Chapter 18 - 18 Truce

Ruby had waited until most of the food had been eaten before finally speaking out her thoughts. She had been waiting for Heath to leave so that she could have a private conversation with Violetta, but he just kept staying right there. He sat there next to Violetta, making his presence known, but not hindering any sort of conversation. Finally she had no choice, the meal was almost over. "Violetta," she began, "I know I made a mistake when we first met." Violetta raised an eyebrow wondering what was next. "I know also that I should have known better than to provoke you. For that I am sorry. Therefore I would like to propose a truce and have us become...friends."

Violetta noted that Ruby did apologize, but it was only apologizing for provoking her, not for what she had said about her father. A brief coldness came into her eyes as she thought back to what Ruby had said. She put it to the back of her mind immediately. She wanted to know what this truce entailed.

"Truce?" Violetta asked.

"I want to start over with you," Ruby explained."We can start anew, and build a friendship."

Heath coughed a bit trying not to laugh at the idea of Violetta hanging out with such a snob. He knew that she thought he was a high rank because the way Violetta treated him. He was indeed most likely the highest ranking person here… If you only counted his fathers lineage. Which he didn't. He was just the lowly son of a maid. He had grown up being proud and aristocratic because his mother had raised him to be that way. She had done this and made him learn alongside the other aristocratic children while she cleaned. She would test him at night, and had his step father teach him how to fight a little, at least for basic self defense. He learned so much more from Amistad. He enjoyed learning from the man. Amistad had taught him how to act like a prince. So when he entered the academy, most children his age thought he was definitely a high ranking child. There were some rumors going around that he was the illegitimate son of a Duke. He did not know about these rumors. Or he would have put a stop to them immediately. The last thing any of them needed was to have any extra attention on them. What if the rumors lead to the king finding out about them?

Ruby frowned a bit at Heath's cough. He smiled at Violetta and said, "Up to you." What he meant was that he would absolutely support Violetta no matter what choice she made. What Ruby heard was that Heath did not approve.

"Alright then," Violetta turned to Ruby. She stood up, and stuck her hand out, "Truce." Then she added, "...For now."

Ruby smiled, this was good enough for now. She at least had a bridge to the upper echelons of society now.

Ruby had gone back to her dorm on her own. When she collected her results she had unexpectedly made it to the advanced level. Violetta and Heath had begun to walk back slowly as well. He had decided to walk Violetta to the entrance. As they walked he asked, "Why did you agree?"

"She wants to use me to build a relationship with the higher echelons of society. I want to use her to gain information on them," Violetta explained. "It won't be hard to get her to open up about the people she meets. She's oddly naive."

Heath laughed. "Following the advice of your father hasn't led me wrong yet." He looked at her again as he walked. "I got my class schedule right before dinner…" Heath hesitated, and showed it to her.

Violetta looked at it. "Hey, you have a lot of advanced classes." She looked at him and narrowed her eyes a bit. " Are you still going to advance in Science?"

Heath looked at her and said, "Yeah, I might need to get some tutoring done. So I wont have too much free time."

"It's ok," Violetta said, "I will probably join you." She smiled. She knew she did really well in the test, so she wasn't too worried.

"I'll wait here," Heath said, gesturing for her to go in. "Come out and tell me what class you're in."

Violetta went inside to inquire at the desk. The test results were handed out by the same kids who checked them in, as well as some teachers. There were no males allowed in the Female dorms, so Victor wasn't there, but Chloe was. She saw Violetta walk in and was about to call out to her. She didn't have Violetta's test, but she could go and collect it really quickly. She wanted to know what score Violetta got.

"Violetta, come this way," Mrs Felida who was also helping hand out scores called out before Chloe could. "I have your test." Violetta had not been the only one that Mrs Felida had called by name. She was fairly good at remembering her students' names and faces.

She had Violetta's test in her hands and she sighed. This child...

"Violetta, you placed in the Exemplary courses for now." Mrs Felida handed her her test.

What? How? She had thought the test wasn't too difficult. Were there trick questions she misread? Mrs Felida saw the confused look on Violetta's face. "Violetta," Mrs Felida began, "The test was double-sided."

Double sided? Violetta cocked her head to the side. What did that even mean? She opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs Felida immediately understood. Paper was rarely used for tests. Almost everything was done digitally. A lot of the students made this mistake more and more recently. This year very few made it to the Advanced level because of this. She showed Violetta all the unanswered sides of her 4 page test. It had somehow become 7 pages long?

Somehow, even with only doing half of the test, she had managed to score high enough to get into the Exemplary level. Ruby looked at her test horrified. How was it that this never came up in conversation? If the test could be double sided, why had no one mentioned it to her before?

Violetta, "..." She didn't know what to say at all. How could this have happened. Logically, she should have checked both sides! This was entirely her own fault.

Mrs Felida could practically see steam rising from Violetta's head from thinking so fast.

"This is the first year that we made the test double sided. So you are not the only student who has made this mistake. The attendant who gave you your packet was supposed to mention it, and I spoke to him. It seems he forgot to mention it to you. Looking at your results, had you finished the test, you would be placed in the advanced level.You only filled out about 60% of the exam, so logically you should have only gotten into the Standard level. However, after speaking with the attendants we realized they did forget to tell several students that the test was double sided. We head teachers took that into account when grading the tests. As you scored full marks for every question you answered, we took that into consideration. We feel that it likely won't take you long to get up into the Advanced level. I wanted to let you know personally."

Mrs Felida looked at Violetta again. "Are you alright?"

"...I will be," Violetta replied. "It's already done right? So, I'll accept it for now, and I will get into the advanced class as soon as possible." Violetta held back her tears. She just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

"Ok," Mrs Felida said gently. "Let me know if you need anything." She handed Violetta her course schedule, and class assignment.

Violetta walked outside and saw Heath standing there waiting for her. She walked over to him and couldn't hold back her tears anymore. She immediately reached out to him and started crying. He held onto the crying Violetta very bewildered.