FOUR KINGS, ONE GIRL.

2

Chapter 2

I did not sleep.

I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling with that note sitting on my desk like it had a pulse. Leave while you can. Three words. No name. No explanation. Just a threat folded neatly into my private timetable folder like whoever left it had all the time in the world.

By 3 AM I had talked myself out of being scared.

By 4 AM I had talked myself back into it.

By 5 AM I got up, showered, dressed, and decided that whoever had left that note had picked the wrong girl. I had clawed my way into this school on grades alone. I had worked the 6 AM coffee bar shift for two years to pay for textbooks. I had gone home every summer to a two bedroom apartment and a mother who worked double shifts and never once complained.

I was not leaving.

Not for a note. Not for anyone.

I tucked the note into my bag, pulled my hair back, and went to work.

River Calloway was already there when I arrived.

He was sitting on the steps outside the coffee bar at five fifty eight in the morning with two cups from the twenty four hour vending machine down the hall, one in each hand, looking entirely too awake and entirely too pleased with himself for a human being at this hour.

I stopped in front of him. "You figured out my shift fast."

"I am motivated," he said, and held out one of the cups.

I took it before I could think about whether I should. It was hot and it smelled like actual coffee and I had not eaten since yesterday afternoon. "This does not mean anything," I said.

"It is coffee," he said. "It means you are caffeinated."

I unlocked the bar. He followed me inside without being invited and sat on the customer side of the counter and watched me set up with the specific attention of someone with nowhere else to be.

"You look tired," he said.

"Good morning to you too."

"Did something happen?"

I glanced up. His voice had shifted, the easy charm still there but underneath it something more direct. His hazel eyes were steady on my face.

"Nothing happened," I said.

He looked at me for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he nodded and let it go, which surprised me more than the question had. I had expected him to push. He did not.

We did not talk much after that. He stayed until the first customers came in, finished his vending machine coffee, and stood up.

"Sienna," he said.

I looked up.

"Whatever it is," he said. "You do not have to handle it alone."

He left before I could tell him he was wrong about that.

Business law was at nine.

I arrived two minutes early, took a seat in the middle row, and opened my laptop. The room filled steadily. I kept my eyes on my screen.

I felt it when Kane Hargrove walked in.

Not because he made a sound. He barely made a sound. It was the way the room shifted, the way conversations dropped half a register and postures straightened without anyone seeming to decide to do it. He moved to the front row, sat down, and did not look around the room at all.

He did not need to.

The professor announced the groups. Mine was four people: me, a girl named Priya who I recognised from the library, a guy called Seth who was already on his phone, and Kane.

Kane turned in his seat and looked at me directly.

"After class," he said. Not a question.

"I have a shift," I said.

"When does it end."

"Three."

"Library. Four o'clock." He turned back to face the front.

I stared at the back of his head for a full three seconds. He did not turn around. He already knew I would be there. That absolute certainty should have irritated me.

It did irritate me.

It did something else as well, something I was not prepared to name at eight fifty nine in the morning.

I was walking out of the building after class when I heard my name.

Not said by Kane. Not said by River.

The voice was deep and unhurried and it came from my left. I turned.

The security officer from the hallway was leaning against the building wall with his arms crossed, watching me with those storm grey eyes. In full daylight he was even more striking in the way that mountains are striking, large and immovable and not particularly concerned with whether you found them impressive.

"Miss Cross," he said.

"You know my name too," I said. "Is that a security thing or a personal thing."

"Both." He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me without asking. His stride was long and unhurried and he matched my pace exactly. "I need to ask you about something."

"Then ask."

"Did anything unusual happen to you yesterday? In your room or in your bag. Anything out of place."

I stopped walking.

He stopped too and turned to face me. His expression gave nothing away but his eyes were very focused.

"Why are you asking me that," I said.

"Because it is my job to ask."

I thought about the note. Three words. The neat fold. The fact that my timetable folder had been in my bag all day.

"What is your name," I said.

"Axel Storm."

"Axel," I said. "If something happened to me, why would campus security know to come ask about it before I reported anything?"

Something moved behind his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or reassessment.

"Because you are not the first," he said.

The words landed quietly and they hit hard.

"Not the first what," I said.

"Person on this campus to have their things accessed without permission." He held my gaze. "We are investigating. I would like to know if you experienced anything similar."

I opened my bag. I pulled out the note and held it out to him.

He took it without touching the surface where fingers would leave prints, which told me he had done this before. He read it. His jaw tightened, one short movement, then went still again.

"When did you find this."

"Yesterday evening. In my timetable folder. Inside my bag."

"Did you tell anyone."

"I am telling you now."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he took out his phone and photographed the note. He slid it into an evidence sleeve he produced from his jacket like he carried them routinely.

"I will need you to come to the security office this afternoon," he said. "Make a formal statement."

"I have somewhere to be at four."

"Before four then."

He handed me a card. His name, the office number, and a direct line. I looked at it and then up at him.

"Am I in danger," I said.

He did not answer immediately. That pause told me more than the answer did when it came.

"Not while I am doing my job," he said.

He walked away. I stood on the path holding his card and watching him go and trying to decide if that had been reassuring.

It had not been reassuring.

It had been something else entirely.

I was still thinking about it at four o'clock when I pushed open the library doors and found Kane already there, alone at a corner table, two chairs set up across from each other, a project brief open in front of him.

He looked up when I sat down.

He did not say hello. He said: "You went to security today."

My blood went cold. "How do you know that."

He held my stare. "I know everything that happens on this campus, Sienna."

"That is not an answer," I said. "That is a threat."

"It is neither." He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping. "It is a warning. Whoever left that note in your bag is not someone who makes empty gestures." A pause. "I need you to tell me exactly what it said."

The air between us went very still.

"You already know what it said," I said slowly. "Do you not."

He did not answer.

And that was when I realised that Kane Hargrove had not asked me to meet him about the project at all.