She opens her mouth to say something, but I stop her.

“Wait. I know you’re going to say it’s bullshit. I get it. But just ask Felix. Or Matteo and Brendan, Blackwood or Conner. You asked me once how I got in midsemester at seventeen. Now you know—my parents were the best Strategia the Academy has turned out in generations. And yet no one knew I existed before I showed up here. I didn’t even know who my parents were.” I swallow, and Aarya blinks, just once, so I know she’s listening. “So why are all these people trying to kill me—some girl no one’s ever heard of?” I continue. “It’s not because my parents fell in love. It’s because my mom killed Jag’s brother and the Lions told everyone some bullshit story that my parents were dead to cover up the fact that they’d failed to track my family down. Except they eventually succeeded. They killed my mom when I was six years old, and since then my dad has been hiding me…right up to the point that he sent me here.”

I take a deep breath and fix her in my gaze. “I can’t change the past. But if there’s one thing I’m going to do before I leave this school, it’s stop the Lions and anyone who’s colluding with them from blotting out the good parts of Strategia. Because a world without my mom, with no Laylas or Ineses and all Brendans, is a terrifying place to live. So I, for one, am going to fight back.” I can’t believe the words that are coming out of my mouth, but the moment I say them, I know I mean them.

Aarya stares at me for so long that I think she might be frozen.

“Aarya?”

“Shut up, November. Just shut up.”

I swallow, wondering if she’s planning to punch me in the throat after all. But after a few more seconds of deadpanning, she sighs and her shoulders drop.

“I broke into Conner’s office not that long ago, okay? I’ve never trusted that bastard. Blackwood caught me, but as far as I know, she never told Conner I broke in. I’ve always wondered why.” She pauses. “He keeps a knife hidden under his desk and he has poison in one of his drawers. Not the amateur assessment poison that will give you a stomachache, the real deal.” She looks at me and I get the sense that she’s expecting a big reaction. When it doesn’t come, she rolls her eyes like I’m an idiot. “Obviously, students aren’t allowed to keep weapons, but it’s not unusual for us to try. But faculty really shouldn’t have weapons. It makes them a threat and undermines the entire point of keeping this Academy hidden. And he’s the head of assessment. No. My creepy tolerance is high, and this soared right past it.”

I shift my gaze from Aarya to the tangled tree branches, trying to process what she’s saying. This has all been so foreign to me that the difference between students and faculty having weapons didn’t occur to me as a particularly huge deal. However, anything that freaks Aarya out is enough to send your average person into a faint.