Page 9 of Wicked Elites

“Why?”

“Mrs. Benazir made him a prefect after his twin sister died, and it’s turned him into a tyrant.”

“Because he stands up to you?”

“Interrupts conversations, sneaks about breaking up couples. One would think a scholar would need to work hard to maintain their grades, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Benazir waived her grade requirements to keep him from falling into the same kind of madness as his sister.”

I bristled. Maybe Prakash never had a family member die before their time, but his attitude toward Cormac was less than sympathetic.

“Are you a scholar, too?” I asked.

He scoffed. “Hardly.”

“But you’re in Advanced Calculus.”

He turned to me and met my eyes for the first time. They were as dark as ebony and twice as hard. With a sneer, he swept his gaze down my free uniform, onto my free textbook, and free notepaper.

“Not all of us need to sell ourselves.”

I flinched at his words. He made earning a scholarship sound like prostitution. I was about to spit out a retort when Miss Weil started her lecture and made rapid-fire calculations to illustrate her points.

As soon as she turned her back and scribbled equations on the board, I turned to him, teeth bared.

“You think you’re better than me because you’re paying thousands of pounds a term?” I hissed. “We’re both sitting in the same class, yet your parents paid, and I’m getting paid to be here. I know who’s got the better deal.”

He raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Or your parents sold you out.”

My mouth fell open. I wanted to hurl the fact that Mom and Dad had refused Mrs. Benazir’s offer, but that would lead to explaining their death. Prakash would probably find a way to twist that around to demonstrate his moral superiority. I couldn’t let him tarnish their memory with jibes.

He stuck his perfect nose in the air, his way of saying he had won the argument.

I clenched my fists. Fuck him and his money.

* * *

Prakash was also in my Information Technology class, but we sat at computers on opposite sides of the lab. I was thankful he wasn’t also in Software Systems Development, because by the end of the day, I was sick of seeing him around campus. Resentment burned through my insides whenever I remembered how he had twice implied that I was a sell-out for accepting a scholarship.

As Ashley now preferred artistic subjects, we didn’t see each other until prep time at the end of classes. The academy provided study rooms where people could read up for upcoming classes, but I returned to my room to find Ashley lying on the bed with a forearm over her eyes.

“How was your first day?” I asked.

“No one talks to me.”

I tilted my head to the side. Most people were silent in classes, too busy concentrating on their work. “What do you mean?”

“And I sit in the back of classrooms, not understanding what’s going on.”

My gaze dropped to the pile of untouched books at the foot of her bed. “Do you need help?”

“Yes!” She sat upright and beamed.

I smiled back, heart filling with warm encouragement. Was the academic environment rubbing off on her already? Maybe things would return to how they were before we left London, and we would study together again. It probably helped a little that luscious Leopold had been the first guy we had met. With that kind of motivation, I guess anyone would want to study to keep up with an elite like him.

“Which subjects?” Sucking in a deep breath, I set down my satchel and took off my blazer. “You were always good at—”

“Not that.” She grabbed my hands and squeezed tight. “I need to meet the other students outside of school, so they get to see my fun side.”

“What are you thinking?” I bit down on my lip. This didn’t sound academic at all.