Page 211 of A University of Betrayal

“Your eyes...”

She jumped up and rushed over to the mirror with a tense expression, where she looked closely at the yellow as if it were a pimple she was determined to squeeze out.

Then, out of nowhere, she said. “Nothing makes sense...”

“I know...” I said and came closer to the mirror, where I realized again that she was damn small, unlike me. And I wasn’t particularly tall.

“Yesterday, when I came home, I was in my mother’s room again...” she began and turned to me, her eyes still yellow. Her voice was softer, and it felt good somehow, because it was as if she was telling me a secret that was meant only for me. “She had done this experiment with another witch, Vivienna’s mother. It’s about the genetic inheritance of the three species. And somehow it confused me even more.”

“Wait, your mum is really still actively researching the species?”

“When I first found it, the protocol was right on her desk,” she said, walking over to the bed where she sat down and pulled her phone out of her pocket to show me a picture. “Here.”

I skimmed the document carefully, and with each insight I gained from it, I understood more and more why the species didn’t want to live together in peace.

“If my father had been a Senseque, as I secretly suspected from the beginning, then I would be a male Senseque now.”

I wasn’t stupid. Of course, I realized that she wasn’t, and I had been aware of this inheritance rule. I had just never met anyone whose parents came from two different species.That wasn’t possible.Politically.But I hadn’t been aware that there could be such devastating consequences from a connection between a few species, as shown here on the document.

“And if my father had been a Ruisangor, I wouldn’t even be alive. My mother, she would be... dead.”

She was right about that, too. Something was very wrong here. And Diana was doing research, together with another Quatura. What’s more, she worked at the DLSC. I had a strange feeling that there was something bigger behind this…

“There are no hybrids,” I thought aloud.

“No. Because one species is always dominant.”

And she was right about that, too. There really was such a thing as dominance. I read the information on the photo over and over again until my brain couldn’t take anything else from it, and then looked at Bay, who was looking at me in despair.

You

Keaton Henson

The light of the setting sun streamed into her room, and there was a strangely familiar gleam in her eyes. The one I always saw in the mirror after I got up and wondered when all this would end.

Bayla looked at me with exactly that look, as if she were my reflection, only this time the despair came from deep insideher. She had every reason to have a worry line appear on her forehead at that very moment.

“What am I?” she whispered softly. She was so close to tears. And I couldn’t help but follow my gut instinct and pull her into a painfully tight hug.

Was that the bond she had placed on me and Emely? Or was it my compassion?

Her body was petite and small, her body temperature human. There was nothing to suggest that she was a Senseque or even a Ruisangor. But she wasn’t human, either.

I would have liked to take some of the burden off her, especially when she pulled me closer, and I could feel how much she needed someone to be there for her. Unfortunately, that was all I could do. I had no answers to her questions, and I could help her even less...

“Let’s find the rest of the diary,” I whispered softly in her ear and listened to her quiet, troubled breathing.

I could have stayed in that embrace for a while longer when I heard Diana’s voice from downstairs and I knew immediately that it was for me.

“Please both come downstairs. Dinner is ready.”

She had communicated just as quietly with my father, because she knew we could hear well.

Bay slowly released herself from the embrace and looked at me questioningly.

“Did you hear her?”

I knew immediately who she meant.

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