Page 25 of The Witch They Fear

Nellie's jaw tightens. She studies the rubbing for another moment, then folds it carefully and hands it back.

"I don't recognize it," she says. "But my mom might. She's got books on old ward systems that the academy doesn't even stock in their library—stuff that's been out of print for decades." She pauses. "I can write to her. Or I can look through the restricted section here. Third-years have access to the second level, and there's a whole shelf on historical inscription practices that nobody touches because it's boring as hell."

"You'd do that?"

"Calypso." She gives me a look. "Someone carved a potentially hostile rune into your door on your first day. Yeah, I'd do that."

Something warm settles in my chest. Small. Careful. The kind of warmth I'm learning not to flinch away from.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. If my mom's books turn up something scary, you're buying my coffee for a month." She takes a sip of her own. "Well. You're standing next to me while I buy coffee for a month. Same energy."

I fold the rubbing and slip it into the pocket of my skirt. The hum of it rests against my thigh like a low-grade alarm.

"Time," Zeva calls from her post. Flat. Efficient. The first word she's spoken all morning. She's looking at me with those restless, scanning eyes, one hand near her holster, the other holding a cup of coffee she doesn't seem to be drinking.

"That's my cue." I stand. "Combat and Defensive Application. Which sounds like the kind of class where I'm definitely going to embarrass myself."

Nellie grins. "Midus runs it. He's intense but fair. Just don't make eye contact with the sparring dummy."

"The what?"

"You'll see." Something complicated passes behind her eyes—there and gone. "Just... be careful with Midus. He's old school. And when I say old school, I mean he was old school when the school was new."

I chuckle and file that away. We split—Nellie heading toward the herbology greenhouses, me falling into formation with Zeva, who walks behind me in complete silence because conversation is a security risk.

The combat training field is behind the main campus, beyond the academic buildings and through a break in the oaks where the grounds open up into something wider and flatter. Hard-packed dirt, bordered by low stone walls etched with the same silver ward-lines as the underground testing room. Training equipment racks line one side: wooden staffs, practice blades, shields, things I can't identify.

Zeva peels off at the entrance and takes up position against the stone wall—arms crossed, holster visible, settling in like a gargoyle that happens to carry a firearm.

Close enough to intervene. Far enough to pretend she's not babysitting.

I step onto the field and immediately tug my skirt down. Combat class. In a skirt. Whoever designed this curriculum either never considered that witches might need to kick something, or—more likely—they did consider it and didn't care.

Maybe this whole experience is just one long humiliation ritual with a diploma at the end.

The fog sits on the field like a blanket, turning the students already assembled into half-shapes. I join the loose cluster forming at the center and try to make myself small, which is difficult when you're the girl everyone is pretending not to stare at. The class is bigger than Magic Theory—maybe forty students, and the species breakdown is different here. More shifters, their signatures warm and restless. More vampires, obviously. A handful of witches. And the groupings are visible even through the fog: vampires clustered with vampires, shifters with shifters, a few mixed pairs that read as established friendships or strategic alliances.

Everyone has a place. Everyone knows where they stand.

I stand at the edge and wonder how any of this works. These people have already sorted themselves into hierarchies I can't read yet—who partners with whom, who sits near the instructor, who gets the good equipment. An entire social ecosystem with rules nobody's going to explain to me, because the kind of thing you learn by asking is never the kind of thing that matters.

Then I feel it.

The pull.

On the far side of the field, leaning against a weapons rack with his arms crossed and one boot braced against the post behind him—the vampire from the hallway. The one who didn't flinch. The one whose stare made my magic reverse direction like a river changing course.

The scar.

The storm-blue eyes.

The dark hair falling in his face.

He's dressed differently than the students—no uniform, just a black long-sleeve pushed to his elbows and dark pants that look like they've survived more than one fight. His arms are covered in tattoos, dense and layered, the ink so dark against his skin it looks like someone poured it there. He's bigger than I realized yesterday—solid, heavy in the way a thing that's been used as a weapon becomes heavy.

A body that carries its history in how it moves.