Chapter 48: Getting Sent To Jail.

"You think he’s going to send us to jail?" Bellamy prodded Elian with his elbow, his eyes still fixated on the sleeping bloodfang that was on Milena’s shoulder, studying it with more curiosity than terror.

Elian let out a short, tired sigh at his question.

"Why would he send us to jail?"

"I don’t know, for being too good at combat maybe?" A pause, a mischievous grin stretching on his lips. "Maybe he thinks we’re some mysterious group of assassins, send to destabilize the school from the inside."

Bellamy waggled his eyebrows.

"I’d make a great assassin. Very stealthy. Amazingly stylish."He said it so flamboyantly Elian was almost starting to feel bad for his friend.

"You yielded before a single exchange happened," He said instead.

"I did it strategically."

"You literally explained why in front of the whole class, and it still doesn’t change the fact that you yielded before even fighting." Cordelia added, not looking up from the notes she was already scribbling about the day’s fights.

"It was, and I quote, ’the smartest thing anyone’s did in this class all day.’"

"See, this is what I mean. I’m smart, assassins are smart." Bellamy nodded sagely, entirely committed to the bit now. "Probably why he’s calling us back. Recruitment or maybe even better, a secret mission."

Darrow, sprawled against the wall nearby with his hands behind his head, cracked one eye open. "If it’s a secret mission, I’m in. Beats theory homework."

"You don’t even do the theory homework." Cordelia said.

"Exactly! This solves that problem!" Joining in on Bellamy’s bit now.

Oizys, who had been standing silent the entire time, watched the two of them with open, unguarded amusement—none of her usual careful composure bothering to reassert itself.

"I don’t think either of you has fully considered that being summoned back by a combat instructor after a class like that is far more likely to mean extra training than secret recruitment."

"That’s considerably less fun," Bellamy said, his smile turning into frown.

"Reality often is." Oizys shrugged, entirely serious.

Milena, arms crossed, snake dozing peacefully against her shoulder despite the noise, exchanged a long, weary look with Cordelia that required no words at all. Both having the specific, shared exhaustion of two people who had apparently developed an unforeseen companionship in the chaos without ever formally agreeing to it.

Which Elian totally understood. Because he’d have chosen that team instead of being lumped in with Bellamy, if he had ever gotten the chance.

"I don’t know how either of you survive a full day."

Cordelia said finally, shaking her head.

"You’ve been talking for six straight minutes and all of it has been straight nonsense, I think i heard two words that were useful."

"Useful is subjective," Bellamy said.

"It is not."

"It absolutely is in my professional opinion as someone who’s never once needed to be useful to have a good time."

He grinned, and slung an arm loosely around Elian’s shoulders instead, apparently done being lectured.

Wonderful, he was fully a part of the doofus team now.

"Anyway. If we do get arrested, Ellie, I want you to know it’s been an honor rooming with you. Truly."

"Nobody’s getting arrested."

"You don’t know that."

"I do, actually, because that’s not how any of this works."

"Optimism," Bellamy said, patting his shoulder. "It’s a nice quality. I hope it survives whatever Mr Callen’s about to walk through that door and tell us."

"You think it might actually a secret mission?" Darrow leaned in, voice still theatrically serious.

Elian stared at, then sighed.

"Shut up!"

The group erupted in laughter, the loudest being Darrow and Bellamy.

Rudra was still standing alone on the other corner of the room, not even a glance towards were Elian the rest were this entire time, face entirely serious as if he actually believed that they were all going to be arrested.

Professor Callan Reyes walked in through the door next moment, a water pouch in hand and a completely unexpected guest tailing closely behind him.

Rowan Vale, of all people.

Elian exchanged a glance with Milena, confused, and found no answers there either—just the same furrowed, wary curiosity mirrored back at him.

Callan meanwhile, didn’t so much walk in as get chased in, one hand still braced on the doorframe as though he was reconsidering whether the hallway was a better option for the conversation he was having.

"—because they’re children Rowan, in case that detail slipped your mind somewhere in the last twenty-four years."

"They’re not normal children."

Vale’s voice was even, unbothered, the tone of a woman who had had this argument somewhere before and expected to win it again.

"They’re trained fighters who happen to still be enrolled in school. There’s a difference."

"That doesn’t make it any better does it!?" Reyes raised his voice, his anger dangerously close to boiling out.

Rowan Vale didn’t give him an answer.

Once he stepped inside the class, he pointed them towards the arena’s raised floor.

"Sit." He said, still trying his best to regulate his voice. "This going to be a long conversation."

"I doesn’t need to be." Rowan sighed.

"It absolutely does."

Reyes waited until they were all seated before speaking again.

His arms were crossed, the tension from the hallway still sitting visible in his shoulders even as he tried to fold it back into something more measured.

"Alright."

He looked at the seven of them, scattered across the arena floor in various states of post-duel exhaustion.

"I want to be clear about something before Vale says whatever it is she’s about to say, if she hasn’t already. This is not it, this is not how you do it. I’ve never once, in nine years, had to pull a group of first-years aside after a first day and told them they were being reckless on anything. That’s not how this class works, it is not how it’s supposed to work."

"Callan."

"I’m not finished."

He didn’t raise his voice at Vale this time, but the edge in it stayed.

"I watched seven teenagers today move like they’d already survived things this school hasn’t prepared any of them for. I watched two of them nearly put each other in the infirmary out of pure trained instinct, and when I asked who taught them, neither one answered me. I’m not even curious anymore Rowan, I’m genuinely worried for them. Do you not see where they’re headed? you think filling their heads with idea that some duty they were assigned centuries ago is grander than them is going to help?"