The room turned to Blair. Blair Davenport, heiress, ice queen, S-rank Hellflame, the girl whose father sat on the IHC advisory council and whose sister had spent a day investigating me like a tax audit. The girl I'd thrown off a cliff. The girl who had kissed me in a collapsed cave and told me it meant nothing while her body called her a liar.
She stood very straight. Her burned side moved with careful restraint.
"It was the worst three days of my life." Blair's voice came out measured, each syllable carved from ice, and beneath that aristocratic veneer, something thin and fracturing. "I set an ancient forest on fire trying to protect my squad. Nearly incinerated all of us in the process. I watched Charles Leone die because he did exactly what he's been doing all semester, just like clockwork. I got thrown off a cliff into a river by someone I despise." Her eyes cut to me. "Because being eaten was worse."
