The hallway between Draconic Arts and the main corridor is long and poorly lit, a stretch of old stone that runs behind the east wing where the student traffic doesn't flow. I'm halfway down it when I hear footsteps behind me that don't sound like someone heading somewhere.
They sound like someone following.
I keep walking. The footsteps stay exactly the same distance behind me, which is more unsettling than if they'd gotten closer. I turn the corner into the narrower passage that cuts toward the dormitory wing, and the footsteps follow me around the turn without hesitation.
"You can stop pretending you don't know I'm here," Caspian Thorne says.
I stop walking and turn around.
He's leaning against the wall with one shoulder, watching me with the patient, half-amused expression of someone who has all the time in the world and has decided to spend some of it on me. He's beautiful in the way sharp things are beautiful—red hair that catches light like copper wire, dark green eyes, the kind of face that makes you notice the danger a second after you've already noticed the dimples. Broad shoulders, the easy strength of someone who's never had to prove anything. When he smiles, I catch the flash of fangs, there and gone.
"Thorne," I say.
"Fairmont." He tilts his head. "You look tired. First full day of classes?"
"What do you want?"
"Just checking in." He pushes off the wall and walks toward me slowly, and I hold my ground because I refuse to be the person who steps back. "You've had quite the morning. Ashford made you perform for the class. Valorix burned your things." He stops close enough that I'd have to look up slightly to hold eye contact. "How are you finding Nocturne Academy so far?"
"Educational," I say. "Is that all?"
"Not quite." He smiles, and it doesn't reach anything behind his eyes. "I wanted to see something."
It hits me without warning, a rush of warmth that floods up from my sternum and spreads outward through my limbs, andmy pulse jumps so hard I feel it in my throat. My skin goes hot. The warmth has a particular quality to it, something that isn't temperature exactly, something that slides under my defenses before I can identify it as external, and for three full seconds I'm standing in a hallway with my heart slamming against my ribs and heat pooling low in my stomach and absolutely no idea why.
Then I understand. Thrall.
Caspian is watching my face with complete attention, the way a scientist watches an experiment hit its peak reading.
"Interesting," he says quietly.
I take a step back. The warmth fades as the distance increases, dropping off the way a sound drops off when you move away from its source. My pulse is still elevated. I can feel it, which makes it worse, because he can feel it too, and from his expression he absolutely knows it.
"Do that again," I say, "and I will find a way to make it inconvenient for you. I don't know how yet, but I will."
He laughs. It's a real laugh, surprised out of him, and it's briefly and infuriatingly attractive. "A null threatening a vampire heir in a back corridor. This place keeps finding ways to entertain me."
"Glad I could help." I turn and walk away.
"Your pulse is still up," he calls after me. There's a smile in it.
I don't stop walking.
Sage is already in the dormitory common room when I find it, sitting cross-legged on one of the low couches with a book open across her knees and a cup of something steaming on the table beside her. She looks up when I come in and reads my face with the efficiency of someone who has been paying attention to people for a long time.
"Sit down," she says. "I'll get you tea."
"I don't need tea."
"You need something, and tea is what I have." She's already up, moving to the small cabinet near the window. "What happened?"
I sit on the couch and look at the ceiling. "Ryder used me as a failed demonstration in front of his entire class. Thane burned my bag and everything in it. And Caspian Thorne used vampiric thrall on me in a hallway and then laughed about my physiological response."
Sage comes back with a second cup and sits down beside me. She doesn't say I'm sorry or that's awful or any of the other things that would require me to do something with the sympathy. She just hands me the cup.
"Okay," she says. "So you've officially met the three worst people in the academy on the same morning. That's efficient."
"Is that what they are? The worst people?"
