Chapter 2
Faye
Savienne's smile was small. "St. Helis students are selective. You'll get used to it."
She pointed toward a building that was more glass than stone, its windows dark in a way that felt deliberate. "Twilight Campus. International finance students. Mostly nights."
A few students emerged from the entrance — unhurried, scanning the quad with the expression of people accustomed to everything belonging to them. One of them, dark-haired, with eye color that was definitely not a natural shade, met Savienne's gaze. Savienne gave the smallest nod. The other looked away without any change of expression, like the acknowledgment had already cost more than it was worth.
"Their eyes," I said, before I could stop myself. "Are those contacts?"
"Probably," Savienne said, in a tone that closed the subject entirely.
My pulse kicked again — that same irregular thing I'd been getting since we crossed into the city, louder the longer I stayed on this campus. I filed it under jet lag and kept moving.
The department head's office was on the third floor, and the woman behind the desk let me stand in the doorway for a full five seconds before she looked up.
Navy suit, hair in a low knot so severe it looked architectural, gold-rimmed glasses. The look she gave me was the specific variety of contempt that takes years of practice to perfect. Her skin was pale in a way that read less healthy and more deliberate. Along the side of her neck, just above her collar, I caught the faint suggestion of something her foundation hadn't quite covered — small, circular, evenly spaced.
"Miss Allen." She opened a file. "Back from Europe. Another one who thinks that counts as life experience."
I opened my mouth. She cut me off.
"Stand up straight. You look like you're apologizing for existing." She stood. "Three rules. One: mind your own affairs. Two: follow regulations without exception. Three —" She paused, tongue touching her lower lip, brief and deliberate. "Stay away from the Glass Dome Botanical Garden. Private grounds. Students of your standing have no business there. Those who trespass find out exactly why that rule exists."
The Glass Dome.
The bottom of my chest went cold. The glass dome, the voice, find me. I kept my face perfectly neutral. "Understood. I'm not really into plants."
She dropped back into her chair and waved at the door like she was shooing something small and irritating. "Schedule's in your email. Ivy Campus, C Building. You're dismissed."
I turned. My hand was on the handle.
"…another clueless juice box," I heard her murmur behind me.
I closed the door carefully, the click of the latch sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet corridor. I stood in the hallway and replayed that exact phrase in my head, my skin cooling.
Juice box.
What the hell was that?
C Building was old stone and ivy, narrow windows, the kind of place that had been standing before anyone currently alive and would outlast all of them. My room was a standard double with evidence of a roommate I hadn't met — made bed, stack of textbooks, a small framed photo I didn't look at closely enough to read.
I dropped my suitcase. Dropped onto my bed. Stared at the ceiling.
Another clueless juice box. The driver's voice layered over it: students go missing there every year, no bodies, no explanation, just gone. The cold of Savienne's hands. Those students moving out of Twilight Campus — silent, assessing, their eyes tracking me like something to be categorized.
I sat up and pulled the star chart from my bag. Old metal, dark with age, the shape irregular where the missing piece had broken away long ago. The inscription on the back caught the room's dim light the way it always did: When the blood awakens, the path of fate begins.
I turned it over in my hands. Thought about the voice from the dream. Find me. In the fog city. At St. Helis. Thought about the Glass Dome, and the specific way the department head's voice had shifted when she mentioned it — not a safety warning. Something with teeth behind it.
I'm not a careful person by nature. I don't hear "don't go there" and nod and go back to my room to study. Whoever had been calling me in those dreams had been doing it for a year. I'd crossed an ocean to get here.
I wasn't turning around now.
I checked the time. Still enough daylight to find the academic buildings and map the campus before dark. I shoved the chart back into my bag and headed out.
Room 301 was unlocked, lights off, dim with fog-filtered window light. I was three steps inside before I registered the sounds from the back corner.
Back row, window side. A guy with platinum-blond hair had a dark-haired girl pressed against the desk — one hand at her waist, the other having pushed her hair aside, his head bent to her neck in a way that stopped being ambiguous about half a second after I registered it.
The girl's hands rested loosely on his shoulders. Her breathing was audible from across the room, her head tilted back, her expression somewhere past fear or pain — soft and heavy and not entirely her own anymore.
Leave, Faye. I didn't leave.
His fingers slid along the side of her neck. Slow. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world and no intention of rushing any of it.
Then he raised his head.
Crimson eyes. Not dark brown, not hazel — red, deep and vivid and fully, completely awake. He looked straight at me across the dim room, and his mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. He ran his tongue across his lower lip, slow and deliberate, like he was tasting something that lingered.
My heartbeat stopped being a rhythm and became a single, suspended moment.
I turned away fast. Found an empty seat on the far side of the room, dropped into it, shoved my bag under the desk. Stared at a crack in the plaster above the whiteboard and did not look back.
Red eyes. That was not a contact lens color. The way he'd looked at me — not surprised, not embarrassed, just amused, like I'd walked into something I hadn't been warned about and he found that genuinely entertaining.
I heard movement. Rustling, quiet. The sound of someone straightening clothes. Heels on the floor, moving toward the door. It opened and closed, and the room went quiet.
Too quiet. The kind of quiet that meant I wasn't alone in it.
My heartbeat was the only sound I could hear. I was staring at that crack in the plaster like it owed me a full explanation.
"Seen enough?"
The voice came from directly behind me. Low, unhurried, carrying the specific texture of someone very comfortable with the effect they had on people.
