Chapter 5 Manners

(Wren’s POV)

I decided somewhere around 2 a.m., lying awake replaying Kai’s half-answer on a loop I couldn’t shut off, that I was done being sad about it. Sad wasn’t useful. Sad didn’t pay rent. And I’d learned a long time ago, back before Ravenmoor, back when it was just me and my mom and a lot of people who thought a plus-size girl with no House and no money was an easy target — sad turns into something else if you let it sit long enough. It turns into fine, then. It turns into a plan.

So when Selene cornered me again three days later, this time in front of half the junior class in the courtyard, smiling that same smile that never once touched her eyes, I wasn’t sad anymore. I was ready.

“Wren.” She said my name like she was doing me a favor by learning it. “I heard you had training grounds access revoked this morning. Something about… unauthorized presence?” She turned slightly, playing to the small crowd that had already started gathering, the way people gather anytime blood might be about to be drawn that isn’t the ceremonial kind. “I do hope Kai isn’t letting you get the wrong idea about your place here. It would be embarrassing. For everyone.”

I let the silence sit for exactly as long as I needed it to.

“Funny,” I said. “I heard something too. About House Voss.”

Something flickered behind her composure — small, but real. She hadn’t expected me to have anything. That was fair. Three days ago, I hadn’t.

“I don’t know what you think you heard—”

“I heard your House has spent three generations telling everyone the alliance with House Nightshade is about stability.” I kept my voice easy, conversational, the exact register she’d used on me at lunch, because I’d been paying attention, and turnabout felt like the least I owed her. “Funny word, stability. Real popular with people who benefited the most from whatever came before it got stable.”

The crowd had gone very quiet.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Selene said, and for the first time, there was an edge under the composure, something less rehearsed.

“Maybe not. I’m just a Claimed girl with no House and no name, right? Nobody explains anything to people like me.” I shrugged, easy, unbothered, everything she’d tried to make me feel three days ago and failed to actually land. “But it’s funny what people forget to keep quiet around the help. You’d be amazed what a girl who’s furniture to everyone hears, when nobody bothers lowering their voice in front of the furniture.”

I hadn’t actually heard anything specific — not yet, not concretely, not beyond Ronan’s careful non-answers and the particular way every adult at this school flinched at the word “Purge.” But I’d watched Selene’s face for exactly one second too long, and one second was all I needed, because guilty people flinch at vague accusations the same way they flinch at specific ones. Sometimes worse. Vague is scarier. Vague means you don’t know how much the other person actually has.

“Is that a threat?” Selene said, very quietly, the smile completely gone now.

“It’s manners,” I said. “You taught me some, remember? I’m just returning the favor. Don’t embarrass yourself, Selene. It would be a shame. For everyone.”

I turned and walked away before she could recover, before the crowd could decide which way to lean, and I did not let myself look back, because looking back would’ve meant seeing whether it worked, and some victories you have to walk away from too fast to check, or your legs stop cooperating.

They did anyway, a little, once I turned the corner. But nobody was around to see that part.

Ronan found me twenty minutes later, leaning against a wall two corridors away, still catching my breath in the specific way you do after you’ve done something brave and terrifying and are now waiting to see if it costs you everything.

“That,” he said, “was either the smartest thing I’ve seen anyone do at this school in three years, or the single fastest way to get yourself killed. I genuinely can’t tell which yet.”

“Can it be both?”

“With Selene Voss? Absolutely both.” He leaned against the wall beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, which still struck me as strange, still didn’t match up with everything I thought I knew about what vampires were supposed to feel like. “You don’t actually know anything, do you. About the Purge.”

“Not really. I know there’s something. I know everyone flinches. I know you’ve been asking questions you don’t want to answer out loud.” I looked at him sideways. “I know you know more than you’re telling me.”

He didn’t deny it. That, more than anything, told me I was right.

“I will tell you,” he said. “I promise you that. Just — not yet. Not until I know enough that when I do tell you, it’s the whole thing, and not a piece that gets you hurt worse than the silence would’ve.” He held my gaze, and there wasn’t anything performative in it, none of the easy charm from our first conversation on the stairs. Just something steadier. Something that looked a lot like he meant it. “I know that’s not fair to ask you to trust. I’m asking anyway.”

I thought about Kai, three days ago, telling me it shouldn’t happen again while making it very clear it already had. I thought about Selene’s smile, and the flinch underneath it, and how good it had felt — genuinely, uncomplicatedly good, for the first time since I’d stepped off that train — to watch someone else be the one who felt small for a change.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll trust you. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed, and something about the way he said it, easy and certain at the same time, made me believe I actually could.

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter