“Layla cares too much and is far too moral, if you ask me. Plus, she already told you. She thinks you’re reckless,” Ash says, and smiles. “Not that that’s always a bad quality. And even though she doesn’t know why, Layla knows you were paired with her for a reason. Nothing at the Academy is random, especially not roommate assignments. It’s likely that our immediate families are aligned in some manner, so by revealing unknown information about yourself in the middle of a hallway you could be compromising not just yourself but her, too.”

I nod. “I actually really appreciate her shutting me up. I’m not sure what would have happened if she hadn’t.”

He leans back but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “See, that kind of naïveté is exactly what confuses me about you. I find it nearly impossible to believe you really didn’t know what would happen to you. Strategia are never clueless. Yet the entire time you’ve been here, you’ve been asking questions everyone else knows the answers to, performing brilliantly in some classes and blundering your way through others. Layla told me what you did in mind games and that you fretted about it for an hour afterward. She said she couldn’t tell if you’d actually planned to win the challenge or won by default because you were simply running away from Brendan. Sometimes I think you’re the worst liar I’ve ever met and other times I think you might be a genius.”

I exhale. I got lucky when Layla and Ash thought my naïveté was intentional.

“I’m going to need you to tell me the truth,” Ash says. “Not the abridged version, or there can’t be any trust between us. Why don’t things add up about you?”

I steel myself and I look him squarely in the eyes, so that he can read me, so that he knows I’m not lying. “I am really good at some things,” I start, “and completely untrained in others. Layla guessed correctly. I did run from Brendan because I don’t know hand-to-hand fighting the way you guys do. All those questions I asked you, I asked for real. My cluelessness isn’t an act.”

He listens intently, frowning. “That’s exactly the problem. How could you not know how to fight or not know the answers to basic questions every Strategia learns as a child?”

“Because I wasn’t raised the way you were raised,” I say carefully.

“And how were you raised?” he asks.

I take a deep breath. Time for the truth. “I had no idea I was a Strategia before I came here. I still don’t really believe it.”

He stares at me for a long time, his invasive look on hyperdrive. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it again and frowns more deeply.