The Rise of Ren Crown by Anne Zoelle

option.
    “Give them here, Phillip,” Helen ordered.
    “They are property evidence under Section 4.84.5234.62 of—”
    “I don't care if they are the property evidence of God . You will—”
    “I have three measures right now that—”
    “Are you really that stupid? You waste your precious capital on—”
    “Ren?” The voice was close to my ear and the owner was leading me over to the bed.
    I shoved Dare's hand away and sat without his help. Shaking, I looked up through my lashes to see the scarves firmly in Marsgrove's hand, and tried to calculate what chance I had.
    Hemmed in by three people who were at full strength and ability—while I had none—and with two of them combat mages most mages feared, my chance was nil.
    Coasting through high school in Christian's shadow, happy and oblivious and utterly without care for social power, it would have seemed absurd to me, then, that I would become excessively reliant on having an overabundance of power at my disposal—magic that would let me do most anything.
    And to be so scorched of such means when I needed them most was a bitter pill.
    “Ren,” Dare said.
    “Don't,” I said bitterly. He had helped Marsgrove take Olivia's scarf. I didn't care about mine, but I couldn't look away from hers. In a more rational mood, I might have responded differently, but nothing unemotional was making its way through my head.
    “You are a coddled magelet, Miss Crown,” Helen said coldly, focusing on me again. “Your protectors cosset you.”
    I gave a short laugh. Coddled? Mages had beaten, shocked, imprisoned, leashed, threatened, used, and fed me to monsters. I had forgiven that last one, but I hadn't forgotten what falling into the Blarjack Swamp had felt like my first day on campus, when I'd had few magical skills to assist me.
    It was little wonder that I had taken the enormous magic well I had access to and run with it.
    I had died twice by magic's hand, one of those times in order to save Dare and campus. And I'd been left for dead, completely physically broken, in the non-magical world by mages trying to steal my brother's magic.
    I had been living a pretty un-coddled life since discovering magic.
    I stared at Olivia's scarf in Marsgrove's hand.
    “Get out,” I said.
    “Enjoy your pampered life while it lasts,” Helen said pleasantly, her eyes hard. “For I can guarantee you, Miss Crown, that it will not.”
    A tendril of magic slithered over my skin, then pinched hard.
     
     
     

Chapter Seven: Choosing a Path
    I sat a little ways off from the rest of the students in the dorm’s common room. I could feel them watching me, as I stared at the notebook in my lap, my fingers trying to grip the scarf that was no longer there.
    Helen Price had made me miss the window of time with Neph, Will, and the others. Every dorm had enacted mandatory procedures, backed by Administration Magic, which called the members of each dorm to the dorm's community area upon the designated return hour.
    All I wanted was to reunite with my friends. My emotions felt as knotted as my magic. But trapped in an Olivia-less dorm, I had instead taken up the position as freak and spectacle for the residents of Dorm Twenty-five.
    I jolted as a member of Delta and one of Epsilon took seats on either side of me. They silently met the gazes of the other students. They weren't wearing their Plan scarves either—and I wondered if theirs too had been confiscated—instead they had small blue scarves tied around their necks, symbolic reminders.
    They stared coolly around the room, and the intensity of the gazes on me lessened and became sporadic—people were forced to take quick inquiring glances in my direction instead of the blatant staring they'd been doing before. I didn't know the Delta and Epsilon members as well as I did some of the other delinquents, but they'd been involved in Plan Fifty-two, and they were providing steady support that I desperately needed.
    The dorm heads assembled in the