I TAKE MY seat next to Layla in poisons class, which is set up like a medieval version of a high school chemistry lab. There’s a large fireplace that warms the room, the flames of which are used to heat and prepare poisonous substances, and a stone basin filled with water. At Academy Absconditi they don’t provide you with safety goggles to protect you from an explosive poisons accident, but they will extinguish you if you set yourself on fire. So that’s nice. The truly shocking part, though, isn’t the school’s lack of safety precautions; it’s that I’ve somehow grown accustomed to its risk-enthusiastic curriculum. I would shake my head at the absurdity of it all, but it wouldn’t go unnoticed by my classmates. Ever since I stepped out of my room this morning, watchful eyes of students and teachers have followed my every step.

I’m certain Aarya made a big show of telling everyone that my parents were the rebel Romeo and Juliet of Strategia—the firstborn daughter of the Bear Family running off with the firstborn son of the Lions, only to be chased by Lion assassins. That, combined with Headmaster Blackwood’s perfunctory announcement that Dr. Conner is dead, and the fact that Ash and I are covered in unexplained cuts and bruises, has made me the subject of a great deal of side-eyed whispering.

“Sit, my beauties,” says Professor Hisakawa, which is the way she addresses us at the beginning of every poisons class. She scans the room from under her blunt-cut bangs, her eyes twinkling. “We have so many wonderful things to discuss. You’re not going to want to miss a minute of it.”

Aarya and Felix sit at the wooden table across from ours. Aarya spins the glass vials and jars in front of her, which are filled with varied horrors, while she whistles. She keeps directing smug looks to Brendan’s back, obviously still gloating about her role in Dr. Conner’s demise. The part that strikes me as unsettling, though, is that if everyone assumes Brendan was involved in the plot to kill me, why doesn’t he suffer any consequences? Does his status as a head Lion really shield him that well, or is there just no evidence to prove it?

I shift my focus to Felix, who, unlike Aarya, is stiff and tensed, causing the long scar on his cheekbone to pull at the skin around it. He looks as banged up as me and Ash, and by the careful way he sits, I’m certain he’s as sore from plummeting through that tree as I am. He’s refused to look in my direction since he walked in the room. I guess it’s hard to look at me knowing he tried to kill me only to later discover that I’d saved his life.