Troy found him at the bad coffee cart, which had become their office.
"I have a weird one for you," Troy said, and sat down without ordering, which meant it was real.
"How weird?"
"Theology weird."
"I'm going to need the coffee for that."
◆◆◆◆
"My family reads a lot of old material," Troy said. "Hero-line stuff. Summoning doctrine. Boring, mostly, but I grew up with it in the walls."
"And?"
"And I've been thinking about your evaluation. C to B, no asterisk, class of one. The board couldn't score you." He turned his cup. "So I went looking for what you actually are, in the old texts. Where a person like you comes from."
"A person like me."
"An outside candidate. Someone the world didn't grow. Someone it got handed."
Soren kept his face on the coffee. "That's a strange thing to research about a classmate."
"You're a strange thing to have as a classmate."
