I nodded my thanks.
“Excuse me.” The male cadet in front of me hadn’t moved on. He turned back to the counter, pointing at my plate. “I didn’t get an extra helping.”
The serving woman looked at him with a bulldog expression. “Move along, or you’ll get no potatoes next time.”
He shook his head and went away.
Bryn appeared at my elbow, looking at my tray with visible longing. She hadn’t gotten the extra scoop.
“I’ll share,” I said.
“Nah.” She straightened. “You’re double my size. You need it.”
“That’s not flattering to any woman.”
“It’s math, Max.” She smirked.
We found a table near the wall, away from the center of the room. It didn’t help. The stares followed me.
“It’s not over,” Bryn said, setting her fork down. “Last night, I mean. Delia’s crowd isn’t going to let it go.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“They won’t come at you with fist fights the way Slade and Kevin did.” She picked her fork back up. “They’ll stab you in the back every chance they get. They’ll work the rumors. Thewhispers. Chip at your credibility from a distance where no one can prove anything, until they ruin you.”
I ate a bite of sandwich and considered this. In the mine, overseers controlled your water ration, your shift placement, who got the safest shafts and who got sent to the cursed deep, where I’d always volunteered to be. Delia didn’t have that kind of structural power over me. But she had social currency, and that was its own kind of leverage.
“I never had much credibility to begin with.” I shrugged. “Let them work.”
Bryn blinked. “You really aren’t concerned?”
“I have more important things to think about.”
Being called a whore and an outcast wasn’t fun, but I didn’t come here for fun. And compared to a decade underground—the dust in your lungs, the darkness so complete you lost track of your own hands—this was practically peachy.
“Relax.” I smiled at her. “Let them have the rumor mill. Try the potatoes.”
I spooned some into my mouth and nearly moaned.
A pretty cadet with a high ponytail cut across the aisle with the practiced confidence of someone used to being looked at. She stopped level with our table and fixed her glare on me.
“Suck a dick, Scarecrow slut!” she shouted, loud enough for half the hall to hear. Loud enough to be a performance.
The mess hall noise dropped. Bryn’s head snapped around, jaw setting.
“I will, babe,” I shouted back. “Exclusive arrangement, though. You aren’t invited.” I picked up my spoon. “Sucks to not make the cut.”
Forks clattered across nearby tables.
The cadet stared at me for two full seconds. Then she turned and left at speed.
The male cadets at the nearest tables erupted. A few women near the back joined in. Bryn sat with her mouth open, blinking at me like I’d just said something in a language she understood but hadn’t expected me to speak.
The male cadets were a different calculation than they’d been before. Slade and Kevin were gone, and the organized hostility they’d built had no one left to maintain it. The Sorting had changed things too. I’d walked into dragon fire and come out glowing, the heirs had treated me with open fondness, and I’d deployed with Spartans.
And now that I was outed as a woman, the male population saw me in a different light. Something closer to respect.
You’re desirable to that lot,the demon offered,more so because you’re unattainable.