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“Whatever,” he grumbles when I ignore him.

I don’t want to tell him what I’m about to do, don’t want him to sabotage my plans with his idiot energy. The guy lives on testosterone, which is fine. As long as he doesn’t aim all that energy at Rowan.

By the time I reach the corridor, I’m already grinning. I can practically picture those green eyes widening when he sees me in the water.

Fucking yes. Shouldn’t have ignored me.

Normally the pool would be the last place I’d go looking for Rowan, but then Halvern’s atypical request came to my attention. His student is allowed to use the pool after closing hours, because of his heart condition. The only Noctis scholar in an institute of more than two thousand students. The first scholarship Caervast has awarded in years.

Which is interesting.

No, fuck that. It’s exactly the kind of thing I should be paying attention to.

I tell myself it’s because Dad wants me to look out for him, because Rowan has been doing some weird as fuck things lately, but my body knows better.

Look out for him. Right. Just the thought of walking in on him swimming alone is enough to make my pulse kick.

All that pale skin. Those freckles. The flush I know will creep in the second he catches me watching.

I groan as I push through the locker-room doors, stripping out of my clothes and leaving them in a careless pile while keeping my eyes fixed on my prize.

There, under the moonlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling glass, I can’t help but stop and stare. Because there’s something fucked up and intimate about watching someone who doesn’t know you’re there.

Rowan’s a good swimmer, is my first thought. He cuts through the water in clean, even strokes, long through the reach and economical through the pull, turning at the wall without any need to show off.

His hair is soaked flat against his head, plastered in uneven strands across his forehead and temples. It makes the sharpness of his face stand out even more in the low golden light. Wet, he looks stripped down in a way his clothes never allow. The clean line of his jaw. The shadows beneath his cheekbones. The serious set of his mouth every time he turns to breathe.

He looks younger in the water, moving in a steady rhythm that should probably calm me down and somehow does the exact opposite.

A fault reveals itself eventually, small enough that most people wouldn’t notice. I only catch it because I’m already watching too closely, and the second I spot the first compensation, I can’t stop tracking it. His left side lags a fraction behind the right on the extension. It’s not much, but just enough to tell me something old is still living there.

Most likely his shoulder. He protects it before he needs to, bracing for pain that isn’t landing yet. And the fact that I can see it at all does something strange to me. As though I’ve stumbled across something private. I shouldn’t want to know what put it there. I do.

My gaze drops to the dark band at his wrist when he surfaces on the next turn. The sleek line of it catches the pool light before his arm cuts back under again.

By the time he reaches the far wall, I know two things for certain. The first is that Rowan Ashford comes here when he needs to get himself under control. The second is that he is never going to have this hour entirely to himself again.

I watch him hit the wall, his hand striking the tile with a blunt crack that echoes beneath the glass ceiling.

When he surfaces, pale hair slicked dark against his face, he drags in a breath that catches in his chest before wiping the water from his eyes.

And then he looks up. When he sees me, he freezes. The exhaustion vanishes so fast it’s almost funny, leaving nothing but raw, wide-eyed shock pinning him to the water.

I stand at the very edge of the tile, towering over him in nothing but my trunks. I let the light inventory every inch of me. I want him to look. I want him to fucking feel the weight of what’s standing over him. Because if I lose my damn mind, I want him to be my partner in crime.

When his gaze drops, I can’t tell whether he means to stop it. His eyes trail down my throat, over my chest, catching on the dark ink that bleeds over my ribs. He stays there, staring at the hard planes of my stomach, his throat working as he swallows.

Fuck, yes. His pupils are blown wide enough to swallow me whole.

“See something you like, Rowan? Or are you just checking to see if I’m still dangerous like this?”

He startles, hands splashing the water as he tries to find his footing on the submerged ledge. A dark flush stains his neck and face.

"What are you doing here?" He catches himself against the ledge. "This is a private block."

Tilting my head, I glance at the medical band on his wrist, flashing frantic amber beneath the surface. A slow smile pulls at my mouth. The water leaves him nowhere to go, and fuck if I don’t like that.

“What does it look like?” I step closer until my toes are inches from his face. “I’m here to swim.”