"I'm from a place called Saltcrest," I say eventually. The name of my home feels strange on my lips already. My throat tightens. "I used to fish with my brothers and my father most days. I was always good on the water, so I mostly guided the boat and helped lead us to where the catches were. My oldest brother, Rodrick, used to joke that I was half fish." My smile fades when the memory of crashing waves and the sight of a hand vanishing beneath the water fills my mind. The phantom sensation of water filling my lungs and the burn of salt in my nostrils makes me shudder.

The memory seems to have physical weight—the weight of the water pressing down, the screams swallowed by howling wind, the desperate, frantic reaching for something, someone to hold onto as the current pulled us apart. I blink hard and force the images away before they can consume me.

If the others sense I'm not saying more, they don't push me on it.

Instead, Beck thankfully changes the subject, even if it's not to a particularly cheerful topic. "So what are we going to do about Malakai?"

"We should keep an eye on him," I say. "For now, I don't care what Rector Voss said. We should still assume he's coming for us."

Ambrose, Mireen, and Beck all nod seriously.

“I’m just going to ask the uncomfortable question,” Ambrose says slowly, leaning close and keeping his voice low. “Wouldn’t we be doing ourselves and the rest of the first-years a favor if we struck first? Why wait for them to catch us by surprise. Why not make a plan to…”

I shake my head. “I don’t want us to become the things this place is trying to make us. Weapons. That’s what they want us to be. They put our backs to a corner and hope we’ll turn into killers to get out. But I want us to be better than that. Trying to kill Malakai for what he did would be the Confluence way. It would be the easy way. But I still want to be me when I’m done with this place. Killing Malakai would kill part of me, and I’m not willing to give that up. Not for him.”

There’s a pause around the table and then Beck breaks it by raising his mug toward us. “To being the good guys, then.”

Mireen’s smile is crooked. “To being the good guys. And all the people who died, giving us far more rooms to choose from and ample closet space.”

Ambrose nods seriously and sticks his cup out. “To being the good guys. Not what Mireen said.”

“Rude,” Mireen mutters.

I clank mine with the other cups. “To being the good guys.”