The Lycan Princess and The Four Cardinals

Chapter Six: Everywhere I Turn

POV: Malia Moon

Vargus's fingers freeze against my collar the second my unmarked skin comes into view. For a long moment, neither of us moved, his eyes fixed on the spot where a fractured bone should still be swollen and dark, finding nothing but smooth, ordinary skin instead.

"Get out," I say, voice sharper than I intended, yanking the fabric from his grip and pulling it back into place.

Something flickers behind his eyes, quick and unreadable, before he steps back, hands raised slightly like he's only now realizing how far he overstepped. "Malia."

"Get out, Vargus."

He doesn't argue. He leaves without another word, though the look he throws over his shoulder just before the door shuts stays with me long after he's gone, less suspicion now than something closer to fascination, like he's just confirmed a theory he wasn't ready to have proven right.

I didn't see him again for the rest of that day. I tell myself that's the end of it.

I am wrong.

The next morning, he was standing outside the dining hall when I arrived, arms crossed, not quite looking at me but clearly positioned somewhere he'd have to work to avoid noticing me walk past. I tell myself it's a coincidence. The academy isn't large. Paths cross. I took my tray to the far end of the room anyway, and when I glanced back toward the entrance a few minutes later, he's gone, though I never actually saw him leave.

By midday, he is in the corridor outside my history lecture, leaning against the same wall Torin favored on my first day, watching students file past with an expression too carefully neutral to be as uninterested as he wants it to look. He doesn't approach. He doesn't even glance my direction directly, though I feel his attention the entire length of the corridor, the way you feel the sun on your skin even with your eyes closed.

By evening, he is at the edge of the training yard again, though there's no class scheduled, no reason for anyone to be there at all except him, standing at the treeline exactly where Reyes stood two days ago, watching me practice alone. I try to ignore him, focusing on my footwork instead, but every strike I throw feels performed now, every movement measured against whatever silent judgment he's rendering from the shadows.

I finally cornered him three days later, in the narrow stretch of corridor between the library and the east stairwell, empty enough that I don't have to worry about an audience.

"Are you following me?"

He doesn't flinch, doesn't even pretend to be surprised by the question. "That's a very direct accusation."

"It's a very direct pattern." I cross my arms, refusing to let his stillness rattle me the way it usually does. "Dining hall. Lecture hall. Training yard. That's four days in a row, Vargus. I've counted."

"Have you?" Something almost like amusement flickers at the corner of his mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. "I didn't realize I merited that much attention."

"Don't do that. Don't turn this around like I'm the one being strange here."

"I'm not turning anything around." He pushes off the wall, closing some of the distance between us, though he stops well short of crowding me the way he did in the infirmary. "I have reasons for where I am. Same as anyone."

"Then tell me the reason."

Something shifts behind his expression, calculation sliding into something more guarded. "I don't owe you an explanation."

"You don't owe me anything," I agree, "which is exactly why it's strange that you keep showing up anyway. People don't usually go out of their way for someone they claim not to care about."

"Who said I don't care?"

The question catches me off guard, and for a moment neither of us says anything at all, the silence stretching long enough that I can hear my own pulse in my ears.

He studies me for a long moment, long enough that I have to fight the urge to look away first, the same instinct that flared the very first time he stepped into my room uninvited.

"Maybe I find you interesting," he says finally, and the words land differently than I expected, quieter, stripped of the usual edge he wears like armor.

"Interesting isn't a reason. It's a deflection."

"Then call it curiosity." His jaw tightens slightly, like admitting even this much costs him something. "I've spent my entire life able to sense every wolf within a hundred paces of me. Every single one. It's not something I've ever had to think about, the way you don't have to think about breathing. And then you walked into that housing hall, and for the first time in my life, I felt something pull toward a person with nothing behind it. No wolf. No presence I can explain. Just the pull itself, with no reason for it to be there at all."

"So this is about proving a theory."

"This is about the fact that I can't stop thinking about it," he says, sharper now, as the admission frustrates him as much as it seems to surprise him. "I watched you heal a fractured bone in a matter of hours. I've watched you fight like someone trained since childhood, wolfless or not. Every piece of you contradicts every other piece, and I don't like things that don't add up. I especially don't like that I can't stop paying attention to things that don't add up."

The confession sits heavy in the space between us, more honest than anything he's offered since I arrived here, and something about that honesty unsettles me more than his suspicion ever did.

"So what happens when you figure it out?" I ask quietly. "What happens to me once you solve your theory?"

Something crosses his face I can't quite name, there and gone too fast to read clearly. "I don't know yet."

"That's not reassuring."

"I didn't say it to reassure you." He steps back, putting distance between us again, like he's suddenly aware of how close he'd drifted without meaning to. "I said it because it's true."

I should walk away. Every instinct built over years of hiding tells me to end this conversation now, to put walls back up before he sees anything else he shouldn't. But something in the raw, unguarded way he just admitted to being unable to stop watching me makes me hesitate, makes me want to deflect rather than let the moment sit as heavy as it's become.

"Maybe I'm just a human who wandered into the wrong supernatural school," I say, keeping my tone light, though the words feel thinner than I mean them to.

Something shifts behind his expression at that, not quite the openness from a moment ago, but not quite the wall he usually keeps up either, like the joke landed somewhere he wasn't prepared for.

"Don't," he says, voice suddenly cold again, cold in a way that makes the hair on my arms rise. "Don't joke about that."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think you're joking at all." He's already turning away, already putting the corridor's length between us with long, deliberate strides. "And I'm not ready to figure out what that means."

He disappears around the corner before I can call after him, leaving me standing alone in the empty corridor, his words looping through my mind like something dangerous I've just been handed without a warning label.

I don't want to know the answer.

Except I do. I want to know exactly what he meant, exactly what answer he's so determined to keep from me, and the not knowing settles into my chest like a stone I can't put down. I stand there long after his footsteps have faded, replaying every strange appearance of the last three days, searching for some pattern I might have missed, some clue buried in all that watching that would tell me exactly how much he suspects and exactly how much he already knows for certain.

That night, lying awake long after Ivy's breathing had evened into sleep across the room, I finally let myself sit with the question I'd been avoiding since the moment Vargus first stepped into my doorway three days ago. What if he already knows exactly who I am? What if every strange appearance, every unexplained corridor, every silent watch from the treeline was never been about a theory at all, but about a certainty he'd simply refused to say out loud?

I am still turning that thought over when something taps against the window glass.

Not wind. Not a branch. A deliberate, single tap, followed by another, patient and precise, the kind of sound meant to wake exactly one person without disturbing anyone else in the room.

I sit up slowly, heart hammering, and through the thin curtain I catch the outline of a figure standing just beyond the glass, three stories up, where no one should be able to stand at all.