"Thanks. For healing me. And for the whiskey."
She snorts. "Keep picking fights with fraternity presidents and you're going to need a lot more of both."
"Probably."
But I'm smiling as I say it. Because for the first time since I arrived at Nyxhaven, I don't feel like a victim. I've been knocked down, targeted, humiliated, nearly killed.
And I'm still standing.
That has to count for something.
Chapter 4: Everly
I've never been someone who hides. In the sixth grade, when Maura Bishop went around telling the other kids that I ate my own boogers and smelled like a skunk, I went up to her and asked her if she needed to see the doctor since clearly she was seeing and smelling things. When the other freshmen in high school started to bully Maura, I stepped in and told them to cut it out. I turned in my boss at my part-time job for wage theft, and even though it didn't go anywhere, my parents told me they were proud. That’s how I was raised.
Basically, I stick up for myself. Which is why it feels so unnatural to try to lay low after the storm.
It's not that I don't want to confront Atlas and Callum—on the contrary, it's the only thing I want. The next day in class, I almost burn up at the feeling of Callum Bolingbroke's grey eyes on me. But I make myself keep my head down, dressed in my most boring and unassuming clothes, and try not to make too much eye contact or stare too long.
I last three days.
Three miserable, invisible, suffocating days of eating lunch in my room and walking the long way around every building and sitting in the back of lecture halls like I'm trying to disappear. It goes against every instinct I have. When you've spent your whole life being the person who walks into a room and makes it warmer, choosing to be invisible feels like holding your breath underwater and hoping no one notices the bubbles.
On the fourth day, I crack. March into the dining hall, sit down at a table near the windows, and dare anyone to say something about it.
That's when Felix finds me again.
"You're back." He drops into the seat across from me, that easy grin already in place. "I was starting to think you'd transferred."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"Never." He steals a fry off my plate—of course he does—and pops it in his mouth. "Hiding doesn't suit you, by the way. Even dressed like a funeral director, you still walk around like someone who expects people to like her."
He's not wrong.
And he's easy to be around, which is the dangerous part. Felix doesn't bring up the sphere, or the storm, or the worddangerous. He tells me about the time someone in Tumult enchanted the dining hall silverware to rearrange itself into obscene gestures whenever a professor walked by, and I laugh so hard water comes out my nose, and for fifteen minutes I feel like a normal college student having a normal conversation.
"I should go," I say, gathering my tray. "I've got Theory in ten."
"I'll walk you."
"You don't have to—"
"I know." He's already standing. "See, that's the difference between me and the other three. I don't do anything because Ihaveto."
He says it like it's charming. It is charming. That's the problem.
It becomes a thing.
Felix at lunch, stealing my fries. Felix in the library, shuffling cards while I study, making quiet commentary that's just distracting enough to be fun. Felix between classes, falling into step beside me like we planned it.
"You know what your problem is?" he says one afternoon, walking me across the quad. His cards flicker through his fingers—shuffle, cut, shuffle—and I've stopped flinching at the motion. It's just what he does.
"I have so many problems, Felix. You'll have to be specific."
"You're too honest. This place runs on secrets and leverage and you just... say what you think." He grins. "It's deeply impractical. I love it."
"Is that a compliment?"
