Page 45

You're not my friend, I want to say, but I don't type it.

Instead, I keep reading, and against my will the pool flashes through my mind. Wet skin. Moonlight on water. That infuriating smirk.

I look up and find Damaris in the kitchenette unpacking coffee with the concentration of a man handling explosives, and I feel strangely relieved he's here.

Because somehow I've managed to get the attention of Ciaran Virel, and I still don't know why.

Just knowing he's still thinking about me is enough to drag me straight back to the pool, to what was supposed to be private, to what was supposed to be safe.

I lock the screen, furious with myself, with him, with my inability to shut off my damn hormones and focus on what I came here to do.

From the kitchenette, I hear paper crinkle, a cabinet door slam, the sharp grind of spice under a knife. Damaris starts humming under his breath like he's got nothing in the world to worry about.

"You okay over there?" he calls.

"Fine," I snap, instantly regretting it. "I'm just a little tired. You know what? I might just take a nap. Wake me up when dinner's ready?"

Damaris looks up from the kitchen island as though he wants to ask me why, but only says, "Sure."

Eventually, I stretch out across the bed and stare at the ceiling until my eyes start to drift and finally slide shut. Maybe sleep will shut him up for a while. Get him out of my head, even if it only lasts an hour.

For one strange second, the dark behind my eyelids doesn't stay dark. It flickers, my stomach dropping as stone flashes under my feet and a broken lock catches in the blur, breath tearing through my throat while I'm moving too fast to think, too fast to see anything except the shape of fear closing in.

My band vibrates sharp against my wrist, then again, my pulse stumbling hard enough to make my fingers twitch against the blanket.

Rowan.

I'm running, my lungs burning, my feet slipping, and they're too fast.

If they catch me, they'll hurt me.

"Ro?" It's Damaris again, closer now. "Hey. You okay?"

I can't answer right away. My chest is too tight, my body caught halfway between the bed beneath me and something colder, older, the fear already rising before I'm even fully asleep.

But the fear won't go. It trickles down my spine, refusing to be ignored.

Because if Ciaran knows where I went, and the person in the library wasn't him, then there is more than one set of eyes on me. And one of them might have started watching long before I ever got to Sero.

"Rowan!"

If that's the case, it isn't the academy walls that are keeping danger out. Whatever followed me here is already inside.

"Wake up."

PART II

THE MUSIC

ROWAN, 14 YEARS

"Rowan!"

I don't listen to any of them.

Home. I need to get home. I shouldn't have lingered, and now the horn is blaring and the guards are already sprinting for the Ward, rushing to reinforce the wall while the rest of the district scrambles to get inside before the gates seal.

I don't know what they want. But I can feel them anyway, lurking in the shadows behind me, their footsteps catching and disappearing every time I think I'm about to hear them properly.