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He rolled his eyes at the wordfriends, but obliged anyway. “Savannah, meet Dutch…” Dante indicated the blond boy. “…and Rhett.” He pointed at the black-haired boy. “Or, as I like to think of them, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.”

“Charmed.” I held out my hand like a princess, just to see what the boys would do.

Dutch stared at my hand, confused. For a moment, I thought he was going to take it and kiss it, just like in the fairytales. Rhett whacked my hand away before his friend got the chance.

“Your sister is trouble,” Rhett told Dante. “Just like you.”

“Is that all?” Dante laughed. “Because we’d really like to get on with our plan of not talking to you.”

“Watch yourself, Winters. No one likes a smart ass,” Dutch said, bumping into Dante as he and Rhett stomped away like a pair of hungry T-rexes.

“Wow, they are something else,” I commented.

“They’re all like that. The Apprentices from Victory,” he explained when I blinked at him. “Victory is this kooky town somewhere in Europe. The mayor of Victory puts most of their food, education, and other resources into a group of teenagers he’s decided has the best chance of being chosen. And they totally ignore all of the other kids in town.”

“So a handful of kids gets all the resources meant for thousands?” I asked. “Yeah, that sounds totally fair.”

“It seems to work,” Dante said. “Almost every one of those ‘special’ kids was chosen this year. And last year.”

“Those who are given more achieve more. What a shocker. And talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.” I tried to shake off my annoyance, but it was pretty hard to be nonchalant about injustice.

Dante nodded. “Well, no one ever promised us that life would be fair, Sav.”

“But being a Knight is supposed to be about chivalry, fairness, and righting all the wrongs in the world,” I grumbled. “How is that even possible when the Government lets so many jerks become Knights?”

“Yeah…so, this is why I didn’t tell you about the Victory kids before.”

I frowned at him. “Wait, just how long have you known about these Victory kids?”

“Like a year or two.”

“A year ortwo? You really should have told me!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

Dante had always looked out for me. He’d always protected me. I loved that about him. But sometimes I also hated that about him. He had to understand that I could take care of myself.

“You should have told me before the Choosing. I needed to know these things, so I could have?—”

“Studied even more than you already do?” he said, a twinkle in his eyes.

He had a point. I already studied and trained most of the day.

“It’s still unfair,” I pouted.

“What’s unfair?” asked Bronte, a girl I’d met yesterday in the Garden, as she walked up to us.

I told her all about the Victory kids. She stood there in silence, looking pretty shocked by their cheating. Good. That meant she cared about something more than just winning the Scoreboard competition. Admittedly, when she’d told me about herself yesterday, I’d been a little worried she might be one of those ultra-competitive cutthroats who would do anything to get to the top.

But the more I talked to Bronte, the more I realized there actually was more to her than winning. Though she’d spent her weekends competing in dance contests and performing in elaborate, full-scale theatrical productions, she wasn’t vain. And despite the fact that she had more trophies than I had socks, she didn’t expect everything to be handed to her. She’d had to earn every single victory. She worked harder than anyone I’d ever met. Losing wasn’t in her vocabulary, and that went for dance, school, or anything else our cursed world threw at her.

“It doesn’t matter that those Victory kids got so much help. That is in the past,” Bronte said when I was done telling her about them. “That won’t help them here.”

“Wise words,” Dante said, leaning his arm on my shoulder.

I brushed him off. “Yeah, they are.”

“So, this is your brother?” Bronte asked me.