“Professor, have you seen Chud Larson?” I asked. “He’s three times my size and he’s got a nasty temper. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t try to pound me to a pulp for exposing him just now!”
Griven waved away my objections with a flick of his hand.
“No, no—student-on-student violence is not allowed here at the Academy. It’s strictly against the rules.”
I felt a surge of frustration. He acted as though the rules were going to stop the upperclassman from coming after me! As though someone like Chud Larson cared anything about rules. He was a bully, through and through—anyone could see that.
Anyone but Professor Griven apparently.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that you stopped the cheating as soon as you noticed it, but sorry that you didn’t report the incident,” he said to me. “Generally when a student scores as highly as you did, we move him into Second-year classes and Second-year accommodations.”
“You mean like a room with only two people in it instead of a dormitory?” I asked hopefully.
“Indeed.” He nodded. “Not everyone chooses to accept the upgrade, of course. Some, like Ryse Skoren, choose to stay with their year. In his case, he wanted to be a Wing Leader—we don’t allow younger boys to take command over their older classmates—it causes resentment, you know. So he stayed with his year.”
“I don’t mind about that—I don’t have to be a Wing Leader,” I said quickly.
Professor Griven looked down his nose at me.
“No, I don’t expect you could be at that—you’re far too small. And given your excellent test score, I think you’d be better served in the Second-year academic track.”
“Oh, good!” I felt the sweet balm of relief…but it was dashed a moment later.
“However, you will still be rooming in the First-year dormitories,” Griven went on.
“What?” My heart sank. “But Sir, I was told if I scored high enough, I would be placed in the Second-year accommodations!”
“And normally, you would be.” He gave me a stern look. “But I can’t reward cowardice, Lysandra. You’ll be in the Second-year classes—except for your time on the Flight Simulator, which you will attend with your First-year class. And you’ll be staying in the First-year dorms.”
“But, Sir—” I began again.
“That is all,” he rapped out. “You are dismissed, Cadet! You may go.”
There was nothing I could do but get up and leave his office with the bitter taste of frustration in my mouth. What had I gained myself by scoring the highest ranking in seventy years? Nothing but an angry bully who was sure to come after me and I was still going to have to live in the dorms with the other First-years and do my best to hide my true identity.
My good grade had just made my life here at the Academy exponentially harder and there was nothing I could do about it but keep my head down and hope that Larson never caught me alone.
15
AURORA
“So it looks like you’re rooming with us, after all,” Jorn-o remarked after lunch, when the rooming assignments came out.
We were all clustered around the long rows of parchment hung on the Mess Hall wall to find out where we had to move our belongings. There were four dorms, all smaller than The Great Dorm—or so Jorn-o assured us. Each had about twenty-five First-year cadets listed in it. I would have expected them to place us in dorms by alphabetical order, but for some reason, they hadn’t. Which meant I was lucky—Jorn-o and Leaper were both in my dorm—Dorm A.
Bugs and Toady were together in Dorm B, and I didn’t know anyone in either Dorm C or Dorm D. Still, I was happy to be with my friends…though I was still upset about not getting into a two-person room.
Further down the rooming chart, I saw Second-year students listed in pairs—all but four of them, who were listed individually.
“Why do some of them get their own rooms?” I asked enviously. If I had a room all to myself, I wouldn’t have to trust so much to my luck and the subtle magic of the Dragon Glass pendant at my neck.
“Oh, those are the Wing Leaders,” Jorn-o said. He pointed at Ryse Skoren’s name in a box all by itself. “They never have to take roommates unless they want to.”
I thought I understood a little more about why the mysterious North Wing Leader had decided not to take the promotion from First to Second-year classes when he’d been offered a chance. Of course he wanted his own room—that made sense.
But since I couldn’t have my own room, or even a two-person room, I supposed that being in the same dorm as my friends was the best I was going to get. In fact?—
“Hey—what’s he doing in our dorm?”
