Ella
After lunch, Aidan’s words clung to me like a weight I couldn’t shake off. They were designed to do that, I suppose—crawl under your skin and fester until you couldn’t tell whether it was anger or fear keeping you on edge. But it wasn’t just his words that had me unsettled. It was Nikolai.
The fire in his eyes when he spoke to Aidan had caught me off guard. I hadn’t expected him to push back like that, not with the kind of relationship I suspected they had. It was raw, unpolished, and far too genuine. I hated how it stirred something in me, something I didn’t want to name.
The afternoon classes blurred together, my focus slipping further with every passing hour. I could still see the way Nikolai’s gaze had lingered on me at lunch. Was he trying to figure me out? Or was it some
