The Heir

“We’re here to take you to your dorms. So you can get . . . cleaned up,” she says, raising a disdainful eyebrow at the lot of us. “I’m going to read your names. Grab your bag and join your guide. And pay attention! I’m not going to repeat myself.”

She barks the last line at a couple of Freshmen who were whispering to each other. They snap to attention under her fiery stare.

Marcelline pulls a list out of her pocket and begins to read off our names.

A

The next two groups are Enforcers—almost all male, with a dozen students assigned to each guide. The Accountants are called next, then the Spies, and finally we’re down to the male Heirs. Marcelline reads off the names, pointlessly since we’re the only ones left:

“Bram Van Der Berg, Ares Cirillo, Erik Edman, Leo Gallo, Hedeon Gray, Valon Hoxha, Kenzo Tanaka, Jules Turgenev, Emile Gerard, and Dean Yenin.”

Fucking great. I’m going to be sharing a dorm with the two most obnoxious people I’ve met so far.

At least Ares will be there, too. He gives me a little fist bump as we line up next to our guide, a Polynesian guy with his hair shaved into a Mohawk and several piercings in both ears.

“I’m Joh

He glares at us, challenging us to come up with a query that fits his criteria. Nobody dares to try.

“Good,” he grunts. “Let’s get going.”

He leads us across the courtyard in the direction of the towers on the northwest corner of campus. We pass through a couple of greenhouses, and then what looks like an Armory.

“Gym’s in there,” Joh

“Are all the dorms over here?” I ask him, wondering how far away A

“No,” Joh

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Bram looks green at the thought.

“We’re in here,” Joh

He’s leading us into the second-tallest of the towers on the northeast corner of campus. Unlike the others, which are cylindrical, this particular tower is indeed octagonal. Its strange shape creates odd corners in the main common room, and awkward angles for each of the dorm rooms. At least our rooms are high up with good airflow and a stu

“Two to a room,” Joh

It’s an obvious choice to go with Ares. We only have to make eye contact and grin at each other to confirm it.

I expect Bram Van Der Berg to room with his Albanian friend Valon Hoxha, but to my surprise he gives a quick upward jerk of the chin to Dean instead, saying, “You wa

Dean eyes him warily. “Alright,” he says. “As long as you’re tidy.”

“Of course.” Bram nods.

They take the room down the hall from Ares and me. I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to have both my antagonists teaming up. At least it puts them in the same place, so I can keep an eye on both of them at once.

Valon Hoxha looks disgruntled at being abandoned without so much as a second thought. He’s forced to turn sullenly to the blond Norwegian Erik Edman instead.

“You have a roommate already?” he mutters.

“Nope,” Erik says. “And I don’t snore, so you better not either.”

Jules Turgenev turns to the French-Canadian Emile Girard.

“Serons-nous colocataires?”

“Pourquoi pas?” Emile shrugs.

That leaves the boy with the dragon tattoo, Kenzo Tanaka, to room with the sullen and silent Hedeon Gray, who I believe is from London.

Ares and I take the room at the very end of the hall. It’s the farthest walk away from the stairs, but it has the best view and hopefully will be a little quieter than the bedrooms closer to the common room.

It’s a small space with two beds on opposite sides of the room, two dressers, and no closet. No desks either—I guess we’re supposed to do our schoolwork in the library. If there even is any schoolwork. Do we write papers at Kingmakers? I have no idea.

That’s when the strangeness of this place finally hits me. I realize that I have no fucking clue what class is going to look like tomorrow. This is not a normal college. I can’t picture what we’ll be learning, or how.

“You care which bed you get?” Ares asks me.

“Nope.”

“I’ll take this one, then,” he says, throwing his backpack down on the bed set against the right-hand wall of the room.

“Suits me,” I say, flopping down on the left.

The bed is hard and narrow. My feet hang off the end.

“Well, shit,” I say, realizing how poorly I’m going to fit in this room, especially with a guy as big as Ares. “Maybe we should have picked smaller roommates.”

Ares laughs. “It wouldn’t help you fit on that mattress any better.”

At least the rooms are clean—the stone floor is swept, and the walls have been freshly white-washed to remove whatever scuffs or scribbles the former occupants might have left.

“Does the window open?” I ask Ares.

“Yeah,” he says, trying it. “Careful though—it’s a long way down.”

He peers through the bubbled glass down the steep walls of the tower to the courtyard below.

“When do you think we get di

I skipped breakfast and they didn’t feed us anything on the boat. My stomach is growling.

“Should we ask Joh

I weigh my hunger against Joh

“Yeah.” I grin. “Let’s ask him. But be prepared to run if he decides that’s a stupid question.”