Humiliation

[One Week Later…]

Every Apprentice gathered on the Assembly Grounds for the new announcement.

Ash was one of them.

Both hands were in his pockets as he calmly raised his gaze to the elevated platform where their Head Of Student Affairs stood. The entire atmosphere was buzzing with curiosity, but Ash felt no such thing.

He already knew what the woman was going to say.

"Do you have any idea what she's going to announce?" Dustan snuck up behind him to ask, a question that Ash shrugged aside the same way he shoved the boy's face away from himself.

"Just be patient and listen."

Sometimes, Ash had to wonder if Dustan really read the original novel at all.

"Greetings, students." Beatrice Lampshade began, and in the same curt manner that she displayed in the past, she cut right through the pleasantries and got to the central issue.