With her exit blocked, Dorothea has no choice but to look up at Sylvain as he questions her. It does nothing to settle her unease, the tension in her body coiling like a spring. Her feet shuffle, restless, but she doesn't try to push him aside. He's bigger than her, stronger than her; he can keep her from leaving if he wants.

"It isn't a game. I don't want to play at all," she says, and a casual observer might find that a strange statement for her to make when everyone on campus knows that she came here to try and find a spouse. "People have been treating me like a piece of meat since I was thirteen. If they find out I have a crest, it'll only get worse--the assaults, the... the kidnapping attempts. What will they try now to force my hand? To punish me for rejecting them?"

Sylvain will understand what it feels like to be desired; he's spent his life constantly being reminded of the fact that his crest means people will want him for insincere reasons: his crest, his money, his status. What might not have occurred to him is just how much that money and that status have protected him over the years. Dorothea has neither, and men were already willing to kill to have her--to kill her if they could not have her. What lengths would they go to now if it's discovered that she has a crest, too?