The dining commons hadn't calmed by breakfast. Aethros found the room split into a dozen conversations the moment he walked in, all of them still circling last night's announcement. "You're up early," Roran said, sliding onto the bench across from him. "Couldn't sleep either?" "Not really." "Same. I went and read the full rules the second they posted them. Beat half of Vanguard to the board, which felt like a personal victory." Roran leaned in, lowering his voice. "There's a detail nobody mentioned last night. Every contestant has to fight with a weapon of their own choosing. Not the practice swords the academy hands out. Something you actually own." "That's fairly standard for a tournament." "It's a problem for me, is what it is." Roran held up his hands like the answer was obvious. "I've got a training sword. Academy steel, standard issue, nothing special. Half this cohort's been carrying family blades since they could walk. I'm going to be standing in that ring holding the

Lyanna had never been inside the academy's council chamber, and the attendant guarding its door made it clear, without saying so directly, that students generally weren't."The Headmaster is in session," he said. "Tournament logistics. Elder Fenwick and the senior staff. I can take a message, but I can't interrupt.""It's urgent.""Everything students bring me is urgent." He didn't move from the door. "Wait here, or come back this afternoon."She waited. Twenty minutes, pacing the corridor, replaying the commons in her head, the blood on Aethros's face, until the anger stopped feeling useful and started feeling exhausting instead. When the chamber doors finally opened and voices spilled out into the hall, she recognized Elder Fenwick's among them, along with two others she didn't know, robes marked with the kind of formal insignia that meant senior staff rather than instructors.Headmaster Stormcaller was the last to appear, and he saw her immediately, somet

Zara was still propped up on the physician's cot when Aethros brought Lyanna and Roran in the next morning, pale but awake, a bandage wound tight around her ribs beneath a borrowed robe."You look terrible," Roran said, dropping into the chair beside her bed without waiting for permission."Thank you. I try." Zara's smile came thin, tired at the edges. "The physician says I'll live. Cracked rib, some bruising. Could have been worse.""Could have been worse," Lyanna repeated, something hard settling into her voice as she crossed her arms. "Zara, I love that you're taking this well, but someone attacked you in the dark last night, unprovoked, and I don't think 'could have been worse' is where we should be landing on that.""I'm not trying to land anywhere. I'm trying to heal.""You're trying to change the subject." Lyanna's jaw was tight. "This is the second attack in two days, Zara. Yesterday it was Hadrian, in front of the entire dining commons. Now it's you

Roran hadn't meant to become the center of attention. It happened anyway, the moment word got out that he was one of Hadrian's friends, and by midmorning he'd lost count of how many general cohort students had drifted past his table with the same too-casual question dressed up a dozen different ways."Is it true Darius actually had him held down?""Did you see it happen?""What's he like, really? Hadrian Vex?"He gave the same answer every time. "I don't know anything you haven't already heard." It wasn't entirely true. He knew plenty. He just didn't feel like handing any of it over to strangers who wanted a story more than they wanted to actually help.By midday the questions had mostly dried up, the general cohort's attention drifting toward easier gossip, and Roran was finally eating in something close to peace, though the peace didn't sit as easily as he wanted it to.He was still working through that thought when Sulan and Kang Wei found him."R

Aethros, Lyanna, and Roran found Zara sitting up properly for the first time since the attack, color back in her face, the physician declaring her well enough for visitors so long as they didn't tire her out."You look considerably better," Lyanna said, settling into the chair beside the bed."I feel considerably better. Whatever they've got me drinking twice a day tastes like dirt, but it's working." Zara's smile came easier now, more like the one Aethros remembered from the corridor weeks earlier. "Tell me everything. I've been stuck in this room all day with nothing but rumors filtering in secondhand."They told her. The council chamber, Halvard's arguments, Darius and Garrett standing there being scolded like children caught misbehaving, the Headmaster's final warning and the forced apology that satisfied absolutely no one who'd been in the room to hear it."Expelled, if it happens again," Zara repeated, something like real relief crossing her face. "That's