But he's hard to ignore when he keeps showing up.
He's in the dining hall on Tuesday, warm brown eyes tracking me across the room. Outside my Elemental Studies classroom on Wednesday. In the library on Thursday, two floors below my usual table, and when I glance down through the atrium I catch him looking up before he turns away.
It's not like Callum's cold observation or Felix's sharp curiosity. Ren watches me the way you watch a fire—wary, uncertain, drawn in despite yourself.
I don't know what it means. I'm not sure I want to.
On Friday night, leaving the library at midnight, he's waiting in the shadows near the entrance.
"Everly."
I stop. Turn. He's half-hidden by darkness, and for a moment neither of us speaks.
"What do you want, Ren?"
His hands are shaking—a fine tremor he's trying to hide by pressing them flat against his thighs. The healer's hands. The hands that fix everyone except me.
"Be careful," he says finally. "What you're looking for—the answers you want. They're not safe."
"What does that mean?"
Silence. The shadows lean toward me the way they always do now, and I see his eyes drop to my hands, like he can sense the darkness gathering there.
"Some doors stay closed for a reason."
Then he's gone, slipping into the night before I can ask anything else.
I can't sleep.
The magic inside me is restless—shadow pressing against my ribs, lightning humming beneath my skin. Every time I close my eyes I see Ren's face, that warning I don't understand.Some doors stay closed for a reason.
At 2 AM I give up. Pull on Brittany's least-ruined hoodie, stuff my feet into my pink tennis shoes, and slip out to the library.
The fourth floor is where the dangerous books live. The ones that scream if you open them wrong. The ones with territorial tendencies. Most students avoid this section entirely, which makes it perfect for research you don't want anyone to know about.
I've been through these shelves a dozen times already, following threads that lead nowhere. But tonight something feels different. The shadows are thicker here, pooling in corners, and I find myself moving deeper into the stacks than I've gone before.
Past the screaming books. Past the ones that hiss warnings. Into a section so dusty it's clear no one's touched it in years.
The books here are old. Really old—cracked spines, faded titles, pages that crumble if you're not careful. I pull volumes at random, scanning for anything useful.
A History of Magical Education in North America.Nothing about people who absorb multiple disciplines.
Fraternity Origins and the Formalization of Magical Practice.Dry academic prose about why the four disciplines needed separate institutions. Something about "maintaining balance" and "preventing dangerous hybridization."
Dangerous hybridization. That's a new phrase. I make a note.
The next book is different. Smaller, older, the title barely legible:Campus Architecture and Memorial Sites.
I almost put it back. Then I see a chapter heading halfway through the table of contents:Concordia Hall: A Cautionary History.
Concordia Hall was built in 1847.
According to the book, it sat at the center of campus—a pentagonal building made from stones that predated the university itself. For almost eighty years, it housed a sorority called the Grimoire Girls. Students who could channel all four magical disciplines. Students who could absorb spells, blend magic, do things that single-discipline casters couldn't.
Students like me.
I read faster, my heart pounding.
