Chapter 6
1645 Words
Three weeks at Velmora and Nyra had learned a few things.
She'd learned that the dining hall was loudest on Tuesdays for reasons nobody could explain. She'd learned that the east corridor flooded with feline students between second and third period and was faster to avoid than navigate. She'd learned that Gwen was physically incapable of walking in silence for more than forty seconds and that this was, against all odds, something she'd stopped finding irritating.
"What's the security like in this school?" Nyra asked as they made their way down the main corridor toward the dining hall, the morning crowd moving around them in both directions.
Gwen glanced at her sideways. "Why are you asking?"
"Just curious. Since I'll be here for three years I figured I should know the place properly."
Gwen seemed to accept this with the easy generosity she applied to most things. "It's tight. Tighter than most places." She lowered her voice slightly, not dramatically just the instinctive adjustment of someone who'd grown up understanding that certain conversations had appropriate volumes. "This school holds the future of our world, Nyra. Royals, heirs, the next generation of every major bloodline. Security isn't optional here."
"Right," Nyra said. "But what if something happened. An attack. Are there escape routes? Secret passages or something like that?"
Gwen looked at her again. Longer this time.
"There are," she said finally.
They pushed through the dining hall entrance and the smell hit first warm bread, something savory underneath it, the particular density of a room full of supernaturals all generating heat. They joined the counter queue and moved through it steadily, trays in hand.
Nyra took what was in front of her without much deliberation scrambled eggs, two slices of toast that had gone slightly past golden, a cup of black tea that she wrapped both hands around immediately. Practical. Warm. Enough.
Gwen's tray looked like a different meal entirely a small stack of perfectly golden crepes with fruit arranged on the side, a glass of something sparkling that was not water, a single white flower tucked against the rim of the plate that Nyra suspected had come from the kitchen specifically for her.
Talia appeared from further down the counter with hard boiled eggs, black coffee, and nothing else, which seemed about right.
Wren had oatmeal, a cup of herbal tea, and a small pot of honey that she'd apparently sourced herself because Nyra had never seen it offered at the counter.
They took the far left table and settled.
"The escape routes," Nyra said, picking up where they'd left off, keeping her voice even and her eyes on her eggs. "What are they like?"
Gwen took a sip of her sparkling drink. "There's one past the forest through the danger zone, which already makes it less appealing. And each species has their own. I only know the fae one properly." She set her glass down. "They're sealed by bloodline. The fae route opens for fae. The others the same. You can't use one that isn't yours."
Nyra bit the inside of her cheek. "And apart from the routes broken fences, gaps in the perimeter, anything like that?"
Gwen laughed. Genuinely, openly, the kind of laugh that attracted brief attention from the next table. "The entire perimeter is fortified with magic. There are no broken fences." She pointed her fork loosely in Nyra's direction. "The routes are just precautions. Nobody's actually used them."
"Right," Nyra said. "Of course."
She ate her toast.
*So.* No gaps. No broken perimeter. Every escape route sealed by bloodline magic she didn't have access to and couldn't fake. Three weeks of quiet careful planning and she had arrived at a wall with no door in it.
She chewed. Swallowed. Reached for her tea.
"Are you planning on leaving?" Gwen asked.
The question arrived so cleanly and without warning that Nyra almost choked.
"What? No." She shook her head and stuffed a forkful of egg into her mouth for something to do with her face. "Just wanted to know. That's all."
Gwen watched her for a half second longer than comfortable. "Good. Because I still need you here." She speared a piece of fruit. "And even if you wanted to you'd need a fae to open our route. So."
"Wonderful," Nyra said, into her tea.
Talia, who had been eating in her characteristic silence, looked up. "Are you actually trying to escape this school."
"No."
"Hm." Talia returned to her coffee. The single syllable carried an entire opinion inside it that she chose not to elaborate on.
Wren said nothing. But her eyes moved to Nyra's face briefly over the rim of her teacup, quiet and noting, before she looked away.
Three weeks had been peaceful. That was the part that kept catching her off guard.
No Caius in hallways. No Riven appearing in alcoves. No Asher in dark sections of the library. The alphas existed at the periphery of her days visible at meals occasionally, present in the way weather was present, something you were aware of without direct contact and she'd started to breathe slightly differently because of it.
She'd started, against her better instincts, to wonder if she should simply stay.
Three years. Keep her head down. Graduate. Go home to Thornton with a Velmora qualification and give Tarin something better than what they'd grown up inside of.
It wasn't the worst plan.
She was thinking about it seriously, for the first time when she went to the library after classes and stopped thinking about anything else entirely.
She turned the corner into the reference section and walked directly into a wall that turned out to be a person.
She stumbled back. Caught herself on the shelf behind her. Looked up.
Asher.
He looked down at her with the same expression he always seemed to have not quite cold, not quite anything, the face of someone who had decided long ago that reactions were optional. He didn't step back. Didn't apologize. Just stood in the space he'd been standing in before she'd walked into it and waited to see what she would do.
"Sorry," she said. Automatic. Clipped.
He said nothing.
She moved to step around him and he shifted not blocking her exactly, just not moving out of the way either, which amounted to the same thing in a narrow aisle.
"You're in my section again," he said.
"I'm in the reference section. It's not restricted."
"I'm aware."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The aisle was narrow enough that the distance between them was less than she would have chosen and she became aware of it the same moment she became aware of something else something that cut through the ambient smell of old paper and library air and registered in a way she hadn't anticipated.
Dark chocolate. Something deeper underneath it, woodsmoke and something that had no clean name, something that belonged to forests at night rather than fluorescent-lit reference sections.
She caught herself. Pulled her attention back to his face. Kept her expression exactly where she needed it to be.
He hadn't moved.
"Excuse me," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she deserved credit for.
"You're in a hurry," he observed. Not a question. The same flat delivery he applied to everything, like the world was a document he was reading rather than inhabiting.
"I have somewhere to be."
"You always have somewhere to be when I'm near you."
She met his eyes and held them for exactly two seconds long enough to not look like she was running, short enough to not invite anything further and then she stepped around him and walked away down the aisle without looking back.
Behind her, low and dark and entirely too composed, she heard him laugh.
Not warm. Not unkind exactly. Just the laugh of someone who had noticed something and found it privately interesting.
She kept walking. Didn't break stride. Didn't give him the satisfaction of her pace changing.
But she felt it follow her all the way out of the library and halfway down the corridor before she shook it loose.
She smelled the excitement before she reached the door.
Gwen's particular energy had a frequency to it when she was animated about something a brightness that preceded her, that changed the air in a room before she'd finished explaining why. Nyra had learned to recognize it. She pushed open the dorm room door and found the room in a state of controlled chaos wardrobe doors open, fabric on beds, Talia sitting on her own bed with the expression of someone who had already decided something and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.
The room had been tidy when Nyra left.
It was not tidy now.
"Where have you been?" Gwen demanded, spinning around from the wardrobe mirror with something silver and completely impractical held against her body.
"The library."
"Such a bookworm," Talia said, not looking up from the bracelet she was fastening at her wrist.
"Anyway..." Gwen dropped the silver thing on the bed and grabbed Nyra's arms with both hands, her green eyes wide and lit from somewhere behind them. "We're going to a party."
Nyra stared at her.
"A bonfire," Wren said from her bed, already dressed, quiet as always. "In the forest. The alphas organize it every year for the royals and heirs."
"The alphas," Nyra repeated.
"Every heir and royal in this school will be there," Gwen said, already turning back to the wardrobe. "Which means us. Which means you." She pulled something out and held it toward Nyra with the decisive energy of someone who had already made this decision on her behalf. "Now. What are you wearing."
Nyra looked at the dress.
Looked at Gwen.
Looked at the door.
"Is there any way..."
"Absolutely not," Gwen said.
- Writer
