Chapter fifteen
Jessica
On the first morning of the new semester, we all file into History of the Wolf Kingdoms. It is held in the coldest room at Luftis, and I don't think it's an accident.
Everything about it is severe — high windows that let in light but no warmth, chairs lined up in rows so straight they look measured, a slate board wiped so clean it gleams. There's none of the worn, lived-in comfort of Jon's lecture hall.
This room wants you sitting up straight before you've even sat down.
"I have a bad feeling about this one," I murmur to Renzo as we file in.
"You have a bad feeling about anywhere without snacks," he whispers back, but he's sitting up straighter too.
Professor Faris enters exactly on the hour, and the whole room stills without being told to.
She's elegant — dark hair swept back without a strand out of place, a tailored coat, posture like she's never once slouched in her life.
She doesn't smile. She doesn't say good morning.
She sets a single folder on the desk, squares it precisely to the edge, and looks out at us like she's assessing livestock.
"In this classroom," she says, and her voice is quiet, cool, and carries to every corner without effort, "you will speak only when called upon.
You will hold your questions until the end of the session.
You will not interrupt me, one another, or the material.
" A pause. "Order is not a preference here.
It is the point. The wolves who built the kingdoms we will study did not do so through enthusiasm. They did it through discipline."
Oh, I think, this is going to be a delight.
And then someone slips in behind her, a beat late, and settles into the front row with the ease of someone who's allowed to be late, and my stomach drops.
It's the blonde. From the dining hall. The one who blocked my path and told me to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut — and she turns, catches me looking, and her mouth curls into a slow, satisfied smirk.
"...You have got to be kidding me," I mutter, before I can stop myself.
The room is quiet enough that it carries.
"Is there something amusing, Miss Miller?" Professor Faris doesn't even look up from her folder.
"No, Professor," I say, pleasantly.
The blonde's smile widens like she's just been handed a gift.
It doesn't take long to understand why she's so at home here.
Twenty minutes in, Faris calls on her — "Natasha" — and Natasha answers a question about the Third Accord smoothly, confidently, clearly having read ahead, and Professor Faris does something I haven't seen her do once: she almost smiles.
Just a flicker of warmth, there and gone, aimed at the front row.
"Correct," Faris says, and moves on.
A boy near me leans to his friend and whispers, "Of course she knows it. Professor Faris is her mother."
And everything clicks into place at once — the dining hall, the hostility, the you don't deserve to look at them, the way Natasha carries herself, like rules don’t apply to her.
Well, I think. That explains a lot.
It explains more than a lot, actually, because a few minutes later Faris makes a point of it.
She's talking about how the kingdoms declined — "not through invasion, but through dilution, through the slow erosion of standards, through the fatal belief that everyone deserves a seat at a table they did not earn" — and her cool gaze drifts, just for a moment, across the scholarship students clustered in our row. It lands on me last.
She doesn't have to say it. I hear it anyway. People like you are how good things fall apart.
Message received.
She sets us an independent assignment — a historical analysis comparing two treaties across a century — and the room goes quiet with the scratch of pens. I get into it; I actually like this kind of puzzle, the tracing of cause to consequence. But a few minutes in I feel Renzo going tense beside me.
He's trying. That's the thing about Renzo that people miss under all the jokes — he works.
He's read the material, he's got his notes spread out, he's genuinely grinding at it.
He's just stuck, circling the same paragraph, and I can see exactly where, because he's comparing the wrong two treaties and the whole analysis collapses if you start from there.
I lean over, barely a whisper. "It's the date. You're comparing the wrong treaty — you want the second Accord, not the first."
Renzo's eyes drop to his notes, and I watch it land. "Oh." Then, mournfully, "I'm an idiot."
"No," I whisper, grinning. "You just skipped a paragraph. Happens to everyone."
We both smile, and he bends back over his work, and for one second everything is fine.
Then I feel it — a presence, right beside us, silent. I didn't hear her cross the room. Nobody did.
"Miss Miller."
I look up. Professor Faris is standing over us, perfectly composed, hands folded.
"Were you instructed to complete Mr. Moretti's assignment?"
"No," I say.
"Were you instructed to supervise him?"
"No, Professor."
She nods once, like I've confirmed something she already knew. "Five Merit Marks deducted."
I blink. "What?"
She's already turning to Renzo. "And five Merit Marks deducted from Mr. Moretti."
"Professor—" Renzo sits up fast. "She wasn't cheating, she just pointed out I—"
"I didn't say she was cheating." Faris's voice never rises.
That's the worst part. It stays cool and even, like she's discussing the weather.
"I said you were dependent. You will not have Miss Miller beside you during examinations, or during the Trial, or in any moment that matters.
Learning to fail is how you learn to stand alone.
" Her attention slides back to me, colder now.
Personal. "And you ignored the instructions of this classroom. I was quite clear."
I feel heat crawl up the back of my neck. And here's the thing — it isn't embarrassment. I've been embarrassed plenty of times; I know that flavor. This is different. This is anger, slow and clean, rising right alongside it.
I make myself breathe. I raise my hand.
Faris regards it for a moment, then nods. "Yes?"
"I wasn't trying to undermine your class," I say, and I keep my voice steady and respectful, because I know instinctively that the second I get sharp, she wins. "I saw someone struggling. So I helped him. That's all it was."
"Exactly," she says, as if I've proven her point for her.
I wait, because clearly there's more.
"A leader does not solve everyone's problems for them," Faris says, addressing the whole room now, using me as the lesson.
"A leader allows others to learn from their own failures.
Weakness that is rescued only grows weaker.
That is the mistake soft institutions make, and it is the mistake that ends them. "
And I know I should let it go. I know it. I can feel the shape of the smart move, which is to nod and swallow it and keep my marks.
"Sometimes," I hear myself say, "a leader helps."
The room goes utterly silent.
Faris's expression doesn't change. Not a flicker. She looks at me for a long, cool moment, and I have the distinct sense of being catalogued.
"An interesting opinion," she says. "Another two Merit Marks deducted."
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard.
Okay, I think, as I watch my total tick down on the app under the desk — weeks of work erased in ninety seconds. Okay. Now I'm irritated.
But I don't say another word, because I'm not going to give her the satisfaction, and I bend back over my own analysis and finish it, correctly, in furious silence.
Renzo catches me the second we're in the hall, already apologizing. "Jess, I'm so sorry, that was my fault, you lost seven marks because I couldn't read a date—"
"No." I stop him flat. "Don't. You needed help, I helped you, and I'd do it again. Every time. That woman can keep her seven marks."
"You'd do it again," he repeats, half disbelieving.
"In a heartbeat."
And that's when Natasha drifts past us, unhurried, that same satisfied smile in place. She slows just enough to make sure I hear her.
"My mother warned us the scholarship students wouldn't understand how things work here," she says lightly, to the air, to me. "It's a shame, really. Some people just aren't built for a place like this."
I smile at her. Wide and warm and completely genuine.
"Oh, goody." I brighten. "I never think about you, and apparently I'm a whole topic of conversation at your house. I had no idea I was this popular. Tell your mom I said hi."
Natasha's smile disappears.
She stares at me for a second, opens her mouth, apparently finds nothing useful in there, and stalks away.
Beside me, Renzo makes a strangled sound. Then another.
By the time I look at him, he's leaning against the wall, wheezing with laughter.
"I never think about you," he manages. "Jesus Christ, Jessica."
"What?"
He waves a hand at me, still trying to breathe. "Nothing. Just deciding where I'm getting that tattooed."
"Please don't."
"Too late." He sucks in a breath, immediately loses it to another laugh. "It's meaningful to me now."