The entire class laughed. At her. Hot humiliation and rage zoomed up the back of Yenni’s skull, and her breathing quickened. How dare they? She was a princess of the Yirba, and she refused to accept such disrespect. Yenni pulled ach’e hard, like a child first learning her runes.

“Source to light and here remain!” she shouted angrily. Ach’e rushed through her, making her shiver, and brilliant light burst from her palm, so bright she had to turn her head. She heard Professor Mainard and the students around her cry out.

“Enough!” Professor Mainard yelled. “Are you trying to blind us all?”

Yenni closed her palm but the light continued to leak out between her fingers.

“Source’s light by source undone,” Mainard said, irritation plain in his voice. Foreign ach’e smothered her hand, wet and clammy, and the light in Yenni’s palm went out.

“Oh, by all that is holy,” Mainard grumbled. “Do sit down, Mam’selle Kayerba.”

Yenni sat, seething.

Mainard shook his head. “I’d expect nothing less,” he said. “Give up, Mam’selle Kayerba, you’re in over your head.”

He walked off to terrorize some other student and left Yenni clenching the edges of her desk.

“Never,” she growled through her teeth. She would not give up. She was Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba. She was the equal of any one of these Creshens, and she would master their strange magic, learn a way to save her father, and return to her tribe triumphant. Giving up was simply not an option.

By the grace of the Sha, the rest of the day’s classes were far less traumatizing. Neither of her professors in Basics of Offensive Spellcasting or Basics of Defensive Spellcasting had required demonstrations. She was free to simply listen, make notes, and absorb their lessons.

Her best class was her last: An Introduction to Dragon Psychology. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it was Professor Rosé. She was dragonkind, and had skin that was pale pink, like the wild daisies that grew in the fields back home. Waves of thick, deep-pink hair spilled from her head down to the middle of her back, and her eyes were a disconcerting almost red. Still, she was friendly and enthusiastic, the opposite of Professor Mainard. And it was amusing to watch the silly, lovestruck expressions on most of the men in the room.

“In conclusion,” she said as she sat at the edge of one of the tables and flipped her long hair over her shoulder, “we dragonkind are still people. Now, yes, I know today’s lesson has been an examination of differences in personality when we’re in human and when we’re in dragon forms, but you’ll find that even in dragon we’re not so different from you. To that end, you have some homework.”

A few people groaned.