Moon Blessed: Heir of Velmora

Chapter 2

The office was larger than her entire house in Thornton.

Nyra stood just inside the doorway and let that settle over her for a moment the high ceilings, the shelves of books that lined the far wall floor to ceiling, the kind of space that existed not because it was needed but because it could. A large desk anchored the center of the room. Two chairs sat in front of it. A deep couch ran along the side wall, and on the desk's edge, a nameplate caught the light.

**Ms. Selene Vaughn.**

The principal had already moved around the desk and was settling into her chair with the ease of someone completely unbothered by being watched. She looked and Nyra had to recalibrate because she'd expected someone older young. Not young like a student, but young like someone who had simply decided not to age past a certain point and the decision had held. Her suit was fitted and very blue and her skirt was short enough that Nyra had a brief, involuntary thought that she immediately filed away under things she would never say out loud.

"Have a seat," Ms. Vaughn said.

Nyra sat.

Ms. Vaughn folded her hands on the desk and looked at her with the calm expression of someone who had done this many times. "You must be Nyra Veyne. Thornton, Varkain kingdom." She paused. "Werewolf."

"Yes, ma."

"Welcome to Velmora Academy, Nyra." She smiled, and it did something pleasant to her face softened the professional edges of it. "We're glad to have you."

Nyra pressed her lips together. Breathed. "Thank you, ma." A beat. "Is it possible for you to reject me? Or expel me?"

The smile didn't disappear exactly. It just suspended — held in place while Ms. Vaughn's expression caught up with what she'd just heard.

"I'm sorry?"

"Reject me. Or expel me. Either works."

Ms. Vaughn sat back slightly. "Is this about what happened with Caius?"

*Caius.* Nyra filed the name away without letting it show on her face. "No, ma. It has nothing to do with him." She kept her voice even. "I don't belong here. This school it's for people like him. Elites. People from families that have always had access to places like this. Even if it isn't, it's for someone who actually wants to be here, someone who'll value what this is." She paused. "I'm not that person."

Ms. Vaughn was quiet for a moment. Her elbow rested on the desk, her chin settling lightly into her hand, watching Nyra the way someone watched a problem they found mildly interesting.

"So what you're telling me," she said slowly, "is that the goddess made a mistake."

"That's not what I said."

"You said you don't belong here. The selection brought you here." Her head tilted slightly. "That sounds like you're saying the goddess made a mistake."

"I'm saying I don't want to be here."

The fist came down on the desk without warning.

Not violent controlled. A single sharp impact that made the nameplate rattle and the air in the room feel briefly different. Ms. Vaughn exhaled through her nose, and then, remarkably, the smile returned. Softer than before. Almost tired.

"I really do hate this job sometimes," she said, mostly to herself.

Then she leaned forward and extended both hands across the desk, palm up, waiting.

Nyra stared at them.

"Give me your hands, sweetheart."

Nyra hesitated. Then placed her hands in the principal's her rough knuckles and work-worn palms against Ms. Vaughn's rings and polished nails.

"People dream about this," Ms. Vaughn said, her voice quieter now. Direct. "Not dream the way you use the word casually. Dream the way people mean it when they have nothing else to hold onto. They beg for what just landed in your hands without you asking for it." She turned Nyra's palms over once, almost like she was reading something there. "And some of them in literal terms kill for it." She released her hands and sat back. "So. You'd like to decline."

Nyra said nothing.

"Then I'll need the scholarship refund processed. And there's a council inquiry that follows any voluntary withdrawal standard questions, documentation, a few weeks of your time." She reached for something on her desk. "How soon can you arrange the refund?"

The silence that followed was longer than Nyra intended.

"I would need... some time," she said carefully. "To get the money."

Ms. Vaughn looked at her.

Nyra looked back.

"I see," Ms. Vaughn said. She was quiet for one more moment. Then she picked up the telephone receiver on her desk and pressed a button. "Come to my office," she said to whoever answered, and set it down.

"Ma, I..."

Ms. Vaughn held up one finger. Nyra closed her mouth.

"Welcome to Velmora Academy," Ms. Vaughn said again, and this time the smile carried something different in it not unkind, but final. She slid a bag across the desk toward Nyra. "Your enrollment materials are inside. Timetable access, room assignment, academy guidelines."

"But what about the..."

"Forget about it." She said it the way people said things they meant completely. "You're a student here. Embrace it."

A knock at the door.

"He's prompt," Ms. Vaughn said approvingly. She gestured toward the door. "Your guide is waiting. You can go."

Nyra stood. She picked up the bag. She turned it over once in her hands thick paper, the same gold crest from the acceptance letter pressed into the side and something sat heavy in her chest that she didn't have a name for yet.

She'd tried. She'd genuinely tried to get herself removed from this place.

And instead she'd been smiled at, outmaneuvered, and sent on her way with a welcome gift.

She walked to the door, pulled it open, and found a boy standing on the other side adjusting his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger. He was unremarkable in the specific way that made him easy to trust average height, a little earnest-looking, the kind of face that didn't carry any agenda.

"Hi.. you must be Nyra?" he said.

She nodded.

"I'm Theo." He extended a hand. "Student guide. Also just a person." He said it like he'd used that introduction before and found it worked.

She shook it. "Nice to meet you, Theo."

"Okay." He clapped his hands together once. "Let's get started."

He was efficient, she'd give him that.

Theo moved through the academy the way someone moved through a space they knew by instinct not showy about it, just certain. He showed her how to access her timetable through the academy's system, walked her through the dining hall complex three separate halls, each larger than the last, ceilings vaulted and lit with a warmth that made the stone feel less cold and took her through the library, which occupied an entire wing and smelled like old paper and something she couldn't identify, something faintly metallic beneath it, like the books had been there long enough to absorb the air of whatever had read them.

The classrooms were spread across two buildings connected by a covered walkway. The training grounds sat behind the east wing, wide and open and marked with something that had permanently darkened the stone in places. She didn't ask about that.

By the time they reached the dormitory block, she had a loose map of the campus in her head and a growing, uncomfortable awareness of how many people had glanced at her backpack and then at her face and then away.

"And here," Theo said, stopping in front of a set of buildings arranged around a central courtyard, "is the girls' residential block."

Four buildings. Each distinct.

He pointed as he spoke. "Starlight, Moonshine, Regal." Three of them shared a certain aesthetic well-maintained, spacious, their facades clean and their grounds tended. Built for comfort. Built for students whose families expected comfort and whose expectations the academy had no interest in disappointing.

"Those three are for students from established families, elites, and scholarship recipients. Moonshine's been the default for scholarship girls specifically it's tradition at this point." He turned to her. "So let me just pull up your assignment..."

She handed him the ID card from the envelope.

Theo looked at it.

He looked at it for a moment longer than he should have.

"Give me that," he said, taking it from her hand. He pushed his glasses up and tilted the card toward the light as if the angle might change what was printed on it.

"Is there a problem?" Nyra asked.

"It says Lunaclave."

"I saw that."

"That's..." He stopped. Pushed his glasses up again, a habit she was already learning meant he was thinking. "Okay. So. There are four girls' dorms. Starlight, Moonshine, Regal, and Lunaclave." He turned to face her fully. "The first three are for general students, elite families, scholarship recipients. That's the normal range." A pause. "Lunaclave is different. The Oracle selects placement for that dorm specifically. It doesn't go through standard assignment. It's for royals and the highest tier of elite families old bloodlines, old money, old everything." He looked at the card again. "No scholarship student has ever been placed there."

Nyra said nothing.

"Not once," he added. "In the history of the school."

"And yet," she said.

He exhaled. "And yet." He handed the card back. "Congratulations, I think." He didn't sound entirely sure.

She took the card and looked at it and thought, with great feeling, about how much she wished she was in Thornton right now.

She understood what he meant when she saw it.

The other dorms had presence they were large, well-appointed, the kind of buildings that communicated wealth clearly and without apology. But Lunaclave sat apart from them on slightly elevated ground and it was not a dormitory.

It was a castle.

Not metaphorically. Not in the way people said *castle* to mean big and impressive. It was stone towers and arched windows and a gate with ironwork so detailed it looked like it had been made by someone with infinite time and a very specific vision. A fountain stood at the center of the front courtyard, the water catching the fading afternoon light, and flowers ran along the base of the walls in dark blooms she didn't recognize deep burgundy, almost black at the center, climbing the stone in places where the groundskeeping had clearly decided to let them.

"Here we are," Theo said, and his voice had gone slightly reverent despite himself.

"It's a castle," Nyra said.

"It is a castle."

She followed him through the main entrance and the interior hit her in layers chandeliers suspended from vaulted ceilings, their light fractured and warm, catching on gold fixtures and the polish of marble floors. Girls moved through the common space in small groups, their clothes the kind of effortless that costs a great deal of money, their voices low and liquid. A few wore tiaras like accessories, the way someone else might wear a scarf. None of them looked at Nyra and Theo. They didn't need to.

The elevator and there was an elevator, actual brushed-gold doors set into the stone wall opened when Theo pressed the button, and Nyra stepped inside and stared at the ceiling.

"You should close your mouth," Theo said beside her.

"What?"

He gestured vaguely at his own face.

She closed her mouth. "It's a lot."

"I know." The elevator moved smoothly, silently. "You'll get used to it." He didn't sound convinced of that either.

The doors opened on the fourth floor and the hallway beyond was carpeted in deep green, wall sconces casting a low amber light between each door. Theo stopped in front of one near the end of the corridor heavy wood, a handle in brushed gold, the kind of door that had weight to it before you even touched it.

"This is you," he said. He stepped back. "My job ends here."

"Thank you, Theo."

"Just doing what I signed up for." He tucked his hands into his pockets. "Good luck, Nyra. I mean that genuinely."

He walked back toward the elevator. She watched the doors close on him and then she was alone in the hallway with the quiet and the amber light and the door in front of her.

Her heart was moving faster than she wanted it to.

*First the letter. Then the office. Then Caius.* And now this a room in a castle she had no business being in, in a school she'd tried to leave before it started, in a city that still felt like someone else's life.

She gripped the handle.

*Here goes nothing.*

She pushed the door open.