chair, his ankle wrapped in a bandage and propped on a stack of pillows. In his lap was a thick pile of magazines.

Which means no one has brought ’round his assignments, Henry thought.

“Look,” Henry said, “can we talk?”

“Say what you need to say, servant boy.”

“When my friends and I plastered your textbook,” Henry began, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed and accidentally jostling Valmont’s pillow tower in the process. “Sorry about that. It was because we thought you’d been the one behind something worse. But now we know you weren’t the one doing those things, so I wanted to apologize.”

“You’re apologizing?” Valmont asked incredulously. “You’re apologizing to me about the textbook?”

“Yeah, I am,” Henry said quietly.

Valmont gave a hollow little laugh.

“I don’t care about the textbook,” he said. “The worst part is that you don’t even know what you’ve done—what you’ve cost me.”

“What are you talking about?” Henry asked.

“You really want to know?” Valmont asked angrily. “I was supposed to be the one to pass the Knightley Exam. Not you.”

“We’re back to that?” Henry groaned. That had been nearly six months ago.

“ ‘We’re back to that?’ ” Valmont mocked. “Yes, we are. Because I was supposed to pass the exam.”

“Supposed to?” Henry asked. “What? It’s not like the exam was rigged …” Henry stopped, his eyes wide with realization. No one had passed the exam at the Midsummer School for years. Everyone thought the school was cursed. But what if the school hadn’t been cursed? What if the exam had been rigged to make the boys fail?

“Maybe it was,” Valmont said coolly. “Uncle Havelock used to be the chief examiner, you know. Maybe he made sure that none of the boys at Midsummer passed the exam for just long enough that the next boy who passed would have the glory of restoring honor to the school. So that the next boy who passed became a hero. And then the headmaster up and quit and Sir Frederick was appointed the new chief examiner and instead of me passing the exam, it was you.”

Valmont was glaring furiously at Henry, as though Henry ought to have known. As though Henry had purposefully taken away his glory and honor, relegating him to one of the late-admit spots based on family connections, stealing his place as a golden boy and demoting him to the role of Theobold’s second in command, when back at the Midsummer School he had had cronies of his own.

“So that’s why you hate me?” Henry asked, surprised. “Because I stole your glory by passing the exam back at Midsummer?”

“Obviously,” Valmont sneered.

“Could you be any more selfish?” Henry accused. “You’re here anyway, aren’t you? Do you know what would have happened to me if I’d failed the exam? I’d still be a servant scrubbing pots in the kitchens, eating cold scraps of leftovers, and sleeping in an unheated attic in the winter. So I didn’t steal your glory or whatever it is you think I did. I gave myself a future, and what’s more, I deserved it.”

Henry had never been so angry, had never loathed Valmont so much as he did in that moment. Valmont was without a doubt the most ungrateful, spoiled, self-centered brat he’d ever met.

“I know,” Valmont said.

“What?” Henry unclenched his fists and looked up.

“I know that, all right? That’s what makes it so much worse. Because I’m not allowed to be mad at you. It’s not like Harisford or some other boy from Midsummer passed the exam instead of me. No, it was the brilliant servant, the downtrodden orphan whom everyone felt so sorry for and let take the exam because of a loophole. For five years I’d been promised admiration and awe, and then a charity case came along, and what did it matter about my breaking some stupid curse when you changed five hundred years of history.”

Henry didn’t know what to say. Valmont was, well, a person. He wasn’t just some horrible monster sent specifically to torment Henry. From Valmont’s perspective, it was rather the reverse. But he was still Valmont—none of this changed anything. He still called Henry and his roommates servant boy, Jewish boy, and Indian boy. He’d still tripped Henry in the hall and told everyone that Henry used to sleep in the barn with the pigs, and he’d still hurt Henry’s arm with the bandage that first day in medicine. But now Henry knew the reason.

“I hope this doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Henry said.

“Good. Me neither,” Valmont spat.

“Good, because we’re