Headmaster Vaughan stared at me while Fairfax spoke. His pinched brow loosened, then hardened again, but not with frustration this time. With determination. “I will order the bond test.”
“Good. Good man. I will do what I can to replace whatever is lost if any families withdraw their financial support.”
The headmaster turned to slide his jacket off the back of his chair. “Thank you, Merlon.”
“Of course.” He motioned for me to stand. “When she passes the bond test, what then?”
Vaughan slid his arms into his coat. “If she passes, then I am certain we will be facing outrage. There will be full-on inquiries into her family tree, beyond what I’ve already ordered. Questioning every birth on record, even those who wrote the records. Ransacking her home for any evidence of family heirlooms. And that’s the best-case scenario. And, well, we shouldn’t discuss what might be the worst they could do.”
Asset or assassin. I could become either.
“Sir,” I said, halting his progress as he came around the desk. “If I pass the bond test, I want to be admitted into the end-of-year race.”
Both men turned their attention on me. Before either of them could speak, I boldly added, “If it can be proven that I am a bonded rider, then what does it really matter where I came from, or where he came from?” I pointed in the general direction of the lair, even though Myth wasn’t there. “Let the race prove what they won’t admit. Let the race prove that someone like me”—I threw a cursory glare at Fairfax—“can indeed be a rider.”
My sponsor beamed at me, then nodded once at Vaughan, awaiting his reply. We might have our differences, but Fairfax and I at least had overlapping goals.
The headmaster’s eyes traveled between me and Fairfax a half-dozen times. “The end-of-year race? That is…” He trailed off, fingers absently pushing the papers on his desk.
“Let me finish out my classes here, and let me race. Sir,” I added hastily. My pulse had risen so fast I was nearly sweating. If I ran, Duke Covington would only track me down. Rush was right: the more people knew who I was,whatI was, the better. Even if I didn’t win the race, now that the truth about my heritage was out, that could be enough.
“I will suggest to the board that you be permitted to race. However, I cannot guarantee that they will approve this request. Nor can I guarantee they will allow you and your dragon to return here, even if he passes the test.”
I swallowed, preparing my rebuttal, but Fairfax cut me off. “That will be most generous, Casper. Thank you.”
Fairfax gently turned me by my arm and ushered me out.
At the door, Headmaster Vaughan stopped us. “You’re forgetting one thing. The police are here to take you into custody. Until this debacle is resolved.”
“Will that really be necessary?” Fairfax asked.
There was the smallest of hesitations from Vaughan, then, “To save my school the embarrassment of this whole ordeal, the duke agreed to have you transported quietly via coach to the constabulary nearest here.” He nodded at both of us, a dismissal.
Outside the headmaster’s office, a man in dark blue waited with his arms crossed over his round belly. There were no handcuffs or rough handling. He walked quietly beside us toward the school’s main entrance, where a dark coach pulled by a single horse waited. Not even an automobile had been relegated for this.
Faces had gathered in the entrance hall. This might save the headmaster some embarrassment, but it heaped it on top of my head like the shovelfuls of dung I used to toss into train cars at the Covingtons’ estate.
I’d worried that this would go wrong. That my dream of changing this stone-cold world would fracture and crash around me. This was so much worse. This was not a fracture, a mere windowpane shattering. This was obliteration. Every piece of this impossible dream vaporized in an instant.
In the crowd, I spotted Vanya, crying behind her cupped hands. Rush stood beside her, hands lazily hanging in his pockets, attention steadily fixed on me. I stared at them as I passed, hollowed of all feeling. Before we stepped outside into the cold, I glanced back one last time at the school’s interior, as I’d likely never be allowed entrance here again. For the blink of an eye, I’d belonged here, but perhaps even that had been a lie. This place had never been my home, and it was always going to find a way to spit me back out.
The last thing I took in was Rush’s unwavering stare. When our eyes met, he gave the faintest nod, imperceptible to anyone not looking for it.
Then I stepped out of the school. The wintery wind blasted my face and neck. I still wore the school’s uniform, which I had donned this morning. Five steps. Then the coach.
Vaughan didn’t allow any of the students to follow me outside or watch me drive away. But when I bundled into the coach, I heard one of the policemen whispering to Fairfax and motioning for him to follow. To my shock, and to Fairfax’s utter dismay, he was shoved, huffing and puffing, into the coach with me. When the policeman shut the door, darkness swallowed us.
CHAPTER 35
The coach trundled along the shaded streets, where the slush of old snow had turned dull gray in most places, brown in others, and lay in heaps like refuse along the lower streets. People huddled against the chill as they walked, bent forward, toward their jobs or homes or listlessly toward nothing at all but the next place. Each bump in the neglected roads felt like another round of punishment, reminding me that this was where I belonged.
Staring out the window, I finally broke the dense silence. “What now?”
A grunt, then, “That pompous, ridiculous, rotting corpse of a man.”
My eyes turned, amused, toward Fairfax. I was on the verge of screaming my rage for all to hear, but the nobleman’s fury for some reason felt funny to me. I tended to laugh when things got so bad I couldn’t face them. “The duke or the headmaster?”
“He did this to humiliate me. He will pay for this.” His fingers drummed against his leg. “I will go straight to the Minister of Justice. To the queen if I have to.”
