Chapter 27 #2
She glanced down, then away, embarrassed but clearly pleased. “Neither have I. I didn’t know I could—” She shook her head. “We’ll have to talk about this later. When we’re not standing in front of the entire academy.”
“Talisa of Bernswick and Elio Ferraro,” the herald’s voice rang out. “Completed in nine minutes and fifty-three seconds. They advance to the next round.”
The commoners’ benches erupted in cheers and whistles and the thunder of hands clapping in unison.
The sound rolled down from the upper tiers like a wave breaking on the shore.
I glanced up and saw all the commoner students on their feet, shouting and applauding with the unrestrained joy of people who had just watched something they’d been betting on all along.
The nobles’ sections were silent. A few scattered, polite claps from the more diplomatic upperclassmen, but otherwise nothing. No cheers. But no boos, either. Just rows of still, watchful figures in fancy academic gowns, their faces carefully blank.
Lukhan FitzMurad wasn’t blank. His expression was carved from ice, his green eyes fixed on Talisa with a hatred so pure it was almost admirable in its consistency.
I didn’t care. Let him hate. Let them all hate. We’d won our round.
Restraining my urge to make an obscene gesture in Lukhan’s direction, I just winked at him. To my pleasure, he flushed and pointedly turned away.
Then I held out my hand to Talisa. She took it without hesitation, her fingers curling around mine. Her touch made something warm and bright unfurl behind my ribs.
We walked off the arena floor together, hand in hand, and I felt like I was floating a foot above the sand.
∞∞∞
The award ceremony was held a short time later, once the puzzle stations had been cleared away, and the dais set up again on the arena floor.
Sixteen teams out of the original forty stood in loose formation, with the aristos closest to the dais, of course. It had been a brutal elimination round, just like Mundise had warned us.
While the chatelaine made a brief speech congratulating us on advancing to Round Two and previewing tomorrow’s schedule, the assistant chatelaines and their assistants moved among us with the awards.
A sour-looking Assistant Chatelaine Julissa stopped in front of us.
“Congratulations, students.” Her assistant opened a box, and she fished out two bronze laurel-wreath pins. “The Aurelian Trials have always had a talent for producing unexpected results.”
“Thank you, Assistant Chatelaine Julissa,” Talisa replied with cool courtesy as Julissa pinned the award on her gown.
“Indeed.” Julissa inclined her head. “One must never underestimate the role luck can play in the opening rounds.”
“Congratulations,” murmured her assistant, handing Talisa a small velvet purse embroidered with the academy’s crest. The clink of coins betrayed it contained the promised five denarii prize.
Not nearly enough to pay Talisa’s fine, not by a long shot, but an encouraging first step.
I accepted my pin and purse with a bow and a smile.
“One round down,” I murmured when Julissa and her assistant moved to Mira and Juno.
“Four to go,” she replied, and the confidence in her voice made me want to kiss her right there in front of the entire administration.
I settled for squeezing her hand instead.
Around us, the other victorious teams milled in clusters. We walked over to where Mira and Juno stood, surrounded by a knot of admirers from the Open Hand, both of them wearing their laurel pins and talking over each other in their excitement.
Not everyone was pleased with the results.
“Ridiculous,” I overheard a fourth-year complain loudly. “Three first-year teams advancing? And the fifth-year team of Kastania and Meryllia got eliminated in the first heat? Someone was clearly assigning the easy puzzles to the children.”
“Or maybe the first-years are better than we thought,” her teammate replied, with a pointed glance in Talisa’s direction.
The first girl snorted. “Please. They got lucky with easier puzzles. That’s all.”
I caught Talisa’s eye and raised an eyebrow. She rolled hers in response, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
Then I saw Lukhan.
The prick stood perhaps twenty feet away, waiting his turn for his award. Corvellan stood at his shoulder, like always.
Lukhan’s posture was perfect—spine straight, shoulders back, chin lifted at an angle that conveyed aristocratic disdain without actually looking down his nose. Someone had told him, probably repeatedly, that good breeding showed in how one stood. He’d clearly taken the lesson to heart.
But his expression betrayed him. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
His emerald eyes were fixed on Talisa with a hatred that could’ve stripped paint from wood at fifty paces.
Every line of his body radiated the effort of not doing something regrettable in front of the administration.
Corvellan was harder to read. He stood with the relaxed alertness of a soldier at ease, his gray eyes sharp and speculative as they moved from Talisa to me and back again. Assessment. The look of a man recalculating odds he’d thought were settled.
I grinned at them. Wide. Unrepentant. The kind of grin my father’s business rivals hated because it meant I’d just figured out how to undercut their prices by twenty percent.
“How much did you lose, Lord Lukhan?” I called, pitching my voice to carry. “Betting against us like that. Didn’t I hear twenty denarii? Or was it more?”
A few of the bystanders snickered. Lukhan’s expression didn’t change, but a flush crept up his neck, visible even beneath his too-pale skin. Damien’s mouth tightened, and the tall bastard glowered down at us.
I’d hit a nerve. Good.
The moment passed. The Second-Year Assistant Chatelaine, Serena Octavian, stopped in front of the pair to award them their prizes. Lukhan turned away from me, his attention shifting to the newcomer with the smooth, practiced disinterest of someone who had decided I wasn’t worth acknowledging.
But I couldn’t help wondering: What will they try next?
Lukhan wasn’t the type to accept defeat gracefully.
The cruel pranks, the lab sabotage, the mannequins hanging from the tree in front of the dining hall—all of it had been calculated to drive Talisa away.
And not she’d not only refused to leave, she’d advanced to the second round in the Aurelian Trials.
Even more astounding, she and her sisters displayed a talent for unifying spells cast by different people that, unless I was very much mistaken, nobody at this academy had seen before.
That should scare Lukhan and his hulking bodyguard. It scared me a little, and I both loved and trusted her.