Page 5 of A University of Betrayal

“Grace. What’s wrong with you?” Amara asked, confused.

To be honest, it felt good when others from this family drew attention to themselves because it made people forget I was there.

Grace jumped up and stroked her brown corkscrew curls without success.

“If you’ll excuse me.” With these words, she stormed through the first floor and ran audibly up the stairs.

“Dear Lord.” Amara sighed and shook her head. Then she put the wine glass to her lips and downed the entire liquid. I had the urge to do the same, but the manners I had been taught forbade it. Besides, the wine, which had been lying in Moenia’s cellars for two hundred years, tasted miserably bitter.

“I hope she’s just having a bad day, otherwise we’ll be in trouble.”

“Why are you so worried, Mum?”

Amara looked at Ivy for a moment, but she was clearly too tired for discussions, so she ignored the personal address and answered Ivy’s question.

“You have to understand that if something happens to one of us, and we lose that person, it means we’ve failed to protect the Circle. We are like a body. If one organ is injured, it is difficult for the others to continue working.” She leaned back in her chair and looked at the window behind Margot, but it was dark outside, and I doubted that she could see even the slightest thing happening there. “Besides, Gloria is breathing down our necks. She’s just looking for ways to tighten the rules to guarantee the Councils more control over the town.”

“Doesn’t that also serve to protect us?”

I knew Ivy hadn’t meant the question entirely seriously. She was young, but not stupid, and noticed things others overlooked.

Amara laughed sarcastically before turning serious again. “Control is not protection. Control is power. And the one who has that power decides what to do with it, whether to use it for good or bad.”

My throat tightened.

I knew what she was implying, even if she didn’t say it.Nothing was more dangerous than going against the Councils.The Councils wielded great power in the role of the Circle’s opposition, pretending to restrict us so we didn’t do anything forbidden, but in reality, even Ivy sensed their dangerousness. Lots of rules and a uniform system. But the real problem was something else, a mission they were pursuing. They had seen a threat in the existence of the other species for centuries, and Gloria seemed to want to take it to the extreme.

I had long wondered how the Councils had gained so much power in a short time like this, but I had stopped when my lessons in Tempesta had begun. I wasn’t allowed to question the system, especially not as a student of Gloria Westcode, the head of the Councils. It just made you unnecessarily depressed to realize how trapped you were here.

“That’s why it’s important that we make no mistake and act as soon as something threatens us,” Amara continued.

“Like the Ruisangors?”

Ivy was good at bringing up topics that made others ache inside.

Over the last few days, there had been heated discussions between Amara and Gloria’s daughter, Amanda. She had conveyed that Amara was expected to take action, to push for stricter laws against the other species by signing new treaties and agreements. Amara had managed to negotiate compromises. The removal of the Bardots from our territory, more security at the university,whatever that meant...Nobody really talked about it, but you could tell that the Councils were taking their chances to push their interests forward.

“If Bayla wakes up, we shouldn’t have any problems,” Margot said quickly, but Ivy hit the mark again.

“What about the other girl?”

Silence.

The chances of Larissa still being alive were slim. Few people survived a serious Ruisangor bite, and the likelihood that they had taken Bayla’s friend as prey was just as plausible by now.

I had texted Larissa several times, but the messages hadn’t even gotten through, further lowering my hopes that she was still alive.

Ruisangors were ruthless, cold-hearted, and murderous. That was all I knew about them, but I wasn’t afraid of them. The thing I was most afraid of was myself.

“There’s still a lot to do at the town hall. If you’ll excuse me,” Amara interrupted the meal, visibly upset by recent events, and pushed her chair back before hurrying off across the dining room, still dressed in her dark brown business suit, causing the candles to flicker wildly.

You could see how much the responsibility was getting to her. Her attempts to hide it from us had failed. EvenIsensed it somehow. Again, something I couldn’t be happy about inside, but I was. It hid my imperfection. A miserable hiding game, exhausting and tedious. I felt like a traitor. The black sheep of the family who had to keep dyeing her wool white to avoid being discovered. Like a proliferating foreign body.

“Don’t you like your food?” Margot interrupted the silence, which always made me so uncomfortable because it increased the chance of being spoken to, like now.

I stared at her, overwhelmed because I wasn’t used to her talking to me. Since I actively avoided her, she accepted my decision as if she didn’t care about me. I knew it deep down, but had suppressed it for years until it came up, and from then on, I had kept my distance. Margot was part of the circle as Servus, a sister out of formality, nothing more.

“I’m not that hungry,” I stuttered and stood up a little too quickly, not wanting to give this ridiculous small talk another chance.