Chapter Three: Shadow
1497 Words
POV: Malia Moon
The housing hall smells like polished wood and something colder underneath it, the kind of scent that lingers in places built for people who were never meant to feel unwelcome. I follow the directions Torin gave me, half expecting to lose my way in the maze of stone corridors, and somehow find the right door on the first try.
A girl with copper hair and sharp, assessing eyes looks up from a trunk she's unpacking when I step inside. "You're the scholarship girl."
"Malia," I say, because apparently that is destined to be the only introduction anyone remembers about me today.
"Ivy." She doesn't smile, exactly, but something in her expression softens, just slightly. "I heard about the courtyard."
Of course she did. Of course everyone has. News like that seems to move through this place faster than wind through the trees back home, and I am beginning to understand that Blackridge is not simply a school, it is a stage, and every single person on it is being watched, measured, filed away as either useful or forgettable.
"It's fine," I say, setting my bag on the empty bed across from hers, though the words taste like a lie even as I say them.
"It's not, but I get why you'd say that." Ivy goes back to unpacking, giving me the mercy of not making me talk about it further. Her trunk is full of neatly folded uniforms, the kind with a small crest stitched into the collar that I don't recognize, though I suspect it marks her as belonging to one of the lesser noble houses rather than a scholarship case like myself. "For what it's worth, half the first years already think Reyes Colton is an ass. You're not the first person he's humiliated to make himself look better in front of a crowd."
Something in that lands heavier than I expect. "He's done this before?"
"Not exactly like that. But he's the kind of person who steps on whoever's closest if it means someone above him notices." She shrugs, like this is simply an accepted fact of the world she's grown up in. "Illegitimate sons of alpha bloodlines tend to get creative about proving they belong."
I go very still. "Illegitimate son of who?"
"Vargus Shadow." She says it like it's common knowledge, like I should already know this the way everyone else clearly does. "Reyes is his half brother. Different mothers. Vargus is heir to the South Kingdom, Shadow Pack. Reyes isn't, not unless something happens to change that."
The floor feels like it tilts slightly beneath me. All those months under the oak tree, all those stolen conversations, and he never once mentioned a brother, let alone one who might become the next Wolf King if the princess ever surfaces and chooses him.
I don't get long to sit with that thought before the door opens again without so much as a knock.
The boy who steps through it doesn't look at Ivy at all. His eyes land on me immediately, sharp and assessing in a way that makes the hair on my arms rise, cataloging me head to toe with an expression that gives away absolutely nothing.
"So you're her," he says, voice low and edged with something I can't immediately place. "The wolfless one everyone's already talking about."
I recognize the resemblance instantly now that I know to look for it, the same sharp jaw, though harder somehow, the same dark hair, though styled with more discipline. Where Reyes wore his features like an invitation, this boy wears them like armor.
"You must be Vargus," I say, keeping my voice steady despite the way my pulse has picked up.
Something flickers behind his eyes, brief and unreadable, there and gone before I can name it. "You know my name already. Interesting."
"Your reputation precedes you." It isn't entirely a lie. Between the profile Ivy just handed me and whatever quiet menace radiates off him now, I feel like I've learned more about Vargus Shadow in the last thirty seconds than I learned about Reyes in months.
"Does it." He steps further into the room, uninvited, gaze flicking briefly to Ivy before landing back on me, and something about the weight of his attention makes me feel like prey being measured for the first time. He circles a slow half step closer, close enough that I catch the faint scent of cedar and something colder underneath it. "I make it a habit to know everyone who walks through these halls. Especially the ones who show up smelling like nothing at all."
The insult lands exactly where he intends it to, but I refuse to let it show on my face. "Careful. People might start thinking you care."
Something shifts at that, quick and sharp, gone before I can be sure I saw it. "I don't care about much of anything here," he says, voice flattening into something colder. "But I make it my business to know who might cause problems. And a girl who can't be sensed, walking these halls uninvited, tends to cause problems."
"I have a scholarship. I'm not uninvited."
"That remains to be seen." His eyes narrow slightly, and for a moment I could swear he's searching my face for something specific, some answer he expects to find and can't. "There's something about you I can't place. I don't like things I can't place."
"Maybe you're not as observant as you think you are."
A muscle in his jaw tightens, and for the first time something like genuine irritation crosses his face instead of the practiced coldness he's worn since walking in. "Watch your tongue, wolfless girl. I'm not someone you want unraveling whatever it is you're hiding."
"Who says I'm hiding anything?"
"Everyone is hiding something." He steps back toward the door, though his eyes stay locked on mine the entire time, the same unnerving focus Torin had, except where Torin's felt like careful study, this feels like a blade being weighed for use. "I just intend to find out what yours is before anyone else does."
He's gone before I can find a response, the door closing behind him with a quiet finality that somehow feels louder than if he'd slammed it.
Ivy lets out a breath I hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Well. That's one way to make an impression."
"Does he always do that?"
"Introduce himself like a threat? Pretty much." She resumes folding a stack of clothes, though her eyes flick toward me with new curiosity. "Vargus doesn't talk to first years. Doesn't talk to most people, honestly, unless he wants something from them or thinks they're worth watching. Half the girls here would trade a limb to have him look at them the way he just looked at you, and you're standing there like you'd rather he hadn't."
"Should I want that?"
"Depends on what you're after." Ivy sits back on her heels, studying me properly for the first time since I walked in, the kind of look that makes me feel like she's recalculating something. "He's next in line for the South Kingdom. If the princess ever surfaces, if she chooses him, he becomes the next Wolf King. Half this academy is here just to be close enough to that possibility when it happens."
"And the other half?"
"The other half actually wants to learn something." She smiles, small and a little wry, like she's just admitted something she doesn't say often. "I'm hoping to be in that half, for what it's worth."
I file that away, another piece of a puzzle I am only beginning to understand the shape of. Four kingdoms, four alphas, one princess no one can identify, and an entire academy built around the quiet, desperate hope of being close enough to power when the choosing finally happens.
"That's the thing though." Ivy tilts her head, studying me the way everyone here seems determined to. "I've never seen him walk into someone's room on the first day like that. Not once. Whatever he thinks you are, wolfless or not, he clearly thinks you're worth paying attention to."
I sit down heavily on the edge of my new bed, my mind circling back to Reyes's brother standing in this doorway, calling me a problem in the same breath he called me nothing at all. Two brothers, two halves of the same bloodline, and in the space of one single day both of them have already looked at me like I'm something dangerous, without either of them having any idea how right they actually are.
I don't know yet whether Vargus's suspicion is going to be the thing that protects me or the thing that finally unravels everything my parents spent nineteen years trying to keep hidden.
But as I sit there staring at the door he just walked through, I have the sinking feeling I'm about to find out far sooner than I'm ready for.
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