Chapter 4
Violette
The mess hall had never been this quiet while still pretending it wasn’t.
The mercenaries filled the space the way they always did: boots hooked around chair legs, voices overlapping, someone laughing too loud at a half-finished story. Familiar noise. Comfortable noise. The kind you stopped noticing unless it was taken away.
The apprentices sat apart from it.
They occupied two long tables near the far wall, backs straight, shoulders squared, hands folded or clenched like they didn’t know how to hold them loose. No one leaned. No one lounged.
And then there was Symond, alone between both groups, neither inviting him closer.
When the apprentices had first arrived, they’d gravitated toward him instinctively. Familiar face. Shared past. Someone who understood The Institute without explanation. There was a sense of relief that had flickered there.
That was gone now.
When he shifted his weight, the nearest apprentice flinched and slid further away.
Two girls positioned at the far side of the table exchanged whispers behind cupped hands, their eyes darting toward him.
One boy squeezed in by the edge of the crowded table just so he wouldn’t have to sit close to the “outcast”.
The sight of Symond alone made Violette’s throat tighten.
She’d once eaten meals standing in corners, back to the wall, counting the seconds until she could slip away unnoticed.
Back when being seen meant being questioned, and being recognized meant being dragged into the wrong kind of attention.
Even now, she sometimes caught herself tracing the grain of a table instead of joining conversations.
Some habits never left once they’d kept you alive.
But surviving like that left gaps. And gaps had a way of demanding to be filled.
Symond had chosen his poisons the same way others did—anger first, then the things that dulled it, then the ones that helped him forget.
Now he sat there, fingers drumming against the table, completely oblivious to the side glances and scowls directed at him by his peers.
The apprentices hadn’t talked about him, but if his attitude before he emptied his brain was anything to go off of, he probably was not well liked.
At the sound of shoes clacking on echoing wood, the apprentices schooled their disdain, each sitting up perfectly straight, eyeing their laced fingers in their laps.
Florence hadn’t raised her voice. Hadn’t even announced herself.
She simply stepped into the room, and the apprentices reacted as one.
Conditioning, Violette thought. It would take months to undo just a fraction of what years of harsh discipline taught them.
The mercenaries barely paused. A few nodded to Florence.
One smirked. Another finished his drink before pushing his chair back.
They were alert now, but at ease. Florence was their leader, but she was also their comrade, their strategist, the one who housed them and gave them better opportunities to fill their pockets than the random street contract. They knew she was family.
The apprentices did not.
Florence halted in the middle of the space, arms loose at her sides, eyes soft as she scanned the new faces among them.
The look she wore—no sharp crease in her brow, and an easy attitude as if she took off her mask of indifference and years of hard-won battles—made her look younger.
And oddly familiar, though Violette couldn’t place the connection.
“Over the next few days, I’ll be meeting with each of you individually,” she said, addressing the apprentices with a gentle tone, like trying to reassure a frightened animal. “I want to understand what The Institute trained you for, and what it took from you to do it.”
A few of the apprentices swallowed hard.
Violette blinked.
What it took from them? That… wasn’t what she’d expected. That’s not how The Hive operated. Alchemist to the labs, enchanters to the forge or looms. Anyone field capable trained in mercenary work. None of that required any of them to know the trauma they endured to get here.
“These interviews start now.”
Florence might as well told them that she was going to be locking them in a dark room and berating them.
Eyes shifted to the exits, to each other, hands trembled despite clutching the table’s edge.
Fight, flight, or freeze, and all of them had been taught to freeze.
That there was no other option but to endure.
Violette ground her teeth at their terror. She pushed herself from the wall, determined to help ease their anxiety, when Florence addressed her.
“I’d like you to join me.”
As they moved toward the side room, Violette glanced back once. Symond was still seated, arms crossed, eyes narrowed faintly as he watched them go.
The side room off the mess hall had once been a storage space. Now it held a narrow table, three chairs, and a single lantern hung low enough to soften the shadows without fully banishing them.
Florence took the chair closest to the apprentice. Violette sat to the side, where she could see both faces clearly.
The boy—no, young man—hovered near the door until Florence gestured for him to sit.
He did so immediately, hands immediately folding in his lap, spine straight enough to ache. He kept his eyes fixed on the table between them.
“Name?” Florence asked.
“J—Jax,” he said. His voice wavered, then steadied as if he’d been punished for that once. “Enchanter. Metal focus.”
Violette relaxed a fraction. Good. There it is.
That was what this was supposed to be.
Florence nodded. “How old were you when you arrived at The Institute?”
Violette’s attention sharpened.
Jax blinked. “I… thirteen.”
Florence didn’t write it down. She didn’t reach for a ledger at all.
“What were you told before you went?” she asked.
“That I’d learn a trade,” Jax said quickly. Too quickly. “That I’d be fed. That I’d be safe. My mother—” He stopped himself, and his eyes glazed over. “They said it was better than starving.”
Florence’s expression didn’t change. But she leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table.
“And when you made mistakes?”
Why does that matter? Violette wanted to ask. She bit back the question.
Jax’s fingers curled tighter together. “They’d… correct you.” He swallowed. “Sometimes publicly. Sometimes not.”
“What did correction look like?”
Violette shifted in her chair. This was drifting far from assessment. Florence wasn’t one for cruelty. She wouldn’t force these apprentices to revisit painful memories without cause.
Jax hesitated, eyes flicking briefly toward the door as if checking whether he was allowed to say this.
His fingers trembled against his knees. “They’d keep you awake for days,” he said finally.
“Make you stand barefoot on broken glass. Or kneel on salt-covered stone until your skin split. Sometimes they’d—” he paused, mouth opening and closing, “—they’d make you watch as someone else took your punishment.
Usually someone weaker. Someone you cared about.
” The man’s eyes glistened in the lamplight, but he tried disguising the tears, pretending something was irritating him.
Violette felt a tightness bloom behind her ribs. She knew The Institute was cruel but Symond was never specific. Hearing some of the things he possibly endured made her gut sink.
“And who decided when it ended?” she asked.
Jax’s shoulders hunched. “Headmaster Thorn.”
Florence nodded once. She already knew the answer to most of these questions; Violette was sure of it.
“Did you believe you deserved it?”
“Yes.” The word was as quiet as a mouse, but there was no adjustment in tone, no upward inflection. He believed it.
Violette waited for Florence to correct him, to give him some hope. She didn’t. She only tilted her head slightly.
“And now?” she asked.
Jax hesitated. “I don’t know.”
That, finally, seemed to satisfy Florence.
She straightened, her tone shifting just enough to feel like closure. “Thank you for answering honestly.”
Jax looked startled. “That’s… all?”
“For now,” Florence said. “You can go.”
He stood too fast, as if expecting to be stopped, then left the room without looking back.
“Florence,” Violette said carefully, “what exactly are you looking for here?”
The woman glanced at her, expression open, almost curious. “Context.”
“That wasn’t context. You didn’t ask a single question about what he can do.”
Florence smiled faintly. “I can see what he can do later.”
Another apprentice was sent in. Then another. Different names. Different disciplines.
The pattern didn’t change.
Florence asked: what promises were made, what punishments were endured, whether they were isolated, whether they were scared.
And every time the answers turned darker, Florence’s attention sharpened.
By the fifth interview, Violette’s unease had settled into something heavier. This was collection.
Violette’s thoughts turned, inevitably, to the young man still sitting alone in the mess hall.
The one who would answer differently than the rest. Who would throw wrench in Florence’s data.
Symond entered without hesitation. He didn’t hover in the doorway like the others had, or wait to be told where to sit. He took the chair opposite Florence and leaned back, one arm draped over the backrest, posture loose in a way that read as disrespect only if you were looking for it.
Florence wasn’t.
“How old were you when you arrived at The Institute?”
“Seven.”
“What was your focus?”
“Enchanting. Forge-based. Weapons, mostly.”
That wasn’t news. Florence had already assigned him to the forge before she left to rescue his peers.
“What were you told The Institute would be like?” Florence asked.
Symond frowned, as if the question itself was strange. “A school, I guess.”
Florence waited, not breaking eye contact with Symond.
“They said I’d learn a trade,” he added. “That I’d be fed. Housed. That I was lucky to get the opportunity to be someone important for the Empire.”
Similar answer to the rest.
“And when you made mistakes. How were they handled?”