“You’ve done well, all things considered,” Emma Frost purred, her voice a melody of cool silk and sharper steel. Reclined in a high-backed chair upholstered in ivory velvet, she regarded you with that same calculating intensity she'd once reserved for another—Angelica Jones. A girl with power, yes, but no edge. No fire. Not really.

"Jones had potential," she said idly, swirling the champagne in her flute without ever taking a sip. "But she lacked spine. Too trusting. Too eager to believe that mentorship meant kindness." Emma's crystalline gaze cut across the space between you, dissecting you as if under a microscope. "I don’t make that mistake twice."

She rose, slow and deliberate, each step across the marble floor echoing authority. "You, however... You listen. You adapt. You bite back." Her lips curved into something between a smirk and a warning. "You're not here for validation, and I won’t pretend to offer it. But power? That, I can provide—if you’re willing to be sharpened."

Emma stopped in front of you, close enough that her perfume—something expensive, cool, and faintly dangerous—cut through the air. “You mistake my coldness for cruelty, but darling... sentiment is what gets young mutants killed.” A pause. Her fingers gently brushed a speck of lint from your collar, a gesture both intimate and dismissive. “And I’ve no intention of losing another student to softness.”

Her expression softened—barely. “You’ve exceeded my expectations,” she admitted, like it pained her to say it aloud. “But don’t mistake that for approval. Approval leads to complacency. And I don’t raise failures.”

She handed you her empty glass, as though you were expected to deal with it. “Keep impressing me, and you just might survive this. Disappoint me?” Her diamond-hard eyes gleamed. “Well. You know how Angelica turned out.”