They didn't speak much on the way to dinner.
The walk was short. The stares weren't.
Students tracked them through the corridor — not overtly, just enough to confirm: you're still being measured.
Not just by the upper tiers.
By everyone.
They reached the Maison Aurea just before peak hour.
Tiered seating. Environmental control.
The system offered them a table at the edge of the Meridian zone — high visibility, no comfort.
Aria sat first. Aiden followed. Neither said much.
The room was too well-lit. The air too calibrated.
Everything was designed for calm — and none of it helped.
Aria toyed with her utensils longer than she touched the food.
She wasn't hungry. Not really.
Not after what had happened upstairs.
It wasn't the first time people whispered.
She'd lived under lights brighter than this.
Back in her Sydney school, she was the it girl.
Not by force. Just by fact.
Teachers gave her flexible extensions.
Girls copied her hair, her tone, her vocabulary.
Brands offered her clothes "just for exposure."
She didn't have to try.
She just was.
She ruled without effort — because the world there made sense.
Avalon doesn't.
And that's what bothered her.
She was tolerated.
Measured.
Labeled interesting, but unverified.
Like something expensive that hadn't been authenticated yet.
She hated that.
She didn't say it had unsettled her.
She didn't have to.
Aiden watched her for a moment longer.
Then, quietly:
"You okay?"
He didn't say it with softness.
He said it like a system prompt — a checkpoint.
As if he knew she wouldn't break, but wanted to make sure she still knew how to hold the line.
Aria didn't answer right away.
Then:
"I will be."
"I'd rather be hated," she murmured, almost too low to catch,
"than hypothesized."
She didn't clarify.
Didn't explain what it felt like to have the world tilt without warning —
to go from being understood to being dissected.
From presence... to theory.
Halfway through the meal, she broke the silence.
"I woke up feeling like I'd missed something—except I hadn't."
YOU ARE READING
Valmont Series - Inheritance Code
Teen FictionWhat if your perfect life was just a rehearsal? On their twelfth birthday, Aria and Aiden Lancaster wake expecting luxury, freedom, and the future they were promised. Instead, they're given an ultimatum: Leave everything behind - their friends, thei...
