Chapter 3
Faye
I turned around.
He was leaning against the desk behind mine, arms crossed, platinum hair catching what little light came through the fog-filmed windows. Up close, those eyes were worse. Not a trick of the dim room, not some exotic contact lens color — red, fully saturated, watching me with the kind of patience that meant he had nowhere else to be and found this genuinely entertaining.
My mouth went dry. I said, "I — I walked into the wrong room."
"Mm." He tilted his head. "New student? Or just a hobby?"
"Wrong room," I repeated. "I'm... leaving."
He moved before I finished — not fast, just fluid. He was in front of me, half-sitting on the desk's edge, close enough that I had to stop or walk into him. "You stood there a while," he said. "Three minutes? Five? That's not a wrong-room situation. That's a choice."
He counted. My pulse kicked up. I was still seeing it — the way that girl's head had dropped, the way his mouth had moved against her neck. I could not look at his mouth. I fixed my eyes somewhere around his collarbone and locked my hand around my bag strap, squeezing until the buckle edge bit into my palm.
Say something. Just say something and get out.
"I — I froze. It happens. I'm sorry, okay? I'm leaving now."
"Sorry." He repeated the word like he was testing its weight and finding it light. His mouth curved. I looked away. "You think that covers it?"
I made myself look back up — not at his mouth, at his eyes, which was somehow worse. Stop it. Just hold it together for thirty more seconds. "Yes. This is a public building."
"This," he said, pulling his jacket open just enough to show the badge — a silver bat, wings spread — "is the astronomy society's room." He let the jacket fall closed. "Not public. Not for you."
"I didn't see a sign."
He leaned forward slightly, and I caught it again — something that made the air between us feel charged in a way I couldn't name. He inhaled, slow and deliberate, and his expression shifted into something that made my skin prickle. "You're scared," he said. "But you're still standing here. Interesting."
Because if I run you'll know exactly how scared I am. "I'm annoyed, not scared." I stepped back. My shoulders hit the wall. "What do you want?"
"Compensation. Your time. An hour. Consider it a fine for trespassing."
"No." The word came out steadier than I felt. "I don't owe you anything. Whatever I saw — that's on you."
Something shifted in his expression. Like I'd said something that didn't fit the script. He studied me, then tapped the bat badge on his chest. "St. Helis has a lot of societies. But four of them matter. A bat, a shield, a rose, an old book. You see any of those four on someone's jacket, you pay attention."
An old book. The image surfaced before I could stop it — Savienne on the main path that first morning, cream coat, champagne hair, that small gold badge on her lapel. An open book, the kind that looked like it meant something. Standing here now, I was starting to think I should have asked.
He let that land. "Students who make problems for anyone wearing those badges find out very fast why that was a bad idea."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a lesson. Free of charge."
I held his gaze for three full seconds. Then I picked up my bag, stepped around him, and walked to the door.
"Running doesn't fix anything, new girl," he called after me, voice easy, like he already knew how this ended.
I pushed through the door without answering.
The corridor was dim in a way that felt structural. I moved fast, my heartbeat still doing that erratic thing it had no business doing. Red eyes. The way he smelled her. The way he looked at me after. I shoved it all into a box and kept moving.
I took the back path — narrower, flanked by stone walls and overgrown hedges. I needed thirty seconds where nothing was watching me.
What the hell is wrong with this school.
I was watching my feet on the uneven ground when the feeling hit — that specific awareness of being watched, sitting right between my shoulder blades. I stopped. Turned. Nothing. Just the empty path, the fog sitting low and undisturbed.
I kept moving.
The wall curved, and I was looking up at the corner when a loose stone shifted and dropped. I threw my hand up on instinct. The edge caught my knuckles — sharp, clean. Blood welled up immediately, and I hissed through my teeth.
"Careful."
I spun around. No footstep, no rustle, no warning — just his voice, and then he was simply there, stepping out from beside the wall like the fog had assembled him on the spot. Platinum hair, red eyes, jacket still half-open. Same guy. Of course it was the same guy.
The fog, I told myself. That's why I didn't hear him.
"You followed me," I said.
He raised both hands. "Library's this way. I walk this path all the time." His gaze had already moved to my hand, attention sharpening in a way that felt less like concern and more like focus. "You're bleeding."
"I noticed. I'm fine."
"Let me see." He reached for my wrist before I could step back, fingers closing around it with a grip that was gentle and completely immovable. His skin was cold — not cool, cold, the same structural absence of warmth that I was starting to think wasn't a coincidence. He pressed a folded handkerchief against the wound, and then I heard his breathing change — slower, deeper, the kind of controlled that meant something was being held back.
His throat moved. He swallowed.
"I've got it," I said, pulling at my wrist. He didn't let go. "Hey —"
He lowered his head.
His lips were two inches from my hand when something hit him hard from the side — solid, deliberate — sending him stumbling into the stone wall. He caught himself, one hand braced against the stone, and looked up.
A guy I'd never seen stood between us. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of posture that had never once made room for anyone else. His badge caught the dim light — a silver shield, a lion's head pressed into its center, flat and clean against his jacket.
He looked at Adrian with an expression somewhere between contempt and boredom, the way someone looks at a problem they've dealt with before and found tedious both times.
"Adrian, you filthy mutt." He clicked his tongue. "Hunting in the open. Still can't help yourself, can you — you half-turned, half-bred piece of garbage."
Adrian straightened, rolling his shoulder. "Evander."
"And that jacket." Evander's gaze dropped to the bat badge, his voice flat. "You got dropped sophomore year. Wearing their badge doesn't make you one of them — it just makes you a liar."
Adrian's jaw tightened. He said nothing.
Evander turned to look at me. I watched his nostrils flare, just once. His jaw tightened in the same controlled way, and he swallowed — the movement clear in his throat — before his face settled back into something composed and unreadable.
