Chapter 1
Chapter One
Heather
The wind in Sterling Falls didn't just blow; it hunted.
It was a living, breathing entity that curled around the stone architecture of the university, seeking out gaps in window frames and holes in wool coats.
I had a hole in my coat. A small one, right near the hem of my left pocket, but the wind had found it three blocks ago.
Now, the cold was gnawing at my hip bone like a wolf with a grudge, settling deep into my marrow until my teeth chattered a rhythm against my tongue.
I adjusted the strap of my canvas tote bag, digging my chin deeper into my scarf. It was scratching my neck—cheap acrylic, not the cashmere the other girls in my Art History seminar wore—but it smelled like lavender detergent, and that was enough to ground me.
Just keep walking, Hattie. One foot. Then the other. Do not think about the bank notification.
I thought about the bank notification.
It had pinged on my cracked phone screen ten minutes ago, right as I was leaving the library.
BALANCE ALERT: Your checking account ending in -8890 has dropped below $15.00. Current Balance: $12.43.
Twelve dollars and forty-three cents.
The number flashed in my mind, a neon sign of my impending doom.
Twelve dollars meant I could afford ramen for the week, or I could put money on my laundry card, but I couldn't do both. It meant that if my boss at the coffee shop cut my hours again, or if the Bursar’s office found another "clerical fee" to tack onto my tuition, I was done.
Not just broke. Done. Evicted. Dropout. Back to Ohio to live in my aunt’s basement, sleeping on a futon that smelled like cat pee and failure.
"Nope," I whispered to the empty, snow-dusted sidewalk. The word puffed out in a white cloud of vapor. "Not happening. We are manifesting abundance. We are manifesting overtime."
I turned the corner, the grand, gothic silhouette of the Sterling Falls Science Center looming ahead. The gargoyles perched on the roof looked like they were judging my footwear—knock-off boots that were currently soaking through with slush.
I ducked into the side entrance, stomping the gray muck off my feet, and keyed my student ID into the secure door of the Botany Department. The little light flashed green, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Inside, the air changed instantly. The hallway was sterile and cool, but ahead, through the double glass doors, was my sanctuary.
The Greenhouse.
As soon as I stepped inside, the winter died. The air here was thick, humid, and heavy with the scent of damp earth, crushed jasmine, and photosynthesizing life. It smelled like hope. It smelled like survival.
I dropped my bag on the metal potting bench and peeled off my wet coat.
My body finally unclenched. This was my favorite of my three jobs.
Technically, I was a "work-study botanical assistant," which was a fancy way of saying I watered plants and sang to ferns for minimum wage.
But nobody looked at me here. Nobody judged the fray on my sweater or the dark circles under my eyes that concealer couldn't hide.
"Good evening, everyone," I murmured to the rows of prayer plants and orchids. "Did we behave today? Did we grow toward the light?"
I moved through the aisles, checking soil moisture with the tip of my finger. I was stalling. I knew I was stalling. My shift here ended in twenty minutes, and then I had to trek across campus to the Ice Arena for my third job of the day: the graveyard cleaning shift.
Scrubbing toilets and mopping bleachers from 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM. Then a nap. Then class at 8:00 AM.
Twelve dollars and forty-three cents.
My stomach gave a treacherous growl, a hollow, cramping sound that echoed in the quiet glass room. I pressed a hand against my belly, willing it to shut up.
"Ignore that," I told a particularly judgmental-looking Ficus. "That is the sound of ambition."
I moved to the back section, where the rare tropicals were kept under heat lamps.
My hand brushed against the velvet leaf of a Calathea, and for a second, I let myself pretend.
I pretended that I wasn't Heather Bloom, the scholarship charity case who was one overdraft fee away from homelessness.
I pretended I was one of the girls I saw on the Quad—the ones with the sleek blowouts and the Canada Goose jackets, the ones who dated the hockey players and complained that their parents only sent them five grand for the semester.
I sighed, grabbing the watering can. The fantasy dissolved as quickly as it formed. Those girls didn't know how to survive. They didn't know that hunger had a taste—like copper and old pennies. They didn't have armor.
I did. My armor was my smile. It was the weaponized cheerfulness I used to disarm landlords, professors, and bosses. If you smiled big enough, if you were helpful enough, people didn't look too closely. They didn't see the panic.
I checked my phone again. 10:45 PM.
Time to go to the Hive.
The walk to the Sterling Falls Ice Arena took fifteen minutes. By the time I pushed through the heavy metal service doors, my toes were numb again.
The arena was a beast of a building. From the outside, it was all sleek glass and steel, a testament to how much money the alumni poured into the hockey program.
The SFU Saber-Tooths weren't just a team; they were a religion.
And the players? They were gods. Vengeful, massive, violent gods who walked the campus like they owned the pavement.
I hated them.
Okay, I didn't know them. I’d never actually spoken to a hockey player.
I avoided the athletic complex during daylight hours like it was a contagious disease ward.
But I hated what they represented. The entitlement.
The way the university bent over backward to make sure they had private tutors and catered meals while the rest of us fought for scraps.
But at 11:00 PM, the gods were asleep. And the temple was mine to scrub.
I clocked in at the janitor's closet, swapping my wet boots for non-slip sneakers that had seen better days. I pulled on the shapeless gray coveralls over my leggings and sweater. They smelled like bleach and pine-sol, a perfume that seemed to have permanently seeped into my pores.
"Alright," I muttered, grabbing the mop bucket and the industrial spray bottle of glass cleaner. "Let's make this ice palace sparkle."
The arena was cavernous. The lights were dimmed to a low, amber hum, casting long, strange shadows across the rows of empty blue seats. The air temperature dropped ten degrees as soon as I walked out of the tunnel and toward the rink.
It was silent. That was the first thing you noticed about the rink at night. A heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against your eardrums. The ice itself seemed to hum, a massive sheet of frozen tension waiting to be cut.
I set my bucket down by the penalty box. My job tonight was the glass. All the smudges, the sweat, the spit—the residue of violence left behind from practice.
I hated the silence. It gave my brain too much room to think about the $12.43.
I fished my phone out of my pocket, plugged in my wired earbuds—because who could afford AirPods?—and scrolled through my playlist. I needed energy. I needed chaos to drown out the quiet.
I hit play on a "2000s Pop Divas" mix.
The opening synth beat of a Britney song blasted into my ears, and instantly, the crushing weight on my chest lifted just a fraction.
I sprayed the glass with a vengeance.
Spray. Wipe. Spray. Wipe.
I started to move to the beat. A little hip sway here, a little shoulder shimmy there. I wasn't a good dancer. I was a disastrous dancer. My limbs were too long, and my coordination was questionable at best, but there was nobody here to see me.
I moved along the boards, wiping away the ghosts of the players.
" ...My loneliness is killing me... " I sang under my breath, my voice cracking on the high note.
I scrubbed harder.
" ...I must confess, I still believe... "
I spun around, using the squeegee as a microphone, belting the chorus to the empty seats. I closed my eyes, letting the music vibrate through my skull. For a second, I wasn't the janitor. I was a pop star. I was powerful. I was—
I opened my eyes as I pirouetted toward the ice.
And I screamed.
The sound tore out of my throat, sharp and terrified, echoing off the high vaulted ceiling.
I wasn't alone.
Standing on the ice, not ten feet away from me, was a monster.
He was huge. That was my first coherent thought.
He was dressed in black practice gear that swallowed the dim light—black jersey, black gloves, black helmet with a tinted visor that hid his face.
He stood absolutely still, balancing on skates with a predatory grace that defied physics.
He looked like a shadow that had peeled itself off the wall and learned to hunt.
I scrambled back, my heart hammering a frantic, broken rhythm against my ribs. My heel hit a patch of soapy water I’d dripped on the rubber matting.
Physics took over.
My feet went out from under me. I flailed, grabbing at the air, at the glass, at anything, but there was nothing to hold.
I went down hard. My butt hit the wet rubber with a bone-jarring thud, and I slid—actually slid—right up to the edge of the open gate, stopping inches from the ice.
My squeegee clattered away into the darkness.
Silence.
The music was still tinny and faint from my earbuds, which had ripped out of my ears in the fall, dangling around my neck like a noose.
I gasped for air, my tailbone throbbing, my face burning so hot I thought I might melt the ice. I looked up.
And up.
The figure on the ice hadn't moved. He hadn't flinched when I screamed. He hadn't reached out when I fell. He just... loomed.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached up and unsnapped his chin strap. He pulled the helmet off, shaking out hair as black as the water in a deep, frozen lake.
I stopped breathing.