Unease worms in my gut all day.
Even as the day goes on, and Eric reads old star charts to determine the day and events of history, I have that sick, empty feeling inside of me.
Haunting me.
No one else seems affected by it.
The practice round goes past dinner time, but as we all file into the atrium, we find that the mess hall stayed open for the seniors.
The atmosphere is mixed, a jarred divide between those who haven’t done as well as they hoped, those who sulk and slump over their trays and pick at their meals, and the ones who did well, those who grin and laugh and throw things across tables.
Like Teddy.
My eyes narrow on him, two tables down, flicking popcorn pieces into Piper’s open mouth.
“There was no numerus this year.” Oliver drapes his arm over the back of Serena’s chair. “I thought Delia Dimas had the print.”
Asta drizzles white sauce over her plated vegetables, lingering longest over the pile of cauliflower. “Her’s is the sight.”
Landon throws him a furrowed look. “Weren’t you watching?”
“He was asleep for most of it,” I say.
Oliver shoots me a smarmy look. “Some of us are more exhausted than others.”
I make a face back.
Asta interjects, not to divert, but to pretend I’m not here and didn’t speak at all, “You’re thinking of Fiona Abernathy. She’s numerus—but the year below us.”
Serena picks at her green beans. “Fiona is rituals. Her younger sister is runes. I don’t remember her name.”
“Kirsty,” I say—and puzzled looks land on me. “Their family traces back all the way to the Picts and druids.”
The puzzled, doubtful looks stick to my face for a long moment.
I huff. “What? I pay attention in class.”
Dray’s tray slips onto the table, opposite me. He kicks back his chair before sinking into it, and Asta scoots over an inch to give him more room.
He asks, dull, “Since when?”
I correct myself, “I pay attention in History of the Videralli.”
It’s true.
It’s one of my highest performing classes, but mostly because a lot of the history is drilled into the aristos elites from youth, and so I already know a lot of what I’m taught in class.
But no one cares about my offer of the Abernathy sisters’ ancestry, or that I know all the history and ancestry of every elite bloodline in this school, and probably beyond.
Dray’s gaze is the only one to linger on me as he reaches for his knife and fork.
Landon cuts into his roast beef, dividing the strips into smaller bite-sized pieces. “Those were practically the auditions for what jobs will be offered, and you slept through it?”
Oliver lifts a dark look to him over the steam of his coffee mug. “I watched the ones worth my attention. That made one, James, was first-rate.”
I slide a look between him and Landon, back and forth, from one face carved from stone, and the other disinterested.
I don’t think Oliver knows.
