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I ignore the question, too, and say instead, “Do you need help with father?”

She silently shakes her head and divvies out a small bowl of oats to spoon-feed to him. She won’t look me in the eye. I try to pretend that it doesn’t sting, but I’ve noticed this nervousness in her for days. It’s been brewing up, gaining power, as if she’s too frightened to speak about what might come to pass if I fail her at the trails.

I scoff down the rest of my breakfast, eager to get out of here, to leave behind the stuffy oppressiveness of my mother’s desperation. I put on my boots and yank the head from the table.

“Let’s go,” I tell Thaddeus.

Something flashes in his eyes, the first bit of respect I’ve had from him in a while.

“Good man,” he says with a nod. He gets up and slaps my back twice, an intimate gesture. “Let’s get you a spot.”

3

LESSON THREE

“What the fuck is that?” Dean Drearton exclaims when Thaddeus slams the severed head of the teras onto his desk. Red-faced, flustered; I feel like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t. I want to go prostrate before this man, bow to him. He is more than a celebrity. He is a saviour. He runs the University that gives the men and women who fight and protect us from monsters. It feels like being close to God.

But this image of mine is stained by the way Thaddeus speaks to him. He is casual. Flippant. My brother is close to the dean in a way only graduates can be; there is a shared sense of passage, a journey they have experienced together. Only they know the true secrets of this world.

The dean gestures wildly. “Thaddeus, what in God’s name—”

“Cassius killed it out in Watford,” Thaddeus grunts, stepping back from the horse-dog hybrid with a Hunter’s caution. He puts himself out of its range like it might come alive and chomp through his hand. “Had the feet of a gryphon, too. A full hybrid. I can’t think of a single Greco-Roman class that it could fit in. Nor anything British.”

We’re standing in the dean’s office, in the heart of the University. I’ve never been here except in my dreams, and it overwhelms me. This room alone has arched ceilings, windows, all manner of trinkets and books. It’s luxury beyond luxury. For a long time, our tiny London home was the most beautiful room I had ever been in, but I know it’s small for a family of four. This office is almost half its size.

It’s clear Thaddeus wants to say more. He slammed his lips together after the word hybrid. I look between him and the dean, thinking I’ve missed something. The dean stares at Thad, completely unhappily, and then he casts that scrutinising gaze onto me.

My stomach drops. Coming here was a mistake. He looks at me and sees something that makes his lip curl off his teeth in disgust.

“Out in Watford?” the dean clarifies. He’s a stout, round old man, with a permanently angry look in his eye. Rubbing the coarse whiskers on his chin, the dean stumbles over to his desk, scrunching up his face at the sight of the butchered head.

“Stinks, doesn’t it?” I whisper, trying to make conversation.

Thaddeus spins to me so quickly that I’m almost certain he’s snapped his neck. Fury burns in his eyes, his nostrils flare—it might’ve been comical if I didn’t know it meant I truly overstepped.

The dean glances at me, brows pinched together in pity. I feel like dying, then—that’s the kind of emotion he elicits in me. Shame makes my face burn. Then the dean carries on like I said nothing. He reaches down to a drawer, groaning through the stretch, and pulls out a pile of paper. With his face impassive he gives it a cursory glance before slamming it down on the desk. “Watford.” He prods the page with a fat finger. “You were assigned Watford, Thaddeus Jones, not your brother.”

Ah, so that’s it. Thaddeus overstepped, not me. I glance at my brother and see him flinch; I watch the anger catching like flint in his blood. He takes a breath so deep his chest begins to puff up.

“Dean—”

The dean’s red face looks set to burst. “You think a trophy will be enough to get him in? I thought we taught you the dangers of idealism, Thaddeus. Christ. What a disappointment.” A tense minute of silence passes where no one moves. I can feel every nerve in my body tighten up. I worry that I’m visibly shaking, that I’ll lose the last bit of respect from both of these men.

To my surprise, it’s the dean who blinks first, not my brother. Dean Drearton deflates a little and sighs, turning back to the desk. “Would you get the fucking thing off my desk?” he mutters. I leap forward to take it off. A crusty patch of dried blood snows down as I remove it, and I try to wipe it clean with my sleeve. The dean raises a brow and I regret everything. I regret every breath I have ever taken until now. I am not made for this. My time in London should have taught me everything is politics, especially life and death, and I have no graduate class. Why should a man like the dean give me respect? I realise I am being memorable for all the wrong reasons and step back with the head in my hands.

The dean says drily, “I was sending this out this evening, but I suppose there’s no harm in teaching you both a lesson early.”

The dean walks around his desk and rips open a set of drawers. I wait rigidly while he rummages through them, not daring to look at my brother. The air is thick, suddenly, sticky with tension. I can almost feel it seeping out of Thad’s pores. The instant we leave this place, I know I’ll cop the lot of it.

Clearly, Thad had been in the wrong to drag me out for teras hunting before I’d even been confirmed in the University, but he will find a way to make this all my fault.

“Here,” the dean grumbles. He slaps an envelope into Thaddeus’ hands. “Case out Watford again. Try to follow your orders this time.”

Thaddeus takes the letter far more gently than I assume is possible for his big, calloused hands. Then he turns on his heels without another word and leaves me alone with the dean.

I chance a look at the door, give the dean an awkward half-bow, and make to leave.

“This is the place ego comes to die, Mr Jones,” the dean says. I stumble to a stop and turn back to him. “There are far too many risks in this world for the University to select men and women for its cohort who cannot follow the basic rules of our society.”