Chapter 9
“Reeking ash,” hissed Luther as my own knife tilted up against his throat. “She’s got a knife.”
A low cough. “I told you the dragons picked her for a reason.” It was Shep’s voice. The room was dark, only shadows, but I could smell the steel in Luther’s hand, feel his knuckles against my collarbone. “Let’s get out of here, Luther,” Shep urged.
Vanya was sitting upright in bed, covers clutched to her chest. “Yes, get out! What the blazing sun above are you doing?”
Luther exhaled and shoved me back against the bed as he stood up. I was up, knife pointed at him, in a breath.
“I wouldn’t,” he warned.
I was breathing quickly, still not sure what was happening. “I could say the same to you.”
Shep beckoned Luther toward the door. “It’s a pathetic tradition, Miss Miro. To threaten you all on the first night. I apologize. Luther, let’s go.”
“It’s tradition to murder young women in their sleep?” I nearly choked on the words.
Shep was shoving Luther toward the door now. “Rattle you. That’s all it is.”
That didn’t make it okay. And I noticed they hadn’t touched Vanya at all.
“Most girls just scream,” Luther snarled, rubbing his throat. Then, hand on the doorknob, he added, “Watch your back, Miro. Sleeping with a knife isn’t something noblewomen do. Makes me wonder who you really are.”
He ripped open the door and vanished into the hallway, where other deep voices were speaking in hushed tones amid flickering candlelight.
Before he shut the door, Shep glanced over his shoulder at me. “Sorry, ladies. It’s over now.”
Adrenaline kept me awake the rest of the night. When the sky lightened, my eyes were heavy but my muscles kept jumping every time I got close to drifting off to sleep.
A resonant bell struck the hour, signaling it was almost time for my first day of classes at Cardan Lott. And I was exhausted.
As we descended into the common room minutes later, my muscles tensed for more verbal attacks, or worse, someone hauling me from the school because they’d figured out who I was, but everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get out the door for class.
I followed the other students into the wide sunlit hall, Vanya a step ahead of me.
“They want to ruffle our feathers a bit,” she’d said this morning as we’d donned our uniforms, “but we can’t let them. ”
Yesterday, we’d received our class assignments and books in the Great Hall, but out of an abundance of caution, not knowing how long I’d have between classes or if someone might hold me at knifepoint again simply to delay me, I carried all my books in my arms as best I could, feeling more and more foolish with each student I passed.
Their eyes snagged on the books in my arms, their brows rising as their fingers closed around the straps of their sleek leather bags.
My palms were sweating and my arms were burning by the time I reached the bottom of the steps leading to the second floor, where the literature and history classrooms were located.
History was first thing in the morning, followed by literature. Science was after lunch, then we’d have our first official lesson in the lair.
At the bottom of the steps, Vanya glanced back at me awkwardly carrying all my books. She let out an exasperated sigh and took the one off the top, tucking it with her own under her arm as we walked.
“Are you sure a princess is allowed to carry two books? Maybe you should give one back to me. It might look like you’re overexerting yourself.”
She bumped me with her shoulder and kept walking.
“What do you have first?” I asked.
“All the first years in Ruby and Sapphire have history together.”
“Oh.” Even though she hadn’t grown up in this country, she knew more about this school than I did.
At the top of the stairs, I was more out of breath than I should have been.
It was just the nerves. And the feeling of being watched and found wanting.
But I couldn’t focus on those things if I was going to survive here.
“Here, let me help you,” said a voice behind me.
Shep jogged up the steps and took the remaining books out of my arms, leaving me with nothing to hold on to.
“Sorry about last night,” he muttered. “Luther and I had a rough initiation our first year, and now that we’re the oldest, he wants to make sure…
well, he thinks it’s what makes us House Ruby. I disagree.”
I quickly glanced at Vanya, whose eyes widened.
A little ways down the hall, a willowy woman stood outside of her classroom door, long, curly hair sticking out wider than her shoulders. She wore the knee-length black robes of a professor over a charcoal gray pantsuit already dusted with smears of chalk.
Shep fell into step beside me. “That’s Professor Enplencourt. She’s a little eccentric, but she’s an excellent teacher. Listen to everything she says. If you can write fast enough, write it all down. Never sleep in her class, and don’t ever be late.”
“Is that all?” Vanya asked, leaning around me.
“The teachers here don't allow a lot of wiggle room, but if they like you, it will come in handy.”
“Are you saying they play favorites?” Vanya said.
“They all do. Well, except for Bryce.”
I glanced back at my paper. “The lairmaster?”
Shep nodded. “He’s cutthroat, but he’s the best. He’s what made me the, well, he taught me everything I know about dragon riding.”
Vanya swished her hips a little as she said, “He's what made you the best. Is that what you were going to say?” Vanya elbowed me. “Ari certainly can’t forget that you’re the best.”
I shot Vanya a murderous look, but she merely smiled and kept walking. Shep glanced at his feet, pausing a few steps before the door to the classroom. He held the books toward me, and I took them carefully, tucking them under my arm.
“Thank you,” I said, bewildered that a third year was talking to me at all.
“No problem. I like to do what I can to help. Seems more useful than intimidating you all.” He shrugged. “Good luck.”
Vanya was staring at me from inside the classroom.
She tilted her head expectantly, as if wanting me to recap everything that had just been spoken outside in the hall, though certainly she’d heard us.
I ignored her prying glance and walked into the room, beautifully lit with morning sun.
Not a speck of dust rested on the long tables in this room, though plenty of it floated through the air, catching the light as it drifted by.
The first years from Houses Ruby and Sapphire filed into the room and took seats two to a table, books clunking against wood, chair legs scraping against the floor. Soon, we were all settled and silent, ready for our first lesson as students at Cardan Lott.
Professor Enplencourt’s shoes tapped like a gavel as she walked into the room, one arm lifted, curly hair billowing. She wrote her name on the long blackboard, finishing with a loud tap of her chalk.
“In 578, a monumental shift occurred in our history,” she began, voice sonorous and deep.
Her name was Resean based on the spelling, like mine.
That alone intrigued me, as most Resean nobles had been relegated to a second-class aristocracy after the fall of the Laurent dynasty a hundred years ago.
Her family must have managed to survive as part of Cavaria’s high society despite the prejudices against Reseans—and a flare of hope sparked inside me.
A few students quickly dug out pieces of paper.
I shifted my stack of books into two piles so I could see around them better and grabbed a sheet of paper.
For a moment, I stared at the soft ivory page, blank and ready to be filled.
Paper was so expensive that my family had never once had any in our house that wasn’t sent to us in the post or sewn into the few books we owned. Here, every student had sheaves of it.
“Does anyone know what that event was?” asked Professor Enplencourt, scanning our faces expectantly. “Yes, Miss Hawthorne.”
A girl in the row behind me, someone from Sapphire, said, “That’s when dragons first appeared on this continent, migrating from across the sea.”
The professor’s brows pinched a little. “Yes.” The word was drawn out, long and slow.
“There are many versions of history, but I will teach you the only accurate one. Those with knowledge of the truth, of what really happened, will always have the advantage over those who believe only lies.” Her eyes snapped quickly from face to face.
“Dragons did indeed reenter our land in 578, but they did not migrate here. They were here before we were, but then they left.”
Several students lifted their brows and exchanged quizzical looks.
Two hours later, we staggered back into the hall, most of us looking shaken. After her eloquent decimation of even the best answers, I felt a little better about my lack of knowledge on ancient history.
My mind whirled with all the information that she’d thrown at us on the first day.
Conspiracy theories, alternate versions of history, talk of truth vanishing into shadow, and somewhere in there a caveat to test everything we heard from her against our own research.
My hand ached from trying to write it all down, and I’d failed miserably.
My penmanship was slow and out of practice.
At least the library had a slew of typewriters for us to use when composing our essays.
When I walked into the literature classroom, a stillness came over me as I observed books standing upright on each table. A small shelf stood on one wall of the room, on it a variety of books with gilded lettering.