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“When they manifested,” I clarified. “How did they know which Order they were? Did it just happen? Did someone test them? Does blood decide before power does, or after?”

Every student in the room seemed to freeze, no, flinch, at my words. Flinched was the only way to describe it, with a room full of students making one small almost synchronized movement, as if I had dropped a glass. Somebody whispered, “Stars,” and a girl covered her mouth.

It hit me then, not the answer, the problem with the question. They had all known for as long as they could remember. Of course they had.

Their families had named what they were before they understood there was anything to name. They had probably grown up with stories and tutors and little accidents at dinner tables that made proud parents smile behind napkins, folded into a history from the first spark, the first lifted spoon, the first impossible bruise healed or made. They had never had to ask when they learned to breathe.

I kept my chin up. I had learned that at the good grocery store while my mother counted out coins under a cashier’s patient smile. Look up. Always look up. Make them be the one to look away.

Sallow did not look away. “Most students,” he said, “arrive with familial indicators.”

“Blood,” I summarized.

“Lineage.”

“Same drawer.”

A sharp burst of laughter came from someone before cutting off quickly. Sallow’s expression tightened by a fraction.

“We do not have time to remedy every gap in your foundation today, Miss Lane. Your provisional evaluation will address such matters privately.”

I nodded as though I agreed with him even though I knew he was just trying to get me to shut up and sit down. “Has there ever been another?” I asked before they could move on.

Pippa made a tiny sound, and Sallow went still. “Another what?”

“First-generation provisional.”

The answer came too fast.

“Æscholt has always welcomed rare talent wherever it is found. First-generation admissions are treasured, if uncommon, and a point of pride for the institution.”

His answer was smooth and polished and empty of any real meaning. He had answered the brochure version of the question, not the human one. I wanted to ask who they were, to press him for information but the class and Sallow had already moved on.

Sallow did not ask me to demonstrate again. That should have felt like mercy. It felt like being put under glass.

The demonstrations resumed, going down the second half of the room's seating block, but the lecture had changed, or I had. Every small miracle looked different now, less wondrous and more rehearsed, a room full of people showing the thing their blood or education had already been allowed to claim.

Near the front, the dark-haired boy half-turned in his seat, the one Sallow had called Wyndham. He looked at me. Not like Pippa, worried and apologetic, and not like Sallow, measuring a problem he had already labeled. Wyndham looked at me like I had just made the morning less boring.

Under the desk where Sallow could not see, he opened one hand.

Fire stood up in his palm. It was not a tidy academic flame or a candle-trick but fire, gold and lazy and alive, rolling over his knuckles like it knew him well and liked him better than was safe. He held my gaze while it burned.

A dare, or a question, or the oldest stupid boy trick in the world, look what I can do.

I raised one eyebrow. That’s it? I tried to say with my glare.

His grin broke open, bright and startled, and for one stupid second, I wanted to smile back. Absolutely not, I told myself. He closed his hand and the fire vanished, and I looked away first, which annoyed me more than the flame.

Which was when I noticed the man standing just to the side of the classroom door. He did not belong to the lecture, and he hadn’t come in. He was the kind of person anyone could describe perfectly and still fail to recognize an hour later. He stood in the shadow beside the door with a small black book in one hand.

I knew without a doubt that he had not watched the demonstrations. He’d watched me. When I asked how everyone knew, I’d heard a pen scratch at the paper of a notebook, and when I asked whether there had ever been another, I’d heard the crinkle of a turned page. I’d assumed it was students writing notes to one another or something equally innocuous but now that I saw him I knew those sounds all came from him. He’d been taking notes. On me.

By the time the lecture ended, the man was gone, and no one else seemed to have noticed him at all. I did not write that down either, because some things were safer kept off paper until I understood who might read them.

But that night, alone in my room with my charcoal robe hung over the chair and the woods black beyond the window, I opened my notebook and made a page titled “Things I am not supposed to ask.” Under it, I wrote my questions.

When did everyone know? Has there ever been another first-gen? Where are they now? Why does nobody ask why? Who was the man at the door?