Chapter 35-Defending Ourselves

Odett’s POV

  Two days after Selene spoke through the moonlight, I still heard her words whenever the room grew quiet. A path is not a command. I had believed in that path since childhood, and Lorilie had grown tired of watching me carry the question from breakfast to lessons to combat practice.

  ‘It counts as one problem you keep carrying into different rooms,’ she observed.

  ‘That makes it more efficient,’ I replied silently.

  ‘That makes it heavier,’ Lorilie corrected gently.

  I could hardly argue while climbing the Academy steps with four books and our proposal against my chest. The assessment was less than three weeks away. Fifth-years had stopped arguing in the courtyard because they were doing it inside study rooms instead.

  Joshy waited beside the classroom door with Nolan and Cassian. He had already divided our revision list into sections and marked the founding process in blue. Nolan stared at the pages as if color-coding had personally offended him.

  “You added another review period,” Nolan complained with weary disbelief.

  “People should be allowed to decide whether the government they joined still works after living under it,” Joshy explained.

  “People should also be allowed to sleep before their assessment,” Nolan argued stubbornly.

  Cassian took the proposal from him before he could fold the corner. Our instructor had assigned each team a preliminary challenge hearing, and Nolan had agreed to question our founding process. His sudden concern for our rest probably meant he had not finished preparing.

  “You asked for the difficult section,” I reminded him with suspicious amusement.

  “I expected your difficult section to remain the emergency council,” Nolan replied. “You keep creating new problems faster than I can study them.”

  The instructor opened the door before I could defend our commitment to academic suffering. She directed each team toward a marked table and placed sealed challenge cards at every station. None of the cards contained the questions we had prepared for one another.

  “A formal hearing will not follow the argument you rehearsed,” she announced. “Today, you will defend one unfamiliar challenge without rewriting your proposal while you speak.”

  Our card described thirty families requesting refuge after a territorial dispute. Ten wanted permanent membership, twelve wanted temporary protection, and eight refused to state whether they intended to remain. The proposed site could safely house twenty families without emergency construction.

  We had to decide who entered first and name the rule behind it. The card gave us no ages, injuries, species, or reason the families had fled. Every answer I formed depended on a fact the instructor had withheld.

  “We request the missing safety information before ranking anyone,” I decided with immediate caution.

  “The hearing begins now, and the border closes in ten minutes,” Cassian read from the instruction beneath the card.

  Joshy leaned over the page without touching it. We could not pretend the missing information would arrive simply because a fair decision required it. The choice had to remain narrow enough to change when better facts became available.

  “Admit twenty families into temporary shelter without granting or denying permanent membership,” Joshy proposed thoughtfully.

  “Which twenty?” Nolan challenged as the assigned questioner.

  “The families facing an immediate threat,” I answered, then stopped when I heard the problem in my own words.

  “The card does not identify them,” Nolan pointed out.

  I looked at the clock. In ten minutes, waiting for perfect information would leave everyone outside. Guessing who needed shelter most could let my own assumptions decide for them.

  Our proposal let leaders take temporary protective action on incomplete information if they kept the order narrow and brief. We had written that rule with roads and damaged wells in mind. Now I had to apply it to families standing at a border.

  “Open the available shelter to the first twenty families who reach the protected checkpoint, then create a supervised overflow area inside the outer boundary for the others,” I said.

  “You only have safe housing for twenty,” Cassian warned from the card.

  “Housing and immediate protection are different needs,” I explained carefully.

  “We can’t promise rooms we don’t have, but we can bring the other families inside the guarded boundary while we check the danger.”

  Joshy added that medical needs would be evaluated at the checkpoint and could change the order of placement. No species or political status would affect the decision. Permanent membership would wait until the families had information, representation, and time to choose.

  “What happens if the territory demanding their return accuses your pack of sheltering criminals?” Nolan asked with serious concentration.

  “We document everyone who enters, preserve their right to refuse public identification, and request evidence through the joint council,” Joshy answered.

  “And if the accusation arrives before the families do?” Nolan pressed firmly.

  “Then it remains an accusation until it can be checked,” I replied without hesitation.

  I thought of Dad’s locked files, Sam’s delayed work, and the nightmares I kept wanting to treat as evidence. I said none of it aloud. Nolan deserved an answer based on our proposal, not on an investigation he knew nothing about.

  The instructor stopped us with two minutes left. She accepted the temporary shelter plan but challenged our first-arrival rule: what if a family traveled more slowly with children but had no medical need that would move them ahead? We wrote the flaw down. The rules of the hearing did not allow us to revise our answer after the fact.

  “You finally answered a question without trying to make it perfect first,” Cassian observed.

  “I made an imperfect decision and wrote down what could make it wrong,” I corrected.

  “That is what he said,” Joshy replied dryly.

  The other teams finished before lunch. One waited until its border closed; another admitted everyone without enough food or shelter. Each mistake gave us another question to put to our proposal.

  During the afternoon, the combat instructors moved us into the shield hall. Pale stones divided the floor into six circles, and each team received one wooden marker representing a civilian who could not protect themselves. The exercise required us to move the marker through simulated smoke while defending against padded projectiles and changing barriers.

  The smoke held no dangerous spell, but its burnt scent caught in my throat. For a heartbeat I saw Black Claw’s silent field instead of the shield hall. Lorilie pressed against my mind and called me back to the room.