“Cadet Lysandra,” he said, staring hard at me. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Oh God and Goddess, the way he was looking at me was not good.
He knows! He knows, he knows, he knows! shouted the little voice in my head.
It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt everything out—to admit that I was Aurora Lysandra, not Auren. I was going to confess and beg him to understand. “I had no food in the house, and I was all alone—my brother and father are dead!” I pictured myself saying. “Please, you have to believe me—it was pretend to be my brother or starve to death!”
But when I opened my mouth, all I said was,
“No, Sir.”
His frown deepened and he leaned forward across the desk.
“That’s your final word on the matter?”
“On what matter?” I shook my head dumbly. “I don’t understand.”
“All right,” he said grimly. “We’ll do this the hard way.” Raising his voice, he said loudly, “Larson, step in here if you please.”
My stomach, which was already twisted in knots, flipped slowly forward as Chud Larson came into the office and shut the door behind him.
“Have a seat, Larson,” Griven ordered.
With a poisonous glance at me, the upperclassman lowered himself into the wooden chair beside mine.
“What’s this about?” he demanded, staring at the professor belligerently.
Honestly, I was wondering the same thing. What could my secret identity have to do with Chud Larson? Unless he had somehow discovered that I was a girl and reported me. But how could he know?
I didn’t understand at all until Griven pinned us both with a steely stare and spoke again.
“What this is about, is the fact that the first half of both your exams are identical,” he snapped.
Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out two familiar sheaves of parchment paper and slapped them on the desk.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed, leafing through them. “To the letter and the number, up until about problem fifty, these tests are exactly the same, right down to the mathematical work proving the correct solutions! You even both got problem twenty-two wrong because you both forgot to carry a one!”
I stared at my own neat handwriting in horror. If only I had scribbled! And was Larson really so stupid that he couldn’t change any of what he’d copied from me? Now we were both in trouble and none of it was my fault!
I opened my mouth to say so, but Chud Larson beat me to it.
“It’s not my fault, Professor,” he said quickly. “The little runt must have copied off me when I wasn’t looking!”
“Well, well…” Griven tapped an ink pencil on his desk as he stared at Larson. “So you’re claiming that Lysandra cheated off your test and that’s why your answers are identical?”
“He must have!” Larson jutted his lip out defiantly. “How else could he get my answers?”
“Professor, please!” I exclaimed, finally finding my voice. “I never?—”
“Enough.” Professor Griven raised his hand for silence. “Larson claims you cheated off his paper, Lysandra.”
“Yeah, I do—because he did!” Larson narrowed his eyes at me, as though daring me to contradict him.
I wanted to, but my throat was so tight I could barely breathe at that point and my heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of my chest.
“Well, as it turns out, there are a few problems with that theory,” Professor Griven said. “First of all, if I remember the seating correctly, you, Larson, were sitting behind Lysandra. Which means that he would have had to turn his head multiple times to see your paper.”
“He did!” Larson lied quickly. “I saw him—that’s why I hid my paper after I saw him looking so he couldn’t copy the second half of my test!”
