Page 64 of Winterveil

Twenty-Two

Spring 2037

Rural Virginia

JANE LIN: Where are you?

JANE LIN: Are you all right?

JANE LIN: I’m so sorry about everything. Just let me know if you’re okay.

JANE LIN: Mikhail and I are going to eat on the lawn. Meet us there?

Klaudia’s tablet lit up again and again. She turned it over, screen face down, and lay back against her pillows. Since the Thymos tournament, she had not left her room, ignoring Jane’s messages and the wooziness of hunger and thirst. She could not bring herself to walk down the halls of Valeran, enduring the stares and whispers.

The whispers: She’s lost it, she’s gone crazy, she’s slipped. It wasn’t merely that Klaudia Shimonova had finally been defeated; it was the manner in which it had happened. Everyone knew that Julian had thrown the game. Even before their confrontation in the corridor, there had been no doubt.

Klaudia didn’t know if it had been his intention all along, to humiliate her in such an intricate way. If it was, Julian was an even better actor than she had given him credit for. He had looked genuinely concerned, almost stricken.

Like you needed my help. The echo of his words scraped her raw. What if she hadn’t made the mistake? What if she hadn’t been so tired that day, so worn down, so afraid? What if Carter hadn’t—

Klaudia rose from the bed and paced to the window. She stared out through the glass, and Valeran warped and shifted, blurred by her exhaustion. The world, made hostile and strange.

She had tried to keep it all controlled and safe, barren and frigid, and yet here she was: weak, unstable, all the things she had sworn she would never be. Her father would have pinned her to the wall and pressed down on her throat until, in a raspy voice, she recited the answer he was looking for, swore that she would do better next time. She almost wished he were here now. The pain, in its own strange way, would have calmed her.

But her thoughts kept returning to Julian, staring at her from across the stage. That awful, ruinous thing in his gaze: compassion. It was worse than anger, worse than hate. He had seen the fragile parts of Klaudia that she had spent her whole life trying to annihilate.

PROFESSOR NARENDRA: Klaudia, come to my office when you have the chance, please.

She had ignored the notification for an hour, thinking it was another message from Jane. When Klaudia saw Professor Narendra’s name, her stomach fluttered with panic. A litany of possibilities, from the realistic to the utterly absurd, ran through her mind. Was she being punished? Had she lost her chance at a top appointment? Would her graduation be deferred? She could see the way the story might be spun—out of petulance and bitterness, she had attacked a fellow student.

Klaudia dressed, pinned back her hair, and set off for the main building, heart beating at a painful clip. To her great relief, she didn’t run into any of her fellow students. She shuddered to imagine what a confrontation with Carter would entail. Or Julian.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor and paused for a moment outside Professor Narendra’s office, steeling herself. Then she knocked.

“Come in.”

Klaudia entered. She had been in this office many times before, for their private tutoring. Professor Narendra’s Columbia doctorate was mounted on the wall. All his papers were arranged in neat piles. A framed photo on his desk showed him shaking hands with Robert Jervis.

Professor Narendra stood in front of his desk, leaning slightly against the polished mahogany surface. His jacket was off, shirtsleeves rolled up his elbows, giving him an appearance of casualness that slightly ebbed Klaudia’s fear. Surely he would look more stern if he was going to expel her.

“Klaudia,” he said. “Please sit.”

She approached the armchair but didn’t lower herself into it. Instead, she gripped the back of the chair and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t see your message right away.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Professor Narendra. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Of course,” said Klaudia, still feeling uneasy.

“I should have called you in sooner,” Professor Narendra went on, “but there were a number of things—never mind. I asked you to come because I wanted to say that I’m very sorry.”

Her stomach jolted. “Sorry for what?”

“I—and my fellow colleagues—have been far too hard on you. Our expectations have been unrealistic. I can’t imagine the pressure you must have been under. As educators, it’s our job to teach, but we are also responsible for the welfare of our students. Physical and psychological. And of everyone, I am the most guilty for failing you in that respect.”

Klaudia stared at the floor, eyes tracing the pattern of the carpet. This was worse than anything she had feared. It was not only gossip among the students, but faculty, too. And the unspoken implication was that some of them had seen it coming—or, at least, that it had seemed inevitable.

She had the sensation of falling, of feeling the height in the soles of her feet. Without a word, Klaudia sat down in the armchair.