Lyra stepped inside. The door closed behind her with the soft, definitive sound she had come to expect. She stopped a measured distance from the table, keeping the furniture between them for the moment.
She spoke first. “The gala. Six weeks. The Headmaster said I would be presented.”
Caelum’s expression did not change. He moved away from the window with the same deliberate economy she had catalogued many times now, each step placing him closer without seeming to hurry. “Yes.”
She waited.
He stopped on the opposite side of the table, one hand resting lightly on its surface. “The Collegium requires demonstration. Visibility. Recognition.”
The words were exact, stripped of anything that might be calledexplanation. They told her nothing she did not already know and everything she needed to fear.
“What does presentation mean,” she said.
His smirk deepened, cold and satisfied, as if her question amused him precisely because it revealed how little she still understood. “It means you will be seen. By the right people. In the right way.”
He circled the table slowly. Not closing the distance yet—only changing the geometry of the room, making the space between them feel smaller with every step. “The guest list was decided some time ago. The timing was adjusted accordingly. Six weeks allows for preparation.”
“Preparation for what.”
Another step. The smirk remained, faint but unmistakable. “For what the Collegium intends to show them.”
She felt the air change as he moved closer—the same narrowing she had felt in every session, the same deliberate reorganization of space that belonged to him. Her pulse quickened despite herself. The mark on her throat throbbed in time with it.
Caelum stopped an arm’s length away.
He looked at her for a long moment, gray eyes cool and assessing, the high ego behind them visible in the absolute certainty that she would remain exactly where she was.
“You still carry his scent,” he said quietly. The words were not angry. They were factual, almost clinical, and that made them worse. “On your mouth. On your skin. I can taste it from here.”
Lyra’s breath caught.
He stepped forward.
The movement was predatory—slow, deliberate, the kind of approach that left no doubt he was choosing every inch. She backed up instinctively until the edge of the table pressed against the small of her back. There was nowhere else to go. The door was behind herand closed. The window was to her left, latched and thick. The room itself felt smaller, the walls closer, the air heavier with his presence.
He stopped directly in front of her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him against the front of her blouse. Close enough that the mark on her throat seemed to burn under his gaze.
“You let him kiss you,” he said, voice low and velvet-cold. “You let him put his mouth where mine belongs.”
The smirk returned, sharp and cruel. “I won’t kiss you tonight. Not while I can still taste him on you. That would be… beneath me.”
His hand rose. Not to her face. Not to her chin. He placed it flat against her sternum, fingers splayed, pressing just enough to feel her heartbeat hammering against his palm.
“But the rest of you,” he murmured, “has never belonged to anyone else.”
Lyra’s breath shallowed. “Don’t—”
He leaned in, lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Shh.”
The sound was soft, almost gentle, but there was nothing gentle in it. It was the command of someone who knew she would obey even while hating it.
His hand slid lower, deliberate and unhurried, tracing the line of her body through the fabric of her blouse until his fingers reached the waistband of her skirt. He did not ask. He simply hooked two fingers beneath the fabric and pulled her hips forward until she was flush against him.
She felt the hard length of him against her lower belly—unmistakable, rigid, pressing through the layers of cloth between them. The realization hit her like a physical blow. He was hard. For her. Because of her.
Caelum’s breath ghosted against her ear again. “You’re going to stay very still for me.”
His other hand moved to the front of her skirt, pushing the fabricup with the same calm precision he applied to everything. The cool air of the room touched the bare skin of her thighs. She tried to step back, but the table behind her and his body in front of her left her nowhere to go.
