Chapter 74: _ Professor Vespera

"She’s inside," I sighed. "On three. Try to look invisible."

Bren pushed the door open, and the eight of us shuffled into the back of the amphitheater like a line of guilty ducklings.

The entire lecture hall, filled with over sixty first-year dragon initiates sitting in steep, stepped wooden rows, instantly went dead silent.

At the front of the room, standing beside a slate chalkboard framed in gold leaf, stood Professor Vespera.

She was, without a doubt, the most terrifyingly immaculate woman I had ever laid eyes on. She wore an elaborate, floor-length gown of deep red silk lined with thick fur.

Her pitch-black hair was pinned up into an extraordinary crown formed entirely of long, golden dragon-needles that caught the torchlight with every movement of her head. In her right hand, she held a long brass pointer, which rested against the palm of her black leather glove with a rhythm like a ticking clock.

TAP. TAP. TAP.

Professor Vespera slowly turned her head toward the back doors.

"Eight minutes late. Eight minutes of golden, unrecoverable time wasted on wandering the corridors like mindless cattle." Vespera purred.

"P-professor," the noble boy behind me stammered, stepping forward with his hands raised. "The Great Hall was locked down by Discipline Warden Silas! There was a brawl between Prince Remus and..."

"Did I ask for a recounting of your morning failures, Initiate?" Vespera interrupted. She didn’t even turn to look at him. She simply raised her brass pointer, aiming it squarely at his chest. "I do not care if the High King himself descended from the heavens to challenge you to a duel in the courtyard. In my hall, time is absolute. Punctuality is the foundation of discipline, and discipline is the only thing keeping your worthless hides from becoming drake feed."

She slowly lowered her pointer, scanning the eight of us with disdain until her blue eyes locked onto me. Her gaze lingered on my muddy hem, my torn tunic shoulder, and the dark band on my wrist. Her eyebrows twitched upward by a millimeter.

"Since the eight of you clearly possess so much energy to burn," Vespera announced, stepping aside to reveal a wooden table near her podium stacked high with iron-bound leather codices, "you will perform a public service for your more punctual peers. You will distribute the Foundational Codices of the Great Prophecy to every single desk in this hall before taking your seats. If a single student is missed, all eight of you will forfeit your practical marks for the week."

Stifled snickers rippled through the seated rows.

"Jerks," a girl behind me scoffed.

"Understood, Professor," Bren muttered through gritted teeth.

We marched down the steep stone steps to the front podium, grabbing armfuls of the textbooks. Each book weighed at least fifteen pounds. I hauled five of them against my chest, my arms straining under the weight as I began climbing the stairs of the amphitheater, handing them out row by row.

I moved down the third row, leaning over to place a codex on the desk of a broad-shouldered boy with thick bronze scales running along his jawline.

The second my fingers let go of the leather cover, he violently snatched the book away, pulling it so hard that the sharp iron binding scraped painfully across my knuckles.

"Don’t lay your filthy hands near my desk, trench rat," he sneered loudly, not even bothering to lower his voice. "Go back to the gutter where you belong."

My skin flushed hot, but I forced myself to keep moving, stepping up to the fourth row. I held out a textbook to a noble girl wearing a silk tunic adorned with the embroidered crest of an Earl dragon house.

The girl didn’t reach for it. Instead, she pulled her silk skirts tight against her legs, leaning as far away from me as humanly possible while wrinkling her nose as if I carried the plague.

"How did a Dragonless even get past the academy gates? She’s an absolute glitch in the system. A markless human leech." She snickered to her friend sitting beside her. "

"Look at her tunic," a boy in the row behind her chimed in, pointing his quill at the dried mud stain on my hem. "She looks like a chimney sweep who got lost on her way to the scullery! Hey, glitch! Did you have to sell your soul to the Tiger Prince just to get a pair of boots that aren’t falling apart?!"

Harsh, mean-spirited laughter echoed through the back rows.

I kept my head down, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted the faint copper tang of blood.

The desire to hurl curses right back at them gripped me, but I knew that in a class filled with nobles, if I fought back against so many students, I might be the one who ends up getting punished.

My knuckles turned white as I gripped the final textbook, pushing through the wall of hostile glares and sneering faces. I hated them. I hated their stupid silk tunics, their shimmering lineage marks, and the arrogant way they looked at me like I was dirt beneath their polished boots.

I slammed the last book onto a desk near the back and practically ran down the wooden aisle toward the empty bench where Miriel and Bren were waiting.

"SILENCE!" Professor Vespera’s voice cracked through the amphitheater like a thunderclap.

She slammed her brass pointer against the chalkboard with a sharp CRACK! that made half the class jump out of their seats. The mocking laughter instantly died down into silence.

"You call yourselves the elite offspring of the Dragon Realm?" Vespera sneered as she scanned the rows of noble students. "You sit there giggling like mindless toddlers at a tavern, preening over your silk tunics and your grand lineage marks! Let me remind you of something, you arrogant little hatchlings: the Great Prophecy does not care about your father’s gold. It does not care about your family crest. When the darkness comes, a borrowed will tear through a noble dragon lord just as easily as it tears through a common farmer!"

She took two steps toward the center of the podium.

"You are here at the Dragon Academy for one reason, and one reason only. Not to parade your wealth. Not to play political games in the corridors. You are here to be honed into ruthless, unbreakable warriors who will stand on the front lines when the sky bleeds black! Act like the elites you claim to be, or I will personally drag you to the testing grounds and let the mountain drakes teach you humility!"