The Lost Heir's Crown

Chapter 5: A Wrong Answer

Ever since the accident at the ranking wall, people at the academy had been looking at me differently.

Not more kindly.

They simply paused for half a second when I passed, as though reassessing whether something they had already labeled “useless” had been placed in the wrong category.

I would rather they had kept ignoring me.

Being looked down on at least meant safety. Being noticed usually meant trouble.

Unfortunately, some things were difficult to stand by and watch.

Natural Philosophy was held in a circular classroom on the west side of the main building.

The high glass dome pressed the rare winter sunlight into a cold white glow over rows of long blackwood tables. Narrow copper channels were set into every tabletop, with clear water running through them to rinse away herb remnants and laboratory tools.

The air carried the mingled scents of dried herbs, alcohol, and old paper.

The moment I sat down, Theo pushed a roll of class notes toward me.

“You hardly came last term,” he whispered. “Professor Voss hates lateness, and she hates students who mix wormwood with holly.”

“She sounds strict.”

“She used to be a medic in the border corps.”

I looked toward the lectern.

Professor Voss was a lean woman with graying hair and no decoration on the cuffs of her black robe. She was arranging glass jars on the desk with steady movements. Even the oddly shaped dried roots inside seemed ordered beneath her hands.

She did not look like someone who tolerated stupidity.

That reassured me a little.

“No lecture today.” The whole classroom went quiet as she spoke. “Today’s subject concerns the Winter Trials. In desperate circumstances, the difference between those who live and those who do not is usually one judgment.”

At the words Winter Trials, many students sat up straighter.

She picked up a sealed glass bottle from the desk.

Inside was a pale-gray dried herb with long, narrow leaves and curled edges. It did not look very different from an ordinary winter herb.

“Hibernation grass,” Professor Voss said. “It is commonly used to ease muscle spasms caused by severe cold and is included in the personal medicine kits before the Winter Trials.”

“It is non-toxic, easy to store, and can be brewed with cinderwine,” she continued. “Provided that what you have is actually hibernation grass.”

Her assistant wheeled over several small braziers. Each table received a portion of herbs, a copper pot, and a record card.

“In twenty minutes, decide whether the sample may be used to make a warming draught. Write down your reasons. If you are wrong, imagine the consequences yourselves.”

Theo went pale.

“I hate classes like this,” he murmured.

“Why?”

“Because when she says ‘imagine it yourselves,’ it usually means someone actually died because of it.”

I did not say anything.

The samples on the tables had been ground into leaf fragments, most of their original shape already lost. It was difficult to identify them by color and scent alone.

To everyone else, this was probably only a tedious identification exercise.

To me, it felt like returning to the lab.

In my old world, I had been a university student specializing in biochemistry and molecular biology. From my second year on, I had worked with my research group extracting and analyzing plant metabolites.

Those experiments were never as exciting as they looked in films.

Most often, I wore gloves and stared at a centrifuge and a cluster of similarly labeled test tubes; I stayed at the bench until dawn to confirm a data set; I heard my supervisor say, “Run it again,” and renumbered the failed samples.

But during that time, I had repeatedly handled two kinds of plant samples.

One had long, narrow leaves and a mild calming, soothing effect. The other looked much the same but contained active compounds that could not be extracted carelessly.

In this book, their names had become hibernation grass and frostbell grass.

But the veins in the leaves, the structure of the stems, and even their reaction to heat were astonishingly similar to the samples I knew.

Thank goodness the author of When the Crown Falls had not invented every herb from nothing.

And thank the all-purpose Google that countless students in the real world both loved and hated—apparently the author had at least done some research before writing these details.

Observe first.

Then judge.

Only then touch it.

I did not reach for the copper pot at once. Instead, I tipped the herbs onto a sheet of white paper and separated them little by little with tweezers.

Tiny silvery hairs covered the undersides of the leaves.

The stems were hollow.

Strangest of all, a few nearly invisible blue-gray crystals clung to the leaf edges, like salt frost left after water had dried.

That was wrong.

Hibernation grass should not have crystals like that on its edges.

I was about to check again when a small clatter came from diagonally ahead of me.

Someone had knocked over a copper pot.

“Sorry, Professor.” A boy stood up and hurriedly steadied the brazier. “I thought the flame should be a little higher.”

Professor Voss frowned.

“Turn the heat down, Merrick.”

Merrick was a younger student with pale blond hair and shaking fingers. The liquid on his table had begun to boil, changing from pale yellow to a cloudy gray-green.

He was clearly desperate to finish his answer.

Or desperate to prove he would not be the person everyone laughed at in class.

“Add some cinderwine to dilute it,” Professor Voss said.

It was a reasonable instruction.

When ordinary hibernation grass was boiled too long, it released a nauseating bitterness; cinderwine reduced the irritation. There was no hesitation in Voss’s voice. She had plainly handled countless cases like this before.

Merrick picked up the black wine bottle.

But I stared at the gray-green liquid in the pot, and my heart slowly sank.

The foam on its surface was wrong.

Not the bitter foam from overboiling.

It was a film so fine it almost gleamed like metal.

“Do not add it,” I said.

My voice was not loud.

But several people nearby heard me.

Merrick’s hand stopped in midair.

Professor Voss raised her head too.

“Vale?” She looked at me. “Do you object?”

Everyone turned to look.

Harlan sat at a long table on the other side, the edge of a smile already forming as he waited for a show.

I had not wanted to speak.

This was not my lab, not my herbs, not my responsibility.

But Merrick was holding the bottle. One more movement and the cinderwine would spill into the pot.

And I knew what would happen.

“That is not hibernation grass,” I said.

The classroom went so quiet that the soft crackle of the braziers could be heard.

Professor Voss did not refute me immediately.

“Your reason.”

I pushed my sample to the edge of the desk.

“Hibernation grass curls inward at the leaf edge. Its underside hairs are white, and it does not crystallize,” I said. “This sample has silvery-gray hairs, hollow stems, and blue-gray crystals along the edges. It has been mixed with frostbell grass.”

“Frostbell grass?” Theo repeated under his breath.

Someone nearby gave a brief snort.

“Frostbell grass grows only in the northern ice marshes,” Harlan said. “Vale, you have not even finished the textbook, and you want to correct Professor Voss?”

I ignored him.

Professor Voss came down from the lectern and stopped at Merrick’s table.

She did not touch the liquid, only looked at it for a moment.

“Frostbell grass is not poisonous,” she said.

“Not when used alone,” I answered. “But it cannot be brewed with cinderwine.”

Professor Voss looked up.

“Why?”

I tightened my grip on the tweezers.

I could not say that, in my old world, I had analyzed the active compounds of a similar plant with my research group. Nor could I explain why the poetic herb names in a novel corresponded so closely to real experimental samples.

So I said only what I could prove.

“The crystals along frostbell grass’s leaves dissolve in wine,” I said. “When heated, they draw out the sleep toxin in the roots and stems. The color in the pot has already changed, which means the properties are beginning to leach out.”

The color drained from Merrick’s face.

He still had not put down the bottle.

Professor Voss’s eyes settled on the metallic film at the surface of the liquid.

A few seconds later, she reached out and extinguished the brazier.

“Put down the wine,” she said.

Merrick released it almost immediately.

The bottle struck the desk with a dull thud.

Professor Voss took a silver needle and dipped it in the gray-green liquid. A faint blue-black coating quickly appeared at the tip.

Her expression changed.

Not because a student had contradicted her.

But because the facts proved that something was truly wrong with the sample.

“Everyone stop.” She turned around, her voice colder than before. “Do not heat anything. Do not mix anything. No one is to let the samples touch their skin.”

The classroom immediately stirred.

Harlan’s smile vanished.

Professor Voss placed the herbs from Merrick’s table beside my sample on a sheet of white paper.

“Vale,” she said. “Point out the differences.”

I walked over.

My steps were steady, or at least they looked that way.

In truth, my palms were already damp with sweat.

“The veins of true hibernation grass branch outward from the main stem and do not cross,” I said, lifting a leaf with the tweezers. “Frostbell grass has veins that join again near the edge, like a closed net.”

Professor Voss looked at it.

“What else?”

“Crushed hibernation grass smells of resin. Frostbell grass is fainter, but when heated it has a trace of rust.”

She leaned down and smelled the remaining liquid in the pot.

Then she straightened.

“Correct.”

No one in the classroom spoke.

Professor Voss sealed the sample in a bag and handed it to her assistant.

“Find out who sent this to the pharmacy,” she said. “The academy’s herb stores should not contain a mix like this.”

She paused, then looked at Merrick.

“Your heating procedure was not wrong. Your mistake was failing to confirm the material first.”

Merrick lowered his head, his voice shaking.

“Yes, Professor.”

“This is only a class,” Professor Voss said. “In the Winter Trials, a mistake will not give you a second chance.”

As those words fell, I unconsciously touched the notebook inside my uniform.

One hundred days.

One hundred days left.

The lesson did not continue as planned.

Professor Voss instead explained how to distinguish frostbell grass from hibernation grass. She neither deliberately praised me nor made the class applaud. Before the bell, she only looked at me and said:

“Vale, stay behind.”

Theo gave me a worried look.

“You will not be in trouble, will you?”

“I do not know.”

“That is not comforting.”

“I was not trying to comfort you.”

Frowning, he packed his notes and left with the others.

The classroom soon emptied.

I thought Professor Voss would question where my knowledge came from.

But she only placed the two herbs into separate glass bottles, her movements slower than during class.

“Have you encountered frostbell grass before?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then how did you know?”

I was silent for a moment.

“Because it looked wrong.”

That did not sound like an answer.

But Professor Voss did not press me.

She only looked at me for a while.

“Observation is not talent,” she said. “It is a habit. I will not ask where you learned it.”

Before I could relax, she added:

“But next time, do not wait until someone has already brought the pot to a boil before you speak.”

“I understand.”

“Go.”

I turned toward the door.

Only when I opened it did I see someone standing at the far end of the corridor.

Lucien Veyre.

He stood with his back to the window, holding a dark-covered book. Afternoon light rested on his shoulders and drew his shadow long behind him.

He had clearly not happened to be passing by.

I stopped.

“Your Highness.”

Lucien closed the book.

“You do not need to call me that.”

“Then what should I call you?”

“Lucien.”

I did not respond.

He did not seem to mind. He only glanced at the tweezers I still had not put down.

“You said frostbell grass smells of rust when heated.”

“Yes.”

“The academy’s herbal compendium does not mention that.”

“Perhaps the compendium is wrong.”

“Or perhaps you are.”

“Professor Voss verified it.”

Lucien looked at me quietly.

His gaze was not aggressive, but it was more difficult to handle than Harlan’s open provocations. He was not waiting for me to lose control.

He was waiting for me to reveal a flaw.

“You were not like this before,” he said.

I looked up.

“What was I like before?”

“Silent. Avoidant. Uninterested in rank and uninterested in every class.” He paused. “You would never have publicly challenged a professor after she had made a judgment.”

“So you think something is wrong with me now?”

“I think you are very cautious,” Lucien said. “Just not cautious enough to watch someone make a mistake.”

For a moment, I could not refute him. Even when I had read the novel, I knew this school was filled with undercurrents. What had happened in class today had clearly been arranged by someone, and my conspicuous intervention had not been carefully considered.

He was warning me.

And he had been watching me all along.

Perhaps he had been watching since the accident at the ranking wall.

“I do not like unnecessary trouble,” I said.

“Yet whenever trouble happens, you stand at the front of it.”

The corridor fell quiet.

My fingers tightened slightly around the tweezers.

Lucien did not ask further about frostbell grass or where I had learned what I knew. He only stepped aside, leaving me a path to the stairs.

As I passed him, his voice came from behind me.

“Vale.”

I stopped.

“Do not waste your intelligence pretending to be foolish.”