"I’m serious. The first time she even acknowledged I existed was during orientation. She looked at me like I was something stuck to her shoe and walked away. After that, she just kept showing up wherever I happened to be, saying things about lottery winners and proper bloodlines and how I didn’t belong here." I spread my hands. "I never said anything back. Never challenged her. Never even made eye contact if I could avoid it. She just decided I was someone worth hating."

Cassandra studied me for a long moment. "You’re saying my sister targeted you unprovoked."

"I’m saying I don’t know what I did to make her angry. If I knew, I’d apologize and move on. I don’t want problems with your family. I’m just trying to survive long enough to graduate."

"And yet you’ve been advancing faster than anyone in academy history."

"Because I’m scared. People like your sister make it really clear what happens to lottery winners who can’t perform. So I perform."

"Fear doesn’t explain your rate of improvement."

"Then call it stubbornness. Or spite. Or whatever you want to call it." I met her eyes directly for the first time since the conversation started. "I’m not some secret prodigy with hidden abilities. I’m not running some scheme to embarrass your family. I’m a kid from nowhere who got lucky with the lottery and unlucky with everything else, and I’m doing whatever I have to do to not get killed by monsters or other students or Diamond-tier investigators who think I’m something I’m not."

The words came out harder than I intended. More honest. The kind of thing that slipped past your defenses when you were tired and scared and operating on four hours of sleep after a night of activities that would make a Catholic priest require several drinks.

Cassandra’s expression remained unreadable. The silence stretched again, but this time I didn’t break it. Couldn’t break it. The speech had exhausted whatever reserves I’d been running on, and now all I could do was sit there and wait for the verdict.

She let the silence stretch like taffy pulled too thin. Outside, students moved between buildings in their house uniforms, tiny figures going about their lives while I sat here wondering if mine was about to implode.

"My sister has always been difficult."

The change in direction made me sit up straighter. "Ma’am?"

"Difficult as a child. Difficult as a teenager. Still difficult now." Cassandra’s voice carried the exhaustion of someone who’d spent two decades managing a force of nature. "She has genuine talent. Real potential. But somewhere along the way, talent curdled into entitlement, and entitlement metastasized into something uglier."

I had no idea where this was going, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Blair called our father last week." She turned from the window. "Told him there was a lottery winner at San Nicolas who’d somehow found a way to cheat. Said it was obvious, that everyone could see it, that the faculty were either corrupt or incompetent." A pause. "Your name came up."

"That’s not—"

"I know it’s not true. I’ve spent three days reviewing every piece of data related to your performance. Your improvement is remarkable, but it’s not impossible. Limit Breaker cases are rare but documented. Late-awakening growth spurts happen. And your training schedule would kill most students, which suggests you’re simply willing to suffer more than your peers."

Something cold settled in my stomach. "You think I have Limit Breaker?"

"I think it’s one of several possible explanations." She turned from the window. "I also think you’re hiding something. Everyone at a hunter academy is hiding something. The question is whether what you’re hiding matters."

"And what’s your conclusion?"

"Inconclusive." She returned to her desk but didn’t sit. "You’re not what my sister claims. You’re not some cheater gaming the system. But you’re also not just a lucky lottery winner who works hard. There’s something else going on with you, Mr. Monroe. Something I can’t identify."

The cold in my stomach intensified. "Are you going to keep investigating?"

"For now, no. I have actual responsibilities to attend to, and my sister’s grudge isn’t worth infinite resources." Cassandra picked up her tablet and made a few notes. "But I’ll be watching. From a distance. If you slip, if you make a mistake, if whatever you’re hiding becomes relevant to matters larger than academy politics, I will find out. And when I find out, this conversation will seem remarkably friendly by comparison."

"Understood."

"Do you?" Those winter-cold eyes searched my face. "Because I’m not making threats. Threats imply uncertainty about follow-through. I’m making promises. The Davenport family protects its interests. If you become a threat to those interests, protection becomes removal."

"I’m not a threat to your family. I just want to graduate."

"Then we have no conflict." She gestured toward the door. "You may go."

I pushed myself up from the chair. My legs worked fine, but something about the last thirty minutes left me feeling wrung out in ways that had nothing to do with physical exertion. Mental chess against someone operating on a completely different level. Every word carrying implications I probably missed half of.

"Thank you for your time," I managed.

She’d already returned her attention to her tablet. Dismissed, just like that. From terrifying interrogation to irrelevant distraction in the span of a sentence.

I left before she could add anything else. The door closed behind me with a soft click that somehow sounded like a cell door slamming shut.

The hallway stretched ahead, empty and silent. My legs carried me forward on autopilot while my brain processed everything that had just happened.Diamond-tier resources. Diamond-tier intelligence networks. Diamond-tier everything.

And she’d let me go. Not because I’d convinced her I was innocent, but because I wasn’t worth the effort of pursuing. The moment that changed, the moment I became interesting enough to merit actual investigation, every layer of protection I’d built would crumble like wet paper.

My phone buzzed.

Belle: "alive?"

Me: "barely"

Belle: "location?"

Me: "heading to the quad. need air."

Belle: "on my way"