Chapter 7
Faye
Something shifted in Savienne's eyes.
Not a blink, not a flicker — a deliberate change, like a lens adjusting focus. The caramel color deepened at the edges, pupils expanding slow and steady, and the fog pressed closer, filling the space between my ears with a low, cottony pressure.
Look at me, the fog said, in her voice.
My thoughts lifted. Not violently — gently, the way a current takes something that isn't anchored. I was aware of Savienne's face, aware of her fingers still resting under my chin, and I was aware that I was speaking, but the words were coming from somewhere outside my control, like listening to a recording of yourself and not recognizing the voice.
I saw you, I heard myself say. You and the department head. The honey. The ropes. I was watching through the ivy.
Savienne went very still.
Then the star chart detonated.
The heat came without warning — a white-hot pulse that tore through my jacket pocket and exploded up my hip, along my spine, behind my eyes.
Every nerve fired at once, the cottony pressure in my skull shattered like glass on concrete, and suddenly I was standing in the fog with Savienne's fingers under my chin and absolutely no idea what I'd just said.
My mouth was closed. Had been closed, apparently, for a few seconds now.
Savienne was watching me with something careful and contained behind those darkened eyes. Her fingers hadn't moved.
There was a gap where continuous thought should have been — a clean blank in my memory like a page torn out of a book. Five seconds, maybe ten. Gone.
What did I say?
I didn't ask. I held her gaze and kept my face neutral and did not let a single thing show.
Savienne drew a slow breath. Her fingers left my chin — that brief, almost reluctant pause before she pulled back. Then she straightened, and when she looked at me again, the girl from the hallway was back. Warm. Composed. Completely unbothered.
"The restricted zone is off-limits to first-years," she said. "Unless you have a documented reason, or someone with clearance brings you in. You understand?"
I nodded. My mouth wasn't working right.
"Good." She tilted her head slightly. "Go back to your dorm, Faye."
I went.
I don't remember the walk back. One moment I was standing in the fog with Savienne's eyes on me, and the next I was pushing open the dorm room door, the star chart cooling against my ribs with every step.
Emily was asleep, one arm thrown over her face.
My knees gave out the second the door clicked shut. I slid down against it and just — stayed there. Breathing. Trying to reconstruct the last ten minutes.
Savienne. The honey. The department head. Running. Savienne behind me.
I could pull those pieces up clearly. The ivy, the ropes, her jaw tight when she turned around. Her fingers under my chin, the tremor in them, her breathing shallow and uneven — not angry. Something else entirely.
She was looking at your throat. Same way Adrian looked at your hand.
And then: nothing. A clean gap, and the next thing I had was Savienne smiling at me, telling me to go home. The star chart had been burning in my pocket during that blank stretch — a searing heat that shot through the fabric like a brand. Whatever it had done, I couldn't access what came before or after it.
What did I say to her?
That was the part that sat wrong. Not the gap itself — the possibility of what I might have filled it with.
I told myself it didn't matter. The important thing was that I'd gotten out. I was fine. Sitting on my dorm room floor at three in the morning with my pulse running too fast, but fine. What I was not going to do was think about the way she'd looked at me — that specific, focused hunger that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with appetite. I'd seen the same thing on Adrian's face.
You got lucky, I told myself. You ran fast and you got lucky.
I dropped the star chart into my backpack and climbed into bed. Sleep hit me before I could finish the thought.
The dream started in fog.
Savienne's eyes, close enough that I could see where caramel bled into something darker at the edges. Her fingertips, ice-cold, tracing down the side of my neck — not threatening, just there, following my pulse with a patience that made my breath go short. The air tasted like honey. I couldn't move, and I wasn't trying to.
"Look at me," she said, and I did, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
"Faye. Hey — wake up, we're gonna be late."
I came up out of it like breaking the surface of water — gasping, disoriented. Emily was standing over my bed in her robe, looking at me with the mild concern of someone who had places to be.
"You okay? You were making weird noises."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Became aware, in a slow and absolutely catastrophic way, of the state of my sheets.
No, I thought, very clearly. Absolutely not. I did not just—
"Faye?"
"I'm fine. Jet lag, I think. You go ahead, don't wait for me."
Emily hesitated, then grabbed her bag and went.
I stripped the bed with the focused efficiency of someone trying very hard not to think about what they were doing. Sheets into the laundry bag. Backup set from the closet. Done.
I had literally been mocking Emily last night, I thought, yanking the fitted sheet into place. Thought she was a hopeless romantic with zero survival instincts. And then I came back and—
I shoved the laundry bag under the bed.
Stress response, I decided. Adrenaline. Means nothing. It meant nothing that the dream had been about Savienne. I was going to shower, get dressed, and never think about this again.
I made it to the lecture hall eleven minutes late. The door opened with a sound that carried, every head in the front rows turned, and I walked to the nearest empty seat like I'd meant to arrive at exactly this moment.
I got my notebook out and tried to focus. The words on the board made sense individually. Together they kept sliding apart, my brain running a quieter loop underneath: Savienne's fingers. The blank space. What did I say. The way her eyes went dark.
Stop it. Be in class.
I managed about twenty minutes before the professor called a break. I put my head down on the desk and let my eyes close.
The shadow fell across the desk before I heard anything.
Adrian was standing next to my seat, one hand braced on the desk, platinum hair falling forward. Those eyes — back to their normal color, no trace of the red from yesterday — fixed on me with something between amused and calculating.
"Rough night?"
