PERSUASION WAS LENNON’S last class of the day, and she arrived just a few moments before the period began. The class‑
room was already full, students seated behind all but one of the twelve desks in the room. On each of them, there was a small glass cage that contained a single live rat.
Dante stood at the front of the classroom—dressed smartly, in wool trousers and a white button‑down, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to expose tattooed forearms. If he had any memory of their encounter outside of Irvine Hall, he gave no indication. “Lennon, nice of you to join us. Have a seat.”
She claimed a desk in the middle of the room, stared into the cage in front of her. The rat on the other side of the glass was dun brown with a little white patch on its left ear. He was shaking.
“I have no idea if you’re a boy or a girl, but I’m going to call you Gregory because you look like one,” said Lennon in a whisper, and the rat looked up at her, nose twitching, as if he understood.
“What’s the difference between training and an act of persuasion?” Dante asked the class, but his gaze lingered on Lennon.
Nadine raised her hand, her arm stiff with urgency. Behind her, Ian rolled his eyes.
“Go on,” said Dante, nodding to her.
“Persuasion is forced. Training is taught,” said Nadine, and she cut a quick glance back at Ian, her cheeks flushing pink. Was she just embarrassed—Lennon wondered in passing—or was it that even nuns weren’t immune to the wiles of tattooed, toxic men?
“An interesting perspective . . . but is that entirely accurate?” Dante picked up a nub of chalk from the sill below the board and sketched the question: Is persuasion an act of force?
This question, once written in full, triggered a chorus of murmurs. The class dissolved into a general conversation, no one bothering to raise their hands, people talking over one another, or interjecting in the short breaths between words and sentences.
“Persuasion is the ability to project one’s own will onto a being, object, or entity,” said Dante, and everyone fell quiet. “There is not a living being in the world that lacks the ability to persuade. It is a gift inherent to all of us. From the smallest microorganism to the smartest humans that have ever walked the face of the earth—every one of us is bestowed with the power to enforce our own will upon the world. I want you to think of a newborn baby, crying for its mother’s milk. This early instinct is, for most of us, our first discernible act of persuasion. Now imagine this same newborn baby grown into a man. He goes to a bar, flirts with a woman there, and he ends his night in bed with her. This too is an act of persuasion. But while persuasion is a skill we all possess, our degrees of efficacy vary greatly depending on our social status, natural intelligence, nationality, the money in our bank accounts, even our race.
“Here at Drayton, we believe that a handful of extraordinarily gifted individuals can be taught to command a persuasive ability powerful enough to bend, or even break, the rules of reality itself. This skill is well beyond the natural limits of most people walking the planet. Most who would so much as attempt to wield such a power would either die or go insane. Which is how we come to you, the chosen few.” As Dante said this, his gaze again affixed itself to Lennon. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“For the rest of the semester, you will work to persuade—not train—the rat sitting on the desk before you. So I suggest you spend this class session building a sense of rapport with your charge, learning its peculiarities, understanding the subject onto which you intend to impose your will. Cruelty—by way of pain, starvation, or verbal abuse—will not be tolerated. Nor will it help you achieve the kinds of results you’ll need to pass this class. Am I clear?”
Lennon nodded along with the rest of her classmates. “Good,” said Dante. “Then let’s begin.”
What followed was a brutal crash course in rudimentary persuasion. Dante adopted a sink‑or‑swim approach to the lesson, which Lennon privately suspected was more a test of natural aptitude than anything else, a way to gauge what he was working with. What little instruction he did offer was vague and rooted not in pragmatism but in feelings and intuition. “Think of your will as an extension of your body. No different than a limb. When you extend it to the rat—as you might your hand—imagine yourself expanding around it, the fingers of your psyche closing into a fist. That’s how you make first contact and establish control.”
Excerpted from An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson Copyright © 2024 by Alexis Henderson. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
AN ACADEMY FOR LIARS by Alexis Henderson
A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come from outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.
Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.
Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.
After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.
As Lennon continues in her studies, her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns, for it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption…and it’s a test she’s terrified she’s going to fail.
Fantasy Dark | Fantasy Historical [Ace, On Sale: September 17, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593638309 / eISBN: 9780593638316]
Buy AN ACADEMY FOR LIARS: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Target.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Alexis Henderson
Alexis Henderson is a speculative fiction writer with a penchant for dark fantasy, witchcraft, and cosmic horror. She grew up in one of America’s most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, which instilled in her a life-long love of ghost stories. Currently, Alexis resides in the sun-soaked marshland of Charleston, South Carolina.
No Comments
Comments are closed.