Entangled Roots

Chapter Eight: The Whisper of the Faculty

Chapter Eight: The Whisper of the Faculty

While Lily was successful in fooling Nathan, she was less successful in fooling the faculty of St. Jude’s. The teachers at this elite institution were some of the best in the country, trained to spot gifted students from a mile away.

In the faculty lounge, Mr. Zhang, the head of the Science Department, threw a stack of papers onto the table. "Look at this," he said to the Dean. "Lily’s Physics final. She solves the most complex theoretical problem in the first ten minutes—I watched her—and then she spends the rest of the hour staring at the wall only to 'miscalculate' a simple multiplication at the very end."

The Dean sighed, sipping his tea. He looked out the window at the Vane family’s name etched into the new library wing. "The Vanes are our largest donors, Zhang. If the girl wants to come in second, we let her come in second. It keeps the boy's ego intact and the checks cleared."

"It's academic malpractice," Zhang grumbled. "The girl is a once-in-a-generation talent. She’s not just smart; she’s intuitive. She’s playing a game with her own brain just to keep that family comfortable."

"She’s a ward," the Dean reminded him. "Her survival depends on their favor. Don't interfere. As long as she maintains a high enough average to get into a top university, our job is done."

Unbeknownst to them, Lily was standing just outside the cracked door of the lounge, her heart hammering. She had gone there to return a borrowed textbook, but she left with a cold realization: her secret wasn't as well-kept as she thought.

The pressure of the "open secret" began to isolate her even further. The other students started to look at her differently. They saw the way she looked at Nathan’s scores before checking her own. They saw the way she dimmed her light the moment he entered a room.

"The Vane Shadow," they whispered in the cafeteria. "The girl who’s too afraid to be first."

The mockery stung, but it was a price Lily was willing to pay. She had convinced herself that if she could just make it through secondary school, if she could just get Nathan safely into Imperial University as the "Top Student," she would have fulfilled her debt. She didn't realize that Nathan’s appetite for superiority was bottomless, and the smaller she made herself, the more room he took up, until there was almost no space left for Lily at all.

As the semester ground on, the preparation for the National Entrance Exam began. It was the one test that couldn't be manipulated by school faculty or family donations. It was the one test where the entire country would see the truth. Lily looked at the registration form, her pen trembling. For fifteen years, she had been the Vane ward. For one day, during the exam, she wanted to be herself.

She didn't know that "being herself" would be the spark that finally set her gilded cage on fire.