Dean rises slowly from his chair, his posture too straight to look natural. The motion is silent, calculated, as if even the air around him has been trained not to produce unnecessary sounds.
"Sit down, Dryden Sands."
That should sound polite. The problem is that, in Dean's mouth, politeness sounds like an order dressed in expensive clothes.
I sit immediately.
The chancellor begins to pace across the observatory in slow circles. One hand rests behind his back while the other stays in front of his body, the fingers rubbing against each other continuously in an irritating, rhythmic tic. That dry sound of skin against skin starts to crawl into my head in a disturbing way.
Something about this man tells me he's more dangerous than Rahul Sharma.
Rahul is the visible kind of threat. A territorial predator. Violent, cruel, and direct. Dean is not. Dean smiles while deciding which part of you needs to be broken to become useful. Not out of cruelty—out of extreme vision.
