Page 4 of The Witch They Fear

My shiny new cage.

I pull my duffel from the car and shut the door on my old life. And pray to whoever–or whatever–might be listening.

Please. I never want to go back there.

Corvin leads the way down a wide stone path. Zeva falls in behind me. Same silence as the car, same careful distance—close enough to intervene, far enough to react.

"So," I say, because apparently five hours of quiet wasn't enough to teach me. "Any tips? Things to avoid? Don't eat the cafeteria fish on Fridays?"

Corvin doesn't turn around. Doesn't slow down. Doesn't acknowledge that a sound came out of my mouth.

I try Zeva. Glance over my shoulder. "How about you? Anything?"

Her eyes sweep past me like I'm part of the landscaping.

Right.

Good talk.

I study Corvin as he walks. Average height, average build, the kind of face that was probably forgettable even before he spent a century training it to give away nothing. I haven't seen him smile once in five hours. I'm starting to think the muscles for it atrophied somewhere around the Eisenhower administration.

Zeva's a different kind of unreadable—sharp-featured, buzz cut, eyes that never stop moving, sweeping our surroundings in constant restless arcs like she's expecting an ambush from the decorative hedges. One hand hovers over her holster. The other is balled into a fist. If something moves wrong in her peripheral vision, she's putting a round in it and filing the paperwork later.

I knew they were part of the deal. I just didn't picture what it would actually feel like—two vampires who won't speak to me, won't look at me, and won't let me out of arm's reach.

For a year. I'm already exhausted.

I'm the filling in the vampire sandwich. Probably the council's way of telling the academy exactly what's being delivered: something dangerous, handled with care.

Even through the dampeners, the power here is enormous—pressing in from every direction, humming in the stone under my feet. The grounds are beautiful the way all powerful institutions are beautiful—manicured, deliberate, a beauty that says money and legacy and we've been here longer than you've been alive. Gothic buildings connected by covered walkways. Courtyards with iron benches and fountains that hum faintly with enchantment.

Vampire architecture. Vampire money. Vampire taste.

I can see their names carved above doorways—Montreaux Hall, Vaillancourt Library, The Ashworth Wing—family names etched in stone, claiming the buildings the way they claim everything else. I wonder where the witches sit in all this grandeur.

Somewhere in the back, probably. Somewhere useful but out of sight.

The path cuts through a central courtyard—wide and open, bordered by the main academic buildings. Students are everywhere. Sitting on low stone walls, crossing between buildings with bags and books, gathered in clusters under the oaks. Uniforms in dark greys and blacks, tailored, expensive-looking. Most of them move with the easy confidence of people who belong somewhere. Who've always belonged somewhere.

A girl perched on the edge of the fountain leans into the boy beside her, her head dropping against his shoulder while he talks, one hand absently tracing circles on his knee. He doesn't even pause—just shifts his weight to make room for her like it's muscle memory. A casual, thoughtless gesture. The kind of touch that costs nothing. The kind I haven't felt in twelve years, and the wanting hits me so fast and so sharp it catches behind my ribs like a fishhook.

I look away. File it under things I don't get to have. The folder is thick.

But then they start to notice me.

Not all at once. It starts with two girls sitting nearest the path—one glances up, does a double take, and grabs the other's wrist. A whisper. Then the whisper spreads. I can watch it move through the courtyard like a current, head turning to head, elbow nudging elbow. Conversations trail off mid-sentence. Someone standing near the fountain takes a full step backward without seeming to realize they've done it.

I keep my eyes forward. My spine straight. I don't hurry. I don't shrink.

I know what they see. The two vampire enforcers flanking me. The duffel bag. The bandage on the back of my neck. And whatever they've heard—because they've definitely heard something. Secrets don't survive institutions. Someone talked. Someone always talks. And the story that precedes me through this courtyard is the kind that makes people step back.

That's her. The witch. The one who—

Yeah. That one.

What I'm not prepared for is the garden.

The path skirts the edge of a walled garden—herbs and flowering plants and things I don't have names for, growing in neat rows behind a low iron fence. An apothecary garden, I think. Witch-tended, from the smell of it. The soil is dark and rich and practically vibrating with a kind of magic that feels different from the wards—older, wilder, rooted in the earth itself.