The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 356

Chapter 356: 356 | The Most Entertaining Year

The room detonated.

Not literally, though with Sloane’s crowd it wouldn’t have surprised me. But the sound that came out of Class 1-B was the kind of noise that rattled the reinforced wall panels Radiant had installed. Eden stood on his chair with both fists in the air. Marco pounded the desk. Caden had his hands cupped around his mouth, howling something that got lost in the general roar. Theo was clapping, that generous whole-body clap of a man who’d lost the seat and didn’t care because the guy who won had just made him feel like belonging to 1-B meant something.

Percy had opened his notebook again. He was writing furiously, and when he glanced up at me his eyes carried something that wasn’t the flat assessment he usually gave. Something warmer. Something that looked a lot like the expression he’d worn when I told him knowing all the building exits was smart instead of weird.

Rina had both hands pressed to her mouth, her sheep tail swishing, her purple eyes bright. When I’d named her first, her whole posture had changed. I’d watched three years of some other academy telling her she was support-tier and comfort-provider and the-girl-you-send-to-hold-hands fall off her shoulders in real time.

Felicity was on her feet beside me. She hadn’t cheered so much as she’d stood, and when I looked at her she was watching me with an expression I didn’t have a category for, something between pride and calculation and a warmth she wasn’t performing for once.

"That," she said under the noise, just for me, "was not improvised."

"It was completely improvised."

"That’s worse. That’s so much worse." She was grinning. "You just did that off the top of your head. Diane would weep."

"Diane would critique my pacing and tell me I peaked too early on the Rina line."

"She’d be right. But it worked anyway."

Across the room, Camille had stopped pretending to look anywhere but at me. Her arms were down. Her jaw had lost its tight line. And whatever the other thing was that she hadn’t decided about, I could see her recalculating it in real time, the way she recalculated everything, reading me for stress fractures and finding a new answer than the one she’d walked in with.

Steele let the noise run for exactly ten seconds before she raised one hand. The room dropped to silence like she’d pulled a plug.

"Well." Her pink eyes had a gleam in them I didn’t trust. "That was a better speech than most active heroes give at their license ceremonies. Which is either a compliment to you or an indictment of the profession, and I haven’t decided which."

"Can be both," I said.

"It usually is." She looked at Petra. "Anything to add, Lang? Your co-representative just set a high bar."

Petra rose from the top row with the fluid grace of someone who’d been trained in deportment since before she could walk. She smoothed her skirt. Tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. And when she spoke, her voice carried that precise, cultured, devastating calm that made every sentence sound like a verdict.

"Belmont speaks beautifully." She let that hang just long enough to sound like praise and just short enough that everyone heard the blade underneath. "And I look forward to the parts of this position that involve actual work rather than speeches. Faculty meetings. Curriculum feedback. The unglamorous administrative labor that determines how this cohort is actually treated." Her emerald eyes cut to me. "I’ll handle the substance. He can handle the applause."

The room made an ooooh sound. Somebody, probably Nyx, said "damn" with quiet appreciation.

She’d just called me an empty-headed crowd-pleaser in front of nineteen people while making it sound like a division of labor.

I had to respect it. It was clean. It was the kind of surgical strike Diane would have appreciated, the sort of comment that would age into resentment if I didn’t answer it right now.

"Looking forward to working with you too, Lang." I gave her the warmest smile in my arsenal, the one that had gotten me through an IHL registration and a live television interview and a room full of reporters. "I’m sure your substance and my applause will make a great team. Faculty love a good double act."

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