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My grip tightens around my multi-slate. Always so much fucking tension. Like he's bracing for something.

you do that. make sure you're there by eight and i promise it'll be a show you won't forget

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the understatement of the fucking year.

14

ROWAN

"Hey, you're back." Damaris turns his chair around when I kick the door to our dorm shut.

It's early evening, and I've had a long day of practice that still has my hands tingling. "Yeah."

He snorts, turning back to his desk and grabbing what looks like a newspaper clipping. "Here. I found something."

"What's that?"

"Read for yourself."

I drop my bag, take the clipping, and skim it, eyes catching on the text. "Private venue… Black Chapel…" I read under my breath. "Three students hospitalized after an underground fight… no formal charges filed…" My thumb drags lower over the page. "Authorities declined to comment on allegations of organized betting activity connected to several old-city families… the Marrow Consortium…" My thumb stills on the last line. "…Adrian Voss."

"Yup. I don't know what he's got to do with all of this, but his family keeps showing up around Virel-owned venues. Maybe that's why he was gambling there." Damaris snorts at his own words, lowering the clipping onto the counter. "Apparently Adrian wasn't lying. Remember Pa talking about some mafia family called the Orlovs after we got the scholarship?"

I glance up. "Vaguely."

"Apparently they got banned from Sero." He shrugs. "The Voss family got caught in the fallout and lost a fortune."

"One of the ruling families?"

"Yeah." Damaris scratches the back of his neck. "Actually, that explains a lot."

"How do you mean?"

"Adrian's always going on about the Virels, warning people away from them." He glances back at the clipping. "If his family got burned when all that happened, maybe he wasn't just being bitter."

"Comforting," I mutter. "Maybe that's why you shouldn't be gambling with Adrian, Dama. I told you I don't like the guy. Something about him feels off. I can't put my finger on it."

"Perhaps it's the Sero effect," Damaris jokes. "There's too much coin to be traded here. And too much coin always brings trouble."

A second later, the hotplate clicks on and he's already moving around the kitchen while I stand there, my thoughts drifting unwillingly from Adrian's family to Black Chapel and the people who seemed to orbit it. Maybe Damaris is right. Maybe there really is too much money moving through Sero for trouble not to follow.

The fridge opens. He grabs vegetables first, then some leftover meat wrapped in paper, dropping everything onto the counter while the hotplate hisses softly beside him.

The headline keeps turning over in my head while I stare down at the clipping again.

Organized fights. Old-city families. Gambling rings.

I know Ciaran's dangerous. He even looks dangerous with that dark hair, those dark eyes, and the knowing smile that always lingers at one corner of his mouth like he knows something I don't. Every time he looks at me like that, my stomach does something humiliating.

He's bad news. The worst kind, probably. And somehow that still hasn't stopped me from thinking about him.

Because he let me sit on the back of his bike? Because he keeps sending me messages? Because he looks at me like I'm his problem?

Good Light, I truly am pathetic.

Damaris keeps talking while something hits the pan—oil first, then spice, the smell cutting through the room.

"I'm going," I blurt.