Cinderella's Midnight Contract

chapter 3In Latin

The spotlight bleached the lectern pale.

As Wendy climbed the steps, her shoes creaked faintly on the wood. More than two thousand pairs of eyes turned to her at once. In the front row sat celebrity trustees in tailored suits, solid-gold school badges pinned to their chests, their expressions as picky as shoppers sorting through clearance bins.

The wooden lectern stood empty. Not a single sheet of notes lay on it.

Off to the side of the front row, Chloe folded her arms and leaned back in her seat, chin tilted up, and shot a pointed glance toward the backstage control booth.

The teleprompter screen below the lectern flickered twice, went blue, and died—the power had been cut.

The dean stood behind the curtain, glancing at his watch, his brows knotted together, fingers drumming furiously on the shell of his walkie-talkie.

The scholarship students were wedged in a far corner of the back rows. A few of the boys had their heads buried between their knees, fists clenched white, not daring to glance up at the stage.

A low murmur spread through the hall.

"She didn't even bring notes."

"Chloe threw coffee on her backstage. Just getting up there took nerve."

"The scholarship rep speech? The council's lost its mind, putting some pauper up there to embarrass the whole school."

Wendy stood at the microphone and rested one hand on the edge of the wooden lectern.

The talent borrowed from Lex coursed through her limbs. The cold's raw dryness in her throat gave way to a steady, even airflow. Grammar rules that had gathered dust in ancient books for centuries—the syllable stresses, the cadenced turns of rhetoric—lined up neatly in her mind.

She didn't look at the dead teleprompter. She didn't look at the whispering crowd. She only tilted her head a fraction and adjusted the angle of the microphone.

The murmur in the hall cut off the instant her first syllable landed.

"Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?" How long, O Catiline, will you a***e our patience?

Clear, deep, in the old Oxford pronunciation—classical Latin rolled through the hall's sound system and echoed off the dome of the Great Hall.

This wasn't the flat, chanting monotone of a modern cleric. It was the formal oratorical cadence of the Roman Senate's golden age. The rolled consonants snapped short and hard, the long vowels rang out like bells, every pause and stress landing precisely on the golden mean of classical rhetoric.

Professor Hopkins, the white-haired classicist in the front row, leaned forward and pushed up his reading glasses. The pen in his hand dragged a heavy black line across the notebook open on his lap.

The sneer froze on Chloe's lips. She couldn't follow the complex declensions and subordinate clauses—but the trustees beside her had uncrossed their legs, their faces shifting from idle amusement to rigorous scrutiny.

"Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?" How much longer will your madness mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity run wild?

Wendy's voice rose steadily. Her pace moved from unhurried to brisk, her volume never high, yet carrying the crushing weight of someone looking down from above.

She wasn't quoting a trimmed, textbook version of a ceremonial address. She was quoting Cicero's first speech against Catiline, the one he had thundered against his enemies in the Senate. And she didn't recite it by rote—at the third complex clause, she slid naturally into the hexameter cadences of Virgil's Aeneid, written in Augustus's age, turning the original indictment of a traitor into an argument for learning to tear down the walls of blood privilege.

Sunlight slanted through the stained-glass windows along the side, drawing long, mottled shadows across the marble floor.

Wendy braced one hand on the corner of the lectern and let her eyes sweep over the old-money heirs in the front rows.

Not a sound in the hall.

In the scholarship-student section, a few students who had kept their heads down slowly lifted their faces, chests heaving, staring straight at the thin, upright figure on stage.

Behind the curtain, the dean stood with his mouth open, the fingers on his walkie-talkie going slack, as if nailed to the spot.

When five minutes of unscripted Latin drew to a close, Wendy switched to crisp, clean American English.

"True excellence never feeds on the charity of bloodline—just as truth never bows to power."

She gave a small bow. The speakers crackled as the mic cut out.

The Great Hall went still for a heartbeat.

Clap.

Lord Evans, the college's lifetime honorary trustee, sat dead center in the front row. He was the first to stand, his withered hands coming together in a hard clap.

Right behind him, Professor Hopkins grabbed his notebook and shot to his feet, his applause loud enough to drown the speakers.

Then—the whole hall erupted.

Thunderous applause lifted the roof of the Great Hall. Front-row trustees, professors, old-money heirs—whether they'd understood a word or not—rose to their feet in involuntary salute before that aura of pure dominion.

Chloe stayed in her seat, face ash-white, nails digging into the leather edge of her designer bag, unable even to stand.

Wendy didn't linger in the applause. She turned and walked down the side steps off the stage.

Behind the one-way glass of the VIP box on the second floor, Lex leaned back in a high-backed leather chair, turning a silver badge carved with the family's Latin inscription between his fingers. He watched that slim, composed figure walk off, his Adam's apple bobbing, something deep stirring in his eyes.

In the backstage corridor, the applause still shook the walls through the heavy doors.

Wendy walked through the dim passage and raised her wrist to check her watch.

Beneath the dial, pale gold digits were counting down by the second:

[Remaining borrowed talent time: 05:42:19] [Repayment countdown initiated]

Hurried footsteps came from behind.

"Wendy Lin!"

Julian Ward's long legs ate up the backstage steps, and he cut Wendy off at the archway. His eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses fixed on her with a probing scrutiny he'd never shown before. He pulled a folded, subtly patterned silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out to her, with just the right amount of concern.

"Here, Wendy—clean yourself up."

His voice was low, gentle beyond reproach.

"That speech of yours was stunning. But those Cicero passages you chose were too aggressive. There are immediate family of several old-guard trustees sitting out there—that wasn't a smart move."

Wendy didn't break stride. She didn't even glance at the handkerchief.

She was carrying two thick textbooks fetched from the wings, her worn leather shoes striking a steady rhythm on the granite floor.

"If you have something to say, Chairman Ward, say it plainly."

Julian fell into step beside her, his pace matching hers flawlessly.

"The water at St. Ayles runs deep. You don't swim it by memorizing a few lines of classical Latin. Chloe has a family seat on the council. You humiliated her on stage today, and the days ahead won't be quiet."

He paused, a benefactor's condescension creeping into his tone.

"Join the discipline committee. I'm short an assistant to sort the archives—a scholarship slot. Once you wear the committee badge, at least officially, no one will dare touch you."

Wendy stopped in the middle of the covered walkway.

Sunlight slanted through the wisteria trellis, striping the ground in light and shadow.

The sharp click of high heels approached.

Chloe Browne rounded the corner with three girls in tow. She'd swapped the coffee-stained jacket for a pale blue tweed cropped one, a stiff, false smile on her face.

"Why, if it isn't our little orator?"

Chloe folded her arms, the rhinestones on her nails glinting harshly in the sun.

"Memorized a few obscure old orations off some used-book stall, and now she thinks she's a Roman consul. Julian, you're awfully interested in a cleaner's poor relation—aren't you worried the discipline committee will lose its standing?"

A few passing legacy students paused, their mocking eyes swinging between the three of them.

In their eyes, a scholarship commoner had no business refusing a lifeline offered by the head of discipline.

Wendy glanced down at her watch.

The pale gold countdown beneath the dial was still ticking: [04:18:22].

The borrowed weight of command had not yet faded. She lifted her head, her gaze driving straight into Julian.

"If Chairman Ward is so keen on enforcing discipline, why don't you start by finding out who threw that coffee backstage?"

Her tone was level, untroubled.

"As for protection—I've always taken out my own trash. Don't trouble yourself."

Julian's fingers, frozen in mid-air, tightened slightly.

Wendy didn't look at either of them again. She walked straight between the two, books held to her chest.

The small breeze she stirred caught Julian's fingertips. The expensive silk handkerchief slipped from his grasp and floated down to the dusty flagstones.

Chloe's sneer caught in her throat, her face cycling pale and livid.

Julian looked down at the handkerchief at his feet. Cold white light reflected off his lenses. His fist slowly clenched.

From behind a colonnade pillar, Phoebe Carter—another scholarship student—peeked out, both hands gripping her canvas bag strap, watching Wendy's retreating back, her eyes bright.

Wendy walked quickly through the atrium and turned into the west wing corridor where the lockers stood.

She had barely reached her own sheet-metal locker, number 302, when the tip of her right finger twitched for no reason.

A faint numbness crawled up her forearm.

Wendy took a slow breath, pressing down the hollow heat flaring in her chest, and turned the combination lock.

Click.

The door sprang open.

No textbooks. No spare pens.

Dead center inside the locker, a scarlet card had been pasted perfectly straight, stamped with the Browne family's double-headed eagle crest. A line of looping handwriting glistened, the ink still wet:

"The game has only just begun, parasite."

Wendy stared at the card for two seconds, tore it off, ripped it in half, and stuffed the pieces into her pocket.

Her fingers were shaking worse than before.

The sun leaned west. The shelf life of her borrowed power was visibly running out.