Chapter 177: One Rematch Per Scandal

The results went up on Monday morning, on a board outside the examination hall. By the time Blair got there, half the freshman class was standing in front of it.

Daemus walked her the last stretch with his practice bag over one shoulder and a coffee in each hand. He’d been talking about his horrible algebra score for ten minutes. It wasn’t out yet.

"If it’s a forty, I’m moving to the mountains," he said. "Living in a cave. You can visit."

"It won’t be a forty."

"You don’t know that."

The crowd noticed her. It didn’t part politely. It went quiet in pieces, starting at the back, until a Leopard girl at the front turned around, saw her and stepped aside as if she’d bitten something sour.

Blair could see the top of the list.

1. Killian Lexur

1. Blair Willows

Same number. Someone had had to decide whose name went on top.

Below the overall ranking, the subject scores ran in neat columns. She found Beast Law.

Willows: 99. Lexur: 97.

"Bunny." Daemus had read it over her head. "Bunny. You beat him."

"In one subject."

"You beat the snake at snake law." He said it loudly, to everyone. "That’s his whole thing. That’s the family business!"

People laughed. For once, not at her.

Then they stopped.

Killian came down the hall the way he always did, unhurried, with nobody in his path because nobody stayed in it. He didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t look at her. He stopped in front of the board and read it from top to bottom.

Then he read it again.

"Two points," he said.

"Out of a hundred," Daemus said helpfully. "That’s a lot of points, Kill."

Killian kept his eyes on the board. "One paper, graded by one examiner, on one morning." He turned to the hall at large. "A rematch. Beast Law, on the quad at noon. Questions from the floor. The first to miss loses."

The hallway erupted.

"No," Blair said.

It came out in her normal voice. That surprised her more than anyone.

Killian’s gaze stayed fixed somewhere past her left shoulder. "No?"

"I already took the test. I don’t need to take it again in front of everyone."

"Then you concede the score was luck."

Blair’s fingers tightened on the coffee Daemus had given her.

"It wasn’t luck."

"Then prove it." He was already walking away. "Noon."

Daemus watched him go. Then he looked down at her with enormous, hopeful eyes.

"We’re going, right? Tell me we’re going. I’ll skip practice."

"You can’t skip practice."

"Coach’ll understand. It’s a sporting event!"

* * *

By noon the quad was full.

Beasts filled the steps of the library and crowded the fountain three deep. At the edges, where nobody had offered them room, stood a line of gray: Dormitory G, on their lunch break. Blair hadn’t known so many of them knew her name.

Killian waited beside the fountain, in the only patch of sun on the whole quad. He’d found it the way a cat finds a warm windowsill. His hands were folded behind his back.

Daemus had brought the defensive line. Nobody had asked them to come.

"WIL-LOWS," one of them started, and Daemus elbowed him.

"Too much. She hates that."

"She’s smiling."

She wasn’t. She was trying very hard not to.

The questions from the floor were terrible. A Hyena asked what the law said about stealing someone’s parking spot. A Bear sophomore asked Killian, with real sincerity, whether the Crown was allowed to arrest the weather. Killian answered him, which was somehow worse.

Then a voice came from behind the crowd.

"If this is going to happen on my lunch hour, it will be done properly."

The crowd split for Jack faster than it had split for Killian. He took a battered Beast Law text from a sophomore’s hands without asking for it and stopped at the fountain between them, close enough that his coat brushed her sleeve.

"I’ll read. You’ll answer. Nobody else speaks." He opened the book. "Ms. Willows. Since His Highness insists you defend your title, you may go first."

He didn’t look at her when he said it. She felt it anyway, all the way down her spine.

It went fast after that.

Inheritance law for mixed-faction pups. The penalty for a forged house seal. Which faction holds a river that crosses a royal border. Killian answered without hesitating, in full sentences, as if he were dictating. Blair answered faster and shorter, and the gray line at the edge of the quad leaned in a little more each time.

Twenty minutes. Thirty. Nobody missed.

"Is it B?" Daemus whispered behind her, during one of Killian’s turns.

"There’s no B," Blair whispered back. "It isn’t multiple choice."

"Then how does anybody guess?"

Jack turned several pages without reading them. He stopped near the back of the book.

"Your Highness," he said. "A registered pet is left unattended in a public place. After how many hours is it legally considered abandoned?"

The sun stayed on Killian’s face. Nothing else moved.

The quiet stretched. Someone on the library steps whispered, and someone else shushed them.

"I’ve never needed to know," Killian said at last.

Jack turned to her. "Ms. Willows."

"Twelve," Blair said. "After twelve hours, anyone can claim it."

She hadn’t meant to keep talking. But the gray line was very still, and she could feel every one of them listening.

"I have needed to know," she said.

For a moment there was no sound on the quad except the fountain.

Then the gray line made a noise she had never heard come out of Dormitory G. It wasn’t a cheer. It was louder than that.

Jack shut the book.

Killian stood very straight in his patch of sun. "Again."

"No," Jack said. "One rematch per scandal, Your Highness. I have a lunch."

He handed the book back to the sophomore, and then he was gone.

Killian turned and walked away without a word. He didn’t look at her once. The crowd parted for him all the way to the Royal Faction House.

Something hit Blair from behind and lifted her off her feet.

"You beat him TWICE," Daemus said into her hair. He spun her once, set her down and kissed her in the middle of the quad, in front of the library steps and the defensive line and the whole gray edge of the crowd. It was short and hard and tasted like coffee, and she forgot to be embarrassed until it was over.

"Practice," she said against his mouth.

"It’s okay to be late sometimes."

"Daemus."

He groaned, kissed her again and jogged off backward, pointing at her the whole way, until the defensive line dragged him around a corner.

Blair’s face was still burning when a hand touched her arm.

A human girl stood beside her. She was older, a senior maybe, with a clipboard hugged to her chest, her hair in a neat braid and a gray cardigan buttoned to the throat. She had the kind of smile that made people want to tell her things.

"That was incredible," she said warmly. "I’m Margot. Margot Hale. Fourth floor." She squeezed Blair’s arm. "If anyone gives you trouble about today, come find me. You’re in 204, right?"

"Yes," Blair said. "Thank you."

Margot smiled again and went back to the gray line, where three girls were waiting for her.

Blair turned to go.

Under the stone arches at the far side of the quad, a janitor’s cart stood by itself. A mop leaned in the bucket. Nobody was with it.

The water in the bucket was still moving.