Moments later,

Author

The dining hall was loud. Three hundred students. Trays clattering. Conversations overlapping. The smell of food that was supposed to be nutritious but tasted like cardboard.

She sat at her usual table. Corner seat. Back to the wall. Fenris sat across from her, picking at something green that might have been vegetables.

"Eat," she said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Eat anyway."

Fenris made a face. She was small for her age. Dark hair. Eyes that saw too much. She had her mother's stubbornness and someone else's smile, and she loved her with a ferocity that scared her sometimes.

"I'm not a child," Fenris said.

"You are a child."...