not lacking in importance. Intense. Alert. Narrowed eyebrows that compelled a question of Archie, but a slight smile that told Archie that he’d be happy with any answer.

  “I love Petrichor with all my heart,” Archie said. He nodded out to the horizon. “But there’s a lot of world out there. And I think…I think I can do some good.”

  Arty turned back, resting in his seat. He rubbed his son’s shoulder and joined him in looking out into the distance.

  “I’m so proud of you,” he said.

  A chorus of cheers came from the lounge behind them. Nori’s voice rang out.

  “Archie, come on! Oliver’s making drinks!”

  Arty and Archie laughed together, and then Arty stood.

  “Come on. I gotta get your mom out of here. One drink and she’ll want to stay until morning.”

  Archie smiled and chuckled. “Yeah. Go ahead. I’ll just be a second.”

  “Really, Archie. I’m proud of you.” Arty patted Archie on the back and joined the others in the lounge.

  Archie closed his eyes, enjoying the cold night breeze as it hit his cheek. He listened to the sweet lullaby of crickets and the gentle lapping waves of the distant lake and the rustling forest and the chattering of students. Through closed eyes, he saw the greenhouse and the blueberry bushes and The Serving Bowl and Lifted Spirits and Cafe Julienne and all the Academy’s kitchens and the flour targets and the little stove in the attic and Chandler laughing and playing in The Gift as Rowan tried to convince her that it was bedtime.

  He breathed the night air in deep. And then, before going off to join the party, he said something just for himself.

  “I’m proud of me, too.”

  End of Book One: The Academy of Ambrosia

  The journey will resume with Book Two: The Summer of Legends