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I glance toward Mom, her unseeing blue eyes tilted toward the ceiling, and lower my voice. “That’s the one?”

“It is.”

I take the glass from him and catch our reflections in the window, thinking, not for the first time, that Dad could still pass for my older brother. I’ve got the same black hair he does, though his is threaded with silver now, and I definitely inherited his height and build.

I drop onto the couch opposite him and take a sip of whiskey. “Are you going to tell me why I needed to keep an eye on him?”

Dad leans into the corner of the couch, studying me for a moment. “Let’s just say the timing isn’t ideal. Maybe he’s exactly what he appears to be. Maybe he’s just a scholarship student who picked the wrong year to arrive with the Reach event coming up. You met him.” He glances toward Mom before looking back at me. “What was your first impression?”

He ran from me.

I hum into my glass. “Other than the fact that I found him at Black Chapel?”

One of Dad’s eyebrows lifts. “Oh? What was he doing there?”

“Don’t know. Yet.” I grin. “But don’t worry, his visit was cut short.”

Pinned against a wall, shaking hard enough I could feel it.

That earns the smallest flicker of amusement from Dad. “Anything else?”

Long lashes. Wide eyes. Looking at me as though I was the thing he should be afraid of.

I shrug. “Shy, scholarship student in the Music Department. He didn’t seem particularly dangerous, if you’re asking me.”

Dad waits. “And?”

Please stop.

I stretch out one leg as the memory flashes through my head so clearly it almost sounds real.

Please stop.

“That’s all?” Dad asks.

“For now.”

Dad studies me for another second. “Then for now, keep an eye on him.”

“I will.”

“And keep him away from places he has no business sticking his nose in.” He taps on his multi-slate.

“What are you doing?”

“Reporting it regardless.”

I glance past him, to where Mom is still by the bow window, the Noctis low beneath her hands, the sound carrying through the room, at home there.

And there he is again. Rowan. Pale hair catching the light, freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose, green eyes lifting to mine as if I was the problem.

Earlier today, they installed the Noctis downstairs in the mansion I share with my cousins on campus. I find myself wondering how he’ll sound, whether he’s actually as good as everyone seems to think. Whether he’ll look at the instrument the same way he looked at the exit every time I got too close.

I told him to be there at eight.

My mouth twitches against the rim of my glass. If he shows up, he’ll play for me. A private concert from the academy’s newest scholarship student—not a bad way to spend an evening.

I drag my attention back to Dad. “You never told me he wears a medical band.”