Chapter 38: _ The Girl Who is No-One

The stone flickered with a dim, muddy yellow light.

"Fourth Tier," the instructor announced lazily.

Oh, Miriel.

My heart sank for her. She lowered her head, her shoulders slumping as she was ushered into the crowd of low-ranked initiates. I knew just how much attention and being of elevated standing meant to her.

She came from a fallen noble line and she had, against all odds managed to get admitted to Last Bastion, probably hoping for a fresh start and attaining power, enough to save her ruined family name.

But this had just sealed how difficult that might be to achieve because she was clearly going to start at the absolute bottom of the food chain here.

If Fourth Tier is the bottom, I thought bitterly, are they going to invent a new basement level just for me?

The floor was almost empty now. Only a handful of terrified first-years remained. Pressure mounted in my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t run. The guards were everywhere. The wardens were watching.

Gritting my teeth, I summoned every ounce of spite left in my blood and forced my boots forward.

The entire ballroom was staring at me, but I didn’t feel the two hundred noble eyes hating my existence just because I dared to be Dragonless and stand before their precious Princes.

I could only feel three pairs of eyes: Raice, Remus, and Zev, burning right beneath my skin. They made every step I took heavy. My hands were trembling. I could barely keep my gaze straight.

This is bad. This is bad.

I climbed the steps, my hand trembling as I reached the pulsing Heartstone.

"Has your beast awakened, initiate?" Came the question.

I pressed my lips together, bracing myself for the biggest of all humiliations. I’d thought surviving the scorns, the stone hurled at my feet after the slightest of mistakes—from townsfolk at Stonewick meant there was no biting situation I couldn’t smile my way out of.

Smile first. Pretend none of it reaches your chest where it hurts... this was the biggest lie ever.

It did hurt. I can not smile.

I looked the instructor dead in the eye. "No. I have no beast."

The instructors exchanged baffled, almost offended looks.

"What in the hells do you mean, no beast?" the Dragon instructor snapped, blinking down at me as if I had spoken in foreign gibberish. "There is no such thing as a shifter without a beast! You are either a shifter, Fae, a witch, or whatever creature walking this globe with extraordinary abilities—or you are human. Are you telling us you’re a human?"

"I am not human, but..." I trailed off, rolling back my tunic sleeve to expose my bare forearm.

The instructors leaned forward. I watched their faces go completely petrified at the sight of my markless skin.

"What is a human doing in our realm?!" the Tiger instructor gasped, backing away half a step as if mortal breath was contagious. "Why aren’t you in the human world where you belong?!"

"I told you, I am not human," I repeated with a tight jaw. "I have a dragon father and a dragon mother."

The Headmistress of the Dragon Academy frowned, stepping down from her pedestal. "If you are born of dragon blood, then who are your parents? State their names!"

"I don’t know," I answered quietly.

A murmur of disbelief rippled across the surrounding faculty.

"How can you not know your own parents’ names?" the Lion instructor scoffed, folding his arms. "What ridiculous joke is this? State your family name, girl, and stop playing games!"

"My last name is No-One," I said, holding my head high despite the heat prickling behind my eyes.

"Do not mock this sacred ceremony!" the instructor roared. "Your last name cannot be No-One!"

It is No-One," I insisted. "My father ran off and disowned me as a baby. My mother died giving birth to me on the side of a dirt road. No one in the village knew who they were because they had only moved there two days before I was born. So the woman who raised me named me Elira No-One."

A wave of intense disgust crossed the Tiger instructor’s face, his lips curling back in contempt. "Ah... so she got in through the anomaly clause," he spat, looking at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of his boot. "Step aside, girl. You don’t need to waste our time partaking in this ritual."

I was about to turn my back when...

"Wait."

A voice commanded from the high dais.

High Rector Maddox stood up from her chair, her sharp gaze fixed entirely on me. "She will be tested. Just like the others."

The Dragon instructor gritted his teeth, visibly annoyed, but he didn’t dare cross the High Rector. Grudgingly, he grabbed my wrist, pulled the silver blade across my palm with unnecessary force, and shoved my hand down onto the surface of the Heartstone.

My blood dripped onto the crystal.

And nothing happened.

A beat of absolute silence hung over the grand ballroom—and then the crowd exploded into harsh laughter. First-years giggled behind their sleeves, and senior nobles on the floor and upper balconies pointed and jeered at the pathetic, markless fraud standing on the dais.

Through the haze of humiliation, my eyes darted up to the honor stage. Bren was staring down at me, her red hair blazing, her eyes full of intense concern. Beside her, Miriel, who had just been weeping over her own low Fourth Tier ranking, was now looking at me with pity as if she just realized it could have been worse for her but it wasn’t.

As if she at least, wasn’t that bad. Actually, she wasn’t.

And then my gaze flicked higher, straight to the royal thrones.

Prince Zev leaned back in his seat with a dark smirk playing on his lips. He looked very unsurprised.

Raice was leaning forward, his violet eyes narrowed at me as if he were dissecting a strange insect under a glass.

And Remus... Remus was staring down at me, his brow furrowed, looking strangely, deeply... worried?

What? Why would he–

"Enough of this circus," the Dragon instructor muttered, roughly yanking my bloody hand away from the altar. "Step down, No-One. You’re dismissed."

I wiped my bleeding palm against my dress, turned my back on the mocking laughter, and took my first step down the dais.

I had barely taken the second when the floor beneath my boots violently shuddered...