Abi’s stomach knotted up and her eyes and cheeks grew hot, and she struggled to keep down a sob. And there it was—the one accusation she had no way of disproving. How do you prove you don’t have a Gift? Because if she was good enough, she could hide it from Heralds themselves! After all, she knew all about all kinds of Gifts, she even knew how to Shield, and she could have been hiding almost anything behind a Shield!

“Well, that’s a very interesting theory,” Master Ketnar said . . . and his eyes narrowed. “There’s just one tiny little problem with it. You two didn’t get the same exam questions.”

Abi felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. What?

The boy gaped at Ketnar, taken as much by surprise as Abi was. “What?” he blurted.

“I said, you didn’t get the same exam questions. The answers Abi got and the work she did match the questions she got. But the answers you wrote and the work you did do not match the questions you got. But the answers do match Abi’s, down to the smallest detail.” Ketnar got up from behind his desk and loomed over the now cringing boy. “Do you have an explanation for this phenomenon?”

“I . . . I . . . I . . .” the boy babbled.

“Would you like to give that explanation under Truth Spell?” Ketnar continued. “It seems a pity to get a Herald to trot down here for such a petty reason as cheating, but both Abi’s parents have already volunteered to do so any time I discovered someone was trying to get her in trouble. So . . . are you prepared to tell me now, or must I summon one of them?”

“Oh, gods—” the boy blurted, then buried his face in his hands and began to sob. “I—it was Dudley Remp. It was him!”

“And just how, exactly, did Dudley Remp accomplish this amazing feat?” purred Master Ketnar.

“I don’t know!” Geoffers said in a panic. “He just told me that when you called me in about the exams I was supposed to say she cheated and copied mine, and she used Farsight to do it! That’s all I know!”

“Well, you can thank your friend Dudley for the fact that you are being expelled,” the Master replied ruthlessly. “I wish you good fortune explaining to your parents how this came about. You’ll be escorted off the Palace and to your sponsor, who will be told what you have done and will deal with you as he sees fit. Do not set foot within the Palace walls again.”

Abi felt a little sorry—a very little—when he burst into tears. But there was no hope for it. Master Ketnar summoned one of the Palace servants to escort him off the grounds, and that was that. He wasn’t even allowed time to collect his books from the classroom he’d been in.