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I fucking knew it was him. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure he has been doing it for a while. I’ve felt someone watching me more times than I can count lately.

my prince: what the hell is wrong with you

I’m already typing the next line when I push my bedroom door open with my hip.

And holy shit.

I stop.

Flowers.

Flowers.

Everywhere. They fill the room with a smell I don’t recognize but can’t stop breathing.

There are so many of them the light changed. I’m standing in the doorway with my phone still in my hand and my heart going absolutely frantic in the middle of my chest, and I don’t know what my face is doing. I don’t know whether I look disgusted or stunned or like a five-year-old.

I look down at the screen.

my parasite: tell dimitri he was wrong. if you want flowers, there is someone who will give you every last one of them. I would empty every garden for you, princeling.

I don’t reply.

I don’t know what I’d say.

My heart is sick. I think I’m sick. Why do I feel like it’s going to grow legs and run in Kento’s direction? I touch my own chest, squint down at my shirt like I can somehow see through it, then bury my face in the flowers on my bed.

***

I’m walking through the corridors of Bloodburn. Beside me, Dimitri is talking.

He has been talking since we left the parking lot, but I haven’t listened to the majority of it. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

“I am listening with eighty percent of my soul. The other twenty percent is plotting your murder.”

The locker rooms in the boxing wing smell like bleach. It’s quiet down here at this hour, just the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of someone hitting the bags in the main ring room two doors down.

Dimitri heads straight for his locker near the benches, tossing his duffel onto the slatted wood. “We’re doing timed rounds today. Three minutes on, thirty seconds off. If you’re going to be sluggish, tell me now so I can hit you harder.”

“I have never been sluggish in my life,” I snap, pulling my keycard from my pocket. “I will literally cave your ribs in.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Today is one of the rare days Dimitri’s actually sparring with me instead of Alexei. I hate it. I prefer being the one who watches. Lately, though, Lex has been permanently attached to Marco. He only shows up when Marco is with Rei or, on particularly miraculous occasions, when Marco himself finds the strength to drag himself to class. Which means Dimitri has been deprived of his usual problem, and unfortunately for me, I’ve been volunteered as the replacement. I intend to make that everyone else’s issue.

I step in front of locker forty-two.

It’s a keyless biometric reader integrated with our Bloodburn credentials. High-grade security, because the administration knows damn well if students could pick these locks, half the campus would have pipe bombs in their gym bags before midterms. They are reserved for students from the syndicate families. The rest of the student body gets ordinary lockers with ordinary padlocks.

Rei used to.

Then a few months ago, something happened that left him badly shaken. Dimitri’s response was about as subtle as Dimitri usually is. He marched into the administration building, made several extremely persuasive arguments, most of which probably violated school policy, and by the end of the day Rei had one of these lockers too. Funny how quickly bureaucracy starts cooperating when Dimitri decides it’s no longer optional.

I swipe my card against the sensor.

Chirp.

The magnetic seal disengages with a hydraulic clack.